[China has been pushing the North Koreans] to be essentially team players, ... They really have had a substantive impact.

I hope China will feel a certain responsibility to convince (North Korea) to take that deal,

China has become one of the largest traders and investors with many Asian countries.

[North Korea,] not for the first time, has chosen to isolate itself, ... has a rather sad and long history of making the wrong decision on things.

[That North Korea must completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program before receiving any benefits. In a July 13 interview with South Korea’s SBS Television, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated these conditions: North Korea, she said, must] make a strategic choice to abandon its nuclear weapons programs and its nuclear programs ... in the context of these [six-party] talks.

It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it. Speaking of the most controversial reactor at Yongbyon, one of the guys said, 'No sweat. She's shut down now.' Nice to know. But then, so is the rest of North Korean society shut down—animation suspended, all dead quiet on the set, endlessly awaiting not action (we hope) or even cameras, but light.