Word: ils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...core task," Lee said, "is to help all Koreans live happily and to prepare the foundation for unification" of the peninsula. But that, as everyone knows, is easier said than done. It is perfectly true that nothing lasts forever and that one day the totalitarian rule of Kim Jong Il in North Korea will end. Some analysts suspect he is in poor health, and he does not seem to have an obvious heir within his family. But it is also true that many in the South, with a very shrewd appreciation of the likely costs of unification, dread a collapse...
...citizen, and we have been technically at war with the North since a 1953 armistice. Partly it may be because some of the things I've written over the years haven't exactly been flattering to the family dynasty that runs the place: the late Kim Il Sung (the "Great Leader") and now his son, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. But mostly it's because the North Koreans, in their bull-necked isolation, pretty much don't give a damn what the outside world thinks of them...
...Mind Your Minder While the orchestra rehearsed, the government minders took the 80 mostly American journalists on a whirlwind tour of Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung, the late Great Leader, is still the dominant figure in the intense cult of personality that is North Korea. His image is everywhere, most prominently on an overlook where a gigantic bronze statue stands in front of the Korean Revolution Museum. After we boarded the buses, a group of about 40 North Koreans walked up and made their way to the statue. We were just about to leave, but again there was a journalists' revolt...
...This didn't seem to be an act for our benefit; this appeared real. Before the mob of journalists could pepper them with questions about what Kim Il Sung meant to them, their handler hustled them into the museum. When we got back on the bus, we got a tongue-lashing; a handler screaming at us in Korean to behave. My group's translator, a decent enough guy named Mr. Kim, sheepishly translated: "He says we have to stick to the schedule. Otherwise, you'll never be able to see everything and you'll get in trouble...
...diplomatic consensus was not good going into the orchestra's adventure in the Hermit Kingdom. Except for closing a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon - a significant step, to be sure - North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has not fulfilled any other aspect of the supposedly ground-breaking deal he signed last year. But the warmth and musical harmony of Tuesday night in Pyongyang seemed to belie that impasse. And what dramatic possibilities there might have been. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on the same peninsula, albeit in South Korea, attending the inauguration of that country's new President. If there...