Word: ils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hard-liners in George W. Bush's administration, never known for their diplomatic bedside manner, have called it the "strangulation strategy": forcing the North Korean despot Kim Jong Il to shelve his nuclear weapons program by cutting off his isolated country from trade...
...Jong Il, who runs North Korea like a murderous schoolmaster, has recently identified a new threat to his grip on power. Men in the North are letting their hair grow longer, a social trend so disturbing to Kim?who is instantly recognizable for his gravity-defying bouffant?that he is trying to eradicate it at its roots. The Dear Leader recently decreed that extravagant male locks, defined in the state media as exceeding 5 cm in length, are a bourgeois affectation that could undermine socialism. In a televised campaign called "Let's Trim Our Hair According to the Socialist Lifestyle...
...63rd birthday last week, there was no relief in sight. Instead, Pyongyang watchers believe that Kim was pondering how to perpetuate the rule of his dynasty; they assume that sooner or later he will name a successor to assume the mantle of power he inherited from his father Kim Il Sung...
...choice not yet been made? Kim Il Sung gave his son the nod by naming him to the Politburo at the age of 32 and then cranked up the regime's propaganda arm to sing his praises. Kim Jong Il's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, is 33 but the official media isn't yet hyperventilating about him. Meanwhile, Kim's other sons Jong Chol, 23, and Jong Woon, 21, also remain invisible...
...Jong Il has long taken a personal interest in staging North Korea's biggest celebration: his birthday. Typically, Feb. 16 is marked by fireworks displays, mass loyalty pledges, forced pilgrimages to Kim's mountaintop birthplace and the sudden appearance of food--gift bags of candy and cookies for the children unlucky enough to be born in such an isolated, impoverished and tyrannical land...