Word: pyongyang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pyongyang is prone to such outbursts when it's in a diplomatic headlock. And increasingly, Kim Jong Il's government is being tag teamed by the U.S. and South Korea in international efforts to get Kim to dismantle his nuclear arms program. After a promising start to carrying out landmark denuclearization agreements signed by the North in 2007 - deals reached through the six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan - Pyongyang is no longer cooperating. North Korea shut down its main reactor at Yongbyon in July and allowed in international inspectors, as called...
...along with handling diplomatic affairs with a sweep of other East Asian and Pacific countries. As the talks have made more headway, Hill has gotten greater latitude from the Administration. With some balking, the North has shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Recent talks have dangled carrots before Pyongyang like promising deliveries of heavy fuel oil in exchange for further denuclearization. The New York Philharmonic's visit to North Korea in February is not a direct result of Hill's work, but the event would surely have been less likely without the improved atmospherics he's helped bring about...
President Lee's government was not being cowed, however. His Foreign Minister, Yu Myung Hwan, in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice this week, said that Seoul was "running out of time and patience" with Pyongyang over the North Korean nuclear issue. On Wednesday, President Lee himself warned that he would speak out against human rights abuses in North Korea; an issue avoided by the past two liberal administrations, and would not expand ties with the country until it abandons its nuclear weapons program...
Unlike his predecessor, Roh Moo Hyun, Lee also promised to pursue the issue of South Korean citizens kidnapped by the North, and would vote for a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution this week to look into Pyongyang's human rights abuses. Sohn Kwang Joo, an editor at the Daily NK, an online newspaper focusing on North Korea, is confident Lee will continue to press the North, but adds, "Kim Jong Il will react negatively...
With the bumpy start, the question on many minds is whether Lee's "get tough" policy will work with Pyongyang. "I'm hopeful it will, but the timing is a little difficult," says Lho. Lee's conservative party is facing crucial parliamentary elections on April 9 and desperately needs a majority in the national assembly for the new president to realize many of his policy aims, including denuclearizing the peninsula. North Korea, analysts suspect, will want to put pressure on Lee's policy toward the North, to prevent him from getting off on a normal footing and thereby affect...