Word: pyongyang
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LAST WEEK PRESIDENT BUSH RULED out U.S. military action to take out Pyongyang's suspected nuclear arsenal but then pledged to "lead a coalition to disarm" Saddam Hussein, who isn't believed to possess one yet. Bush and his aides tried to draw a distinction between Iraq and North Korea by pointing to their record of defiance: though Saddam refused for four years to allow the world to check whether he was trying to obtain nuclear weapons, North Korea, until this recent bout of truculence, had at least frozen its plutonium process. That argument glides over the reality that while...
...demanded that North Korea shut down the Yongbyon reactor, the Pentagon drafted plans for strikes to take out North Korea's key nuclear-production sites. Pentagon officials say the plan has recently been reviewed and modified, but few believe any American President would ever authorize it. An attack on Pyongyang's nuclear facilities could spread lethal radiation over China, Japan and South Korea and trigger a hellacious North Korean counterattack. The regime boasts a standing army of 1 million troops--the world's fourth largest--with an estimated 4.7 million more in reserve. It also keeps a massive store...
...China, which supplies the bulk of North Korea's oil, is wary of exacerbating the privations that have already sent thousands of North Korean refugees across the border. U.S. officials think, however, that China's leaders can be swayed to squeeze North Korea, given Beijing's concern that if Pyongyang definitively crosses the nuclear threshold, Japan and South Korea will be provoked to follow. The bigger headache for the U.S. has turned out to be its longtime ally the South Koreans, who have no interest in making life worse for their North Korean kin. The South's President-elect...
...case, putting in place sanctions tough enough to inflict persuasive pain on North Korea would take months, giving Pyongyang time to successfully extract new nuclear-weapons material. So is there another way out? South Korean officials are pushing the U.S. to negotiate a climb-down with Pyongyang; Kim, they believe, is desperate to end his country's isolation and would agree to give up his nuclear ambitions if the U.S. dangled the promise of normalized relations and pledged not to attack him. But so far, the Administration has refused to negotiate until Pyongyang disarms. Hawks in Washington warn that...
...quest for a nuclear weapon has obsessed the Pyongyang regime since the 1950s, when Kim Il Sung began working to amass an arsenal potent enough to deter a feared U.S. attack. Though Pyongyang has made gestures suggesting it was ready to make concessions in exchange for aid and security guarantees, neither Kim Il Sung nor his son gave up the raw material for bombmaking or renounced the desire to obtain the Bomb; in their mind, doing so would sap the country's bargaining strength and make the regime's survival dependent on its neighbors' goodwill...