Word: pyongyang
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Meanwhile, the oil flows, the diplomatic isolation ends, the North Korean economy is revived by Western trade -- and its nuclear program remains intact! It is to be "frozen," meaning ready to restart anytime in the next 10 years when Pyongyang decides it has got all it wants from the West. Not a brick of the North Korean program has to be removed until around...
...Administration defends this investment in peace by saying that the only alternative is war. This is a simple capitulation to blackmail. The U.S. never threatened war as an alternative to agreement. It threatened economic sanctions to squeeze North Korea into complying now, not someday, with its nuclear-treaty obligations. Pyongyang, economically moribund and starved for oil, then rattled its saber. Clinton caved...
...Vladivostok sometimes help them, but many rely on a rudimentary underground run by Korean ethnics. There is as yet no wholesale stampede from the North similar to what happened in the last days of East Germany, but any openings like the agreement two weeks ago between Washington and Pyongyang just might give potential defectors an extra push. The refugees make good propaganda for South Korea, which stages press conferences for new arrivals and keeps them under close observation for several months to help them adjust to their new life and ensure that they are not double agents...
...deal is tough because it incorporates Ronald Reagan's injunction to "trust but verify." The substitute technology the North covets -- the light-water reactors they want for energy generation -- won't be delivered until Pyongyang's compliance has been proved...
Reaching an agreement hasn't been easy. Implementing it will be harder -- and Pyongyang fears that the new Congress, assuming it is more conservative, may move to upset the bargain. That would be tragic. The deal is a good one. And by holding out against those who urged a course that could have led to war, Clinton has proved his strength and made the world safer...