Word: choe
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Four years ago, Michael Choe appeared in the pages of this magazine for doing something spectacular: choosing to be a renter. At a time when real estate riches were Topic A ("Home $weet Home," read the TIME cover line), the engineer, from Sacramento, Calif., decided to sell his house and move with his wife and baby boy into a rental. "Compared to owning, rent is cheap," he said back then...
Exceedingly smart move. Since the summer of 2005, house prices in Sacramento have plummeted by half. Choe and his family - which now includes a second son - watched from the sidelines until the end of last year. That's when the Choes moved back into a home of their own, a four-bedroom they plucked out of foreclosure at a 35% discount from what it had sold for two years earlier. (See pictures of Americans in their homes...
...There are other hints of unpleasantness: In the center of town, we pass a poster of a huge fist smashing down on a startled soldier. An American? I ask. ?You can think like that,? replies our guide. Later, chief minder Choe Jong Hun lectures us on Washington's treacherous attempts to get North Korea to disarm unilaterally through the six-party nuclear talks (the latest round last week produced no results). ?After that the U.S. is going to invade our country,? says Choe. ?Such talks are not necessary...
...grain in the country's recently legalized farmers' markets and announced a return to the old socialist system of government-controlled rice handouts. Private grain markets were just a stop-gap measure necessitated by a few bad harvests, according to the North Korean official in charge of our group, Choe Jong Hun. "Now we have a good harvest and we are able to feed ourselves," said Choe. "There is no need to sell rice in the markets...
...music, or even the Beatles. The only tunes he plays are North Korea's version of pop, a chirpy, heavily synthesized sort of muzak that sounds like it was composed in the 1950s. "I want to be a musician in a military propaganda unit," he tells us. Choe, our minder, says his country is developing its own style of music. Closing his eyes and clasping his hands to his heart, he launches into a song about a girl who is popular with the boys because she is a model worker. "We call it juche music," he says. North Korea...