Word: pyongyang
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...Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. government views the case as wholly separate from the other issues now dividing Pyongyang and Washington. But Pyongyang almost certainly does not. For a regime that acts more like a Mafia family than a government, kidnapping has been a tactic North Korea has used for decades. Relations between Japan and North Korea are inflamed precisely because of revelations that for years the North kidnapped Japanese and then used them to train North Korean spies in Japanese language, culture and history. At a moment when Washington is pledging to get tough, Pyongyang "will...
...choice. Judging from the testimony of defectors like Kang Chol Hwan, who spent a decade as a boy in one of North Korea's most notorious camps for political prisoners, the conditions of the journalists' imprisonment could be brutal. The Administration is considering whether sending a special envoy to Pyongyang would help. Former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson, who has traveled to Pyongyang on special diplomatic missions, said recently, "Now is when the negotiating really begins." (Read "Your Move, China...
...Containment the broader challenge for obama is to craft a policy that contains three parts: it must continue to defuse tensions between North and South Korea, stop North Korea from selling weapons of mass destruction to others, and inflict sufficient economic pain on Pyongyang through new sanctions to make it rethink its determination to be a nuclear power. The primary mission of Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg on a recent visit to Seoul was to reinforce the U.S. military commitment to its long-standing ally, at a time when the "possibility of small-scale skirmishes [between North and South...
...team believes it succeeded in reassuring the South Koreans. Much more difficult will be toughening the antiproliferation measures aimed at North Korea and moving toward stiffer sanctions. Even after Pyongyang's nuclear test, China remains wary of taking any steps that could destabilize the regime, says a diplomat in East Asia, particularly when it appears to be arranging a transition...
...Administration officials say privately, however, that if coercive diplomacy toward Pyongyang is the goal, there are other ways for Washington and Beijing to work together. In fact, it's happened before. The most effective sanctions ever levied against the North were those designed and imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department during the Bush years. Not only did Treasury manage to freeze a Macau bank account through which the North Korean regime allegedly laundered millions of dollars, but it also persuaded several large banks in China to stop doing business with North Korea. In 2006, Kim Jong Il made removal...