Word: pyongyang
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...Japan and South Korea, which harbor U.S. troops and are within range of North Korean ordnance?are not on military alert. Japan's Defense Agency denied press reports last week that it is considering deploying two Aegis-class destroyers in the Sea of Japan to detect missile launches by Pyongyang. "Practically, it is very difficult for North Korea to start a total war against the U.S.," says Jiro Okuyama, assistant press secretary for Japan's Foreign Ministry. "They are not ready for that...
...Even in Pyongyang, there is no activity suggesting the country is on a war footing. During a trip to the capital and to economic-development projects in North Korea last week, a Time correspondent observed that the state-controlled media has cranked up anti-American rhetoric for its domestic audience?a recent TV segment just before the evening news featured grisly photos of dead babies allegedly killed by U.S. bombing during the Korean War. There were also reports of air-raid sirens during a civil-defense drill in Pyongyang last week. But there was no sign of other unusual activity...
...Some believe, however, that the disjointed diplomatic tango between Washington and Pyongyang could yet spin out of control. Already the crisis seems to have advanced further than a similar U.S.-North Korea impasse in the 1990s. That encounter?also centered on North Korea's nuclear-weapons ambitions and characterized by a series of alarming moves by the North?was eventually resolved in 1994 when the U.S. came to the bargaining table. North Korea agreed not to build bombs, and a coalition of nations agreed to supply the North with...
...trigger full mobilization. North Korea's next move could be the test firing of a missile like the one that flew over Japan in 1998. Other even more dangerous provocations are possible. Gordon Flake, a Korea expert at the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington, fully expects Pyongyang to test a nuclear device or declare itself a nuclear power before any fighting starts in the Gulf, or shortly thereafter. "The danger of a North Korean miscalculation is growing every day," he says...
...fact, all of North Korea's neighbors?China, Japan, Russia and South Korea?have been urging the U.S. to abandon its hard-line policy and hold direct talks with Pyongyang. The Bush Administration's frustration that it can't get support from allies only grew last week when a high-level delegation from South Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun visited Washington. At one meeting with top U.S. experts on Korea, Yun Young Gwan, a Roh advisor on foreign affairs, stunned his audience by announcing Seoul would rather see North Korea with nukes than see it collapse. Appalled, one participant...