John Bolton and the DPRK

For those of you who don't know of him, John Bolton is undersecretary of State for arms control and international security and is considered the highest ranking "Neocon" in the State Department. His name has been mentioned in the past few days as a possibility for Undersecretary of State so I thought I'd share these few articles I found. Reading them gave me a laugh.

The first article:

The Bush administration declined Monday to respond to North Korea's description of the State Department's top arms control official as "human scum." "We're not going to dignify North Korean comments about our undersecretary of state," spokesman Philip Reeker said. North Korea's official news agency vilified Undersecretary of State John Bolton after he characterized North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" in a speech last week to a gathering in South Korea.

I searched on KCNA and found the article. I don't know if this link will work but it was on August 4, 2003. Here is the text:

Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry Slams U.S. Mandarin's Invective Pyongyang, August 2 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea today gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA as regards a string of vituperation let loose by Bolton, U.S. under-secretary of state, against the DPRK. According to a press report, during his recent visit to south Korea and Japan Bolton hurled malignant abuses at the top leader of the DPRK. Bolton asserted that "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" and "for many in north Korea, life is a hellish nightmare." Bolton's remarks make one doubt whether he is a man with an elementary faculty of thinking and stature as a man or not, to say nothing of whether he is a politician belonging to a hawkish faction or to a dovish one. We know that there are several hawks within the present U.S. administration but have not yet found out such rude human scum as Bolton. What he uttered is no more than rubbish which can be let loose only by a beastly man bereft of reason. Bolton was so completely seized with the inveterate habit of rejecting others out of reason that he made a malignant personal attack even on the top leader of other country. If he is allowed any longer to speak for the u.s. policy on the nuclear issue, this would adversely affect not only the fate of the policy but that of the administration itself. Bolton's reckless remarks cast a doubt as to whether the U.S. truly wants to negotiate with the DPRK or not. There is no change in our stand on holding the six-party talks including the bilateral talks between the DPRK and the U.S. for the peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula. A caravan is bound to go ahead though dogs bark. Such human scum and bloodsucker is not entitled to take part in the talks in view of either the importance of the talks aimed to decide on peace and stability in Northeast Asia or human dignity. On the basis of a serious analysis of Bolton's outcries in the light of his political vulgarity and psychopathological condition as they are quite different from the recent remarks of the U.S. president, we have decided not to consider him as an official of the u.s. administration any longer nor to deal with him. We may exercise self-restraint as regards other matters but will never allow anyone to slander the top leader of the DPRK whoever he is and wherever he is on earth.

Bolton took another stab at the DPRK recently.