Word: pyongyang
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...abandon its nuclear ambitions continued last week, spurred by Washington's push to send the issue of the country's nuclear ambitions to the U.N. Security Council. South Korean and Russian negotiators, who are in talks with North Korea, fear that any sanctions imposed by the U.N. could provoke Pyongyang. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it would hold a meeting on Feb. 3 to decide whether to refer the issue to the top U.N. body; South Korea urged a postponement to allow time for diplomats to work on the situation. In Seoul, North and South Korea...
...Today's diplomatic impasse began with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly's visit to Pyongyang in October, when he confronted his hosts with evidence of a secret North Korean program for producing weapons-grade uranium. That meeting hardly proceeded according to North Korea's plan. North Korean Foreign Ministry officials were reportedly left all but speechless, having cheerfully assumed that Kelly was coming to town with an offer of renewed aid. Reports further suggest that Pyongyang had even readied the U.S.S. Pueblo, the spy ship North Korea captured in 1968, for return to Washington as a gesture...
...North Korean officials finally got back to Kelly after an all-night session with the Dear Leader. Kelly was then reportedly told that Pyongyang did indeed have a covert uranium-enrichment program and "had more powerful things as well." For good measure, North Korea said its 1994 Agreed Framework with Washington was "nullified." This defiant tirade may have been emotionally satisfying for an enraged and embarrassed dictator. But as a diplomatic gambit it was rank buffoonery. By admitting its own nuclear cheating, North Korea inadvertently spared America the trouble of proving the subterfuge...
...Despite the bellicose rhetoric coming out of North Korea, most Japanese remain relatively unconcerned about the possibility of a nuclear attack. They still believe that the U.S. will protect them from Pyongyang's threatened "sea of fire." But Japan's political leaders do worry about the peninsula: as they see it, a breakthrough in relations between North and South Korea that freezes out Japan and the U.S. would be a regional disaster. Indeed, many people believe that the Japanese government would rewrite the peace constitution if faced with a real prospect of Korean unification or of the U.S. withdrawing...
...Pham Ngoc Canh was a 23-year-old Vietnamese exchange student in Pyongyang. There he fell in love with Ri Yong-hui, 24, a North Korean factory worker. Their governments were communist soul mates, but relationships with foreigners were taboo in both countries. "I saw no chance," says Canh. Both were devastated when he left in 1973. A year later, Ri asked a Vietnamese student to smuggle a letter to Canh. Thus began three decades of furtive exchanges...