Word: yongbyon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seemed remarkably unruffled by the vitriol spewing from Stalinist North Korea just 40 kilometers away. After taking another step toward mass production of nuclear weapons by announcing it was restarting a plutonium-producing reactor, North Korea last week vowed to unleash "total war" if the U.S. bombed the Yongbyon nuclear complex. That threat was followed by another: if America beefs up its military presence in the region, the peninsula "will be reduced to ashes, and the Koreans will not escape horrible nuclear disasters." South Koreans are all in the line of fire, but Chung is sanguine. "North Korea is just...
...North, the kind of pressure the U.S. thinks could peacefully halt the North's nuclear program. Says one U.S. academic in the talks: "Do they understand that in the long run, the alternative is a nuclear Japan, and in the short term the alternative is a U.S. strike against Yongbyon...
...Korea will be reduced to ashes and the Koreans will not escape horrible nuclear disasters," said the peculiarly named Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the government agency that oversees relations with South Korea. To drive home the point, North Korea announced it had reactivated its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. Pyongyang said that it would use the reactor to generate much-needed electricity "at the present stage." The problem, according to experts, is that the reactor, which was decommissioned in 1994, is too small to make electricity in useful amounts - but certainly big enough to produce weapons materials...
...even if the White House didn't have the added complication of organizing a war against Iraq, its options for confronting North Korea would be limited. In 1994, when the Clinton Administration demanded that North Korea shut down the Yongbyon reactor, the Pentagon drafted plans for strikes to take out North Korea's key nuclear-production sites. Pentagon officials say the plan has recently been reviewed and modified, but few believe any American President would ever authorize it. An attack on Pyongyang's nuclear facilities could spread lethal radiation over China, Japan and South Korea and trigger a hellacious North...
...more time by denying the U.S.'s evidence that he had started a secret uranium-enrichment program. The U.S. and its allies halted fuel-oil deliveries to North Korea; at that point, instead of agreeing to abandon the uranium project, Kim got ready to fire up the Yongbyon complex, which the regime had mothballed under the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton Administration. And by removing the spent-fuel seals, opening the reprocessing plant and expelling inspectors, Kim has gone even further than anticipated toward building new bombs--and at a more terrifyingly rapid pace...