Word: ils
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Baseball certainly isn't known as the national pastime of North Korea. Condemned as a bourgeois indulgence, the sport was banned when the country was established in 1948. So why is a baseball stadium being built as a "gift" to President KIM IL SUNG for his 80th birthday next April? Apparently Kim changed his mind when he found out that fellow die-hard Marxist Fidel Castro and just about everybody else in Cuba is crazy about the game...
...technicians, the research center combines the theoretical study of aerodynamics with practical experiments on airplanes and spacecraft. In one hangar-size workshop, stress- testing sensors cling like barnacles to prototypes of the new MiG-31 fighter and the next generation of Soviet civilian airliners, the Tu-204 and Il-114. Nearby is the T-128 transonic wind tunnel, where the space shuttle Buran and the Energiya booster rocket were tested with airstreams driven by a 1,000-kW compressor. The center is also adjacent to the Ramenskoye proving ground, the largest airfield in Europe...
...later, on the aging Chosonminhang airlines plane into Pyongyang -- the carrier runs only five flights a week, linking the capital to Moscow, Beijing, Khabarovsk and Sofia -- the Briton was the only sightseer in evidence. Most of the passengers were North Koreans (easily identified by the badge depicting President Kim Il Sung that every North Korean must pin over his heart) and Japanese businessmen, apparently undeterred by the fact that North Korea is the only country that Japanese nationals are not permitted by their government to visit...
Radios are fixed so they can receive only the one acceptable station, and a loudspeaker is installed in every home. The display case in a hotel bookstore features 114 different works, all by Kim Il Sung or his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Il. Martial music is piped in throughout the country, even in the bus taking passengers from airplane to terminal; by daybreak, when workers march to their jobs, a fast, furious female voice is already shouting exhortations from a hidden amplifier in the street...
Meanwhile, an additional 50,000 apartments are being completed for Kim Il Sung's 80th birthday in 1992. Many Korea watchers believe in that year, when Kim Jong Il turns 50, the father may hand power over to the son. Though citizens in Pyongyang still seem eager to attest to their devotion to their leaders, some of their enthusiasm may be quickened by the fact that theirs is one of the most militarized countries in the world (with nearly 900,000 troops among its 21 million people). According to the human-rights group Asia Watch, as many...