Word: seoul
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...periodic "peace offensives," the New Year's message had the regime in Pyongyang purring like a pussycat. It focused on developing light industry and agriculture to improve the lives of its citizens. And in a passage carefully noted in both Washington and in the South Korean capital, Seoul, the message read: "The fundamental task for ensuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of Asia is to put an end to the hostile relationship between [North Korea] and the U.S.A." (See pictures of North Korea's rubber-stamp elections...
...diplomatic rumor mill in East Asia can be believed, Kim Jong Il - clearly back in charge, sources in Seoul say, after his stroke in September 2008 - is said to be readying for a visit to Beijing to meet with President Hu Jintao. (Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu, showing if nothing else that the Chinese have mastered the art of the nondenial denial, said that she had "not heard of such news.") (See pictures of of Kim Jong...
...Given the North's long-established record of following periods of belligerence with a willingness to talk, Pyongyang's current sound track has been greeted warily in Seoul and Washington. Intense wariness is now deeply ingrained in the diplomats now dealing with the regime. Several senior South Korean officials tell TIME that, at best, they are now, as one put it, "skeptically optimistic, if that makes any sense...
...good news, sources in Seoul say, is that the South Korean government and the Obama Administration are "not only on the same page, but on the same paragraph" when it comes to dealing with the North, as one adviser to President Lee Myung Bak put it recently. One senior diplomat adds that his "gut instinct" is that the North will in fact return relatively soon to the nuclear bargaining table. But even if that happens, Seoul concurs with Bosworth's assessment, on returning from Pyongyang last month, that the sequencing of reciprocal steps by the two sides is likely...