Word: pyongyang
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...perpetually frosty state of relations between North Korea and the U.S. has meant that Washington's diplomats don't rack up many frequent-flyer miles traveling to the isolated capital of Pyongyang. Prior to last week, the last time a senior American diplomat visited was October 2002, and then only to confront the North with secret intelligence about its nuclear-weapons program. But on June 21, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the U.S.'s lead negotiator in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nukes, showed up in Pyongyang unexpectedly, and this time...
...unmistakably hopeful sign that the deal Pyongyang signed in February but ignored until last week was still in force, and that North Korea dictator Kim Jong Il might actually be living up to its terms. Days after Hill's visit, North Korea allowed into the country a group of U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are there to verify the shutdown of the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang has also agreed to account for and eliminate its stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-making material the North may have accumulated in the years since Kim kicked...
...back in February at the so called Six Party Talks in Beijing: allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the shutdown of the controversial Yongbyon reactor. That has helped put the optimists in the Kim club in the ascendant. Indeed, Hill's trip to Pyongyang on Thursday, the first high-level mission by a U.S. official there in more than four years, seemed designed to take advantage of the positive opening. A statement from Hill read, "It is critical for the six parties to make up for lost time to restore momentum to achieving our agreed common...
...then, a few years later, sent its Secretary of State to toast Kim with champagne. Early in the Bush Administration, it was back to war preparations and talk of a "strangulation strategy"; now, again, the full diplomatic embrace is on. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill made a surprise trip to Pyongyang on Thursday - the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the North in five years - in order to "move the process forward" and "make up for lost time" in the race to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, according to a State Department statement...
...process, they believe he will live up to his side of the February agreement - "albeit in slow motion," as one diplomat says - as long as the U.S. and its allies do the same. In this view, Kim can say to his cronies in the party leadership in Pyongyang that he has ensured their place atop North Korea, and "got a bunch of economic aid in the process, so we can afford to give up the plutonium program," says one diplomat in the region who watches and deals with North Korea full time...