Word: il
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with former President Bill Clinton's trip to Pyongyang in August to bring back two hapless American correspondents detained for entering North Korea illegally. Obama responded by sending his special envoy, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang in December bearing a private letter from the U.S. President to Kim Jong Il. In it, Obama offered the North a new era of relations with the U.S. if it first agreed to return to the six-party talks and agree (for the third time since 2005, and the fourth time since 1994) to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program...
...course, in an impoverished nation where aid organizations provide food aid to some six million people, the Western notion of a gift-giving holiday does not translate very well, particularly after Kim Jong Il's regime effectively stripped most of the nation of any personal savings three weeks ago. Each year underground worshippers in North Korea receive an array of presents from the outside world, including foreign-made clothes and candy, smuggled in by defectors like Jeong...
...Meanwhile, the communist regime has placed a slew of nationalistic holidays around Christmas, though their timing is probably a coincidence. On December 24, many North Koreans observe the birthday of Kim Jong Suk - the deceased mother of dictator Kim Jong Il and a revolutionary hero - by making pilgrimages to her birthplace of Hoeryong, a town in the northeast. Three days later, they are given a day off work for Constitution Day. Even New Years' Day is more about revolutionary zeal than ushering in 2010, when thousands of North Koreans will walk in a yearly procession to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace...
...most impoverished countries in the world. Here, a boom year is any one in which we manage to avoid a famine that kills thousands. But you have to understand, what I value most is control. That's what my father, our country's heroic founder, the Great Leader Kim il-Sung, desired; it's what I desire; and I've pretty much bet the family jewels that my 26-year-old son, Kim Jong-Un, will want the same thing when he takes over in a few years. Absolute, total control over pretty much everything...
...Yours truly, The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il...