Top U.S. arms negotiator John Bolton described North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Thursday as a tyrannical dictator who lived like royalty while jailing thousands and keeping many hungry in a "hellish nightmare."
| Ummm... Yep. That about covers it. |
In a tough speech guaranteed to provoke a blistering North Korean response, the undersecretary of state also said Kim was mistaken if he thought threats to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons would weaken international resolve to halt Pyongyang's atomic ambitions through multilateral talks.
| Ahhh... The testes approach... |
His comments come at a delicate time, with Japan's Kyodo news agency reporting the U.S. and North and South Korea were in the final stages of discussing a proposal to hold three-way talks in early September. "The last year has seen Kim Jong-il accelerate these programs, particularly on the nuclear front," he said in a speech to the East Asia Institute, referring to proliferation. "The days of (North Korean) blackmail are over," he said. "Kim Jong-il is dead wrong to think that developing nuclear weapons will improve his security. Indeed, the opposite is true." Bolton, widely seen as a Bush administration hawk on North Korea, spent large parts of his speech painting a bleak picture of life for the average North Korean with Kim at the helm. He mentioned Kim's name dozens of times, and described him as one of the world's "tyrannical rogue state leaders."
| Kinda the poster boy for the whole clan, in fact... |
"While he lives like royalty in Pyongyang, he keeps hundreds of thousands of his people locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging the ground for food," he said. "For many in North Korea, life is a hellish nightmare." North Korea is edging toward talks but has recently repeated its demand Washington drop its "hostile policy."
| There's your answer, Kim. |
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