Word: border
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...rituals are more futile than the "housecleaning" of Mexico's police forces. So deep, broad and brazen is cop corruption south of the border that removing it makes eradicating rats from landfills look easy. Mexico stages quasi-annual purges of officers high and low - last year it was 284 federal police commanders - and yet every year the nation seems to find itself with an even more criminal constabulary. This year's scandals, however, are especially appalling...
...Korea and family members of kidnappees, have continued to organize their ongoing balloon launches in an unusually jittery climate of inter-Korean relations, ignoring threats by the North and pressure by the South to stop the launches. On Nov. 12, North Korea threatened it would shut the inter-Korean border within weeks. South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korea, which has tolerated similar propaganda leaflets being floated in past years, made it clear that it would not accept messages saying the Dear Leader's days are numbered. Now, Pyongyang is blaming Seoul for failing to keep its activists...
...winds to be just right," says Choi Sung Young, who was able to take advantage of rare southerly winds on the peninsula on Thursday to launch nearly a dozen gas-filled balloons, containing thousands of flyers pillorying Kim Jong Il's regime, and watch them float toward the border. (See pictures of The Rise of Kim Jong...
...Every year since 2003, between two and three million leaflets, inked by activist groups including the Representatives of the Abductees Family Union and North Korean defectors, have reportedly been floated across the border into North Korea. The recent flyers implore North Koreans to fight against Kim Jong Il and condemn his regime. Activists have also been stuffing dollars and Chinese yuan into the balloons, ostensibly to help North Koreans seeking to defect through its border with China. "Of course they've responded negatively because we mentioned Kim Jong Il's health," says Choi...
...Seoul is upset over the possibility that Pyongyang might shut the border, crippling a highly symbolic four-year-old joint industrial complex between North Korean and South Korean companies. Since South Korean laws protect freedom of speech, there's little the government can do to legally stop activists like Choi. That doesn't mean they don't try. "We cannot stop this activity," said one official at the Unification Ministry's public information office. "But we are making efforts." The Ministry would not outline how it has been trying to ground the balloons, but Choi says government officials have visited...