Banyan The importance of being insincere

摘要

For his new year's resolution, Kim Jong II, despot of North Korea, is laying on the charm. His regime, prone to daily outpourings of bellicose bile and guilty in November of shelling South Korean civilians, has donned its friendly face. It is making unctuous appeals for talks with the South. This suggests that after a gap of more than two years it may be ready, as its ally China hopes, for the resumption of a six-country negotiating process aimed at getting rid of its nuclear weapons.