Word: ils
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...tour of the local hospital, a disturbing den of dank hallways and archaic equipment, and a department store offering a sparse selection of packaged food and clothing that looked like 1950s leftovers. After dark, students gathered at the foot of Sinuiju's giant statue of Kim Il Sung, the country's founding father, to finish their homework. With little electricity in the town, the spotlights pointed at the statue were one of the few sources of light. The North Koreans escorting us were so out of touch with the outside world that they showed us their city to boast...
North Korea's woes are a direct result of the regime's refusal to change its outdated economic system. Unlike China's leaders, who linked market-oriented reforms to the Communist Party's survival, Kim Jong Il and his cohorts see economic openness as a threat to their power and have in recent years intensified state control over the economy...
...reform, including the proliferation of farmers' markets and the tilling of private plots. But in 2005, Pyongyang reversed course and began re-establishing the state's dominance over food distribution. Officials have even slapped new restrictions on the operation of marketplaces in recent years. (See pictures of Kim Jong Il...
...internationally competitive IT industry, moves that experts say have been strongly encouraged by Kim's oldest son, Jong Nam, who directs the Korea Computer Center. Grade-school kids are now drilled in Pascal and other computer languages, while gifted students are channeled into science and technology programs at Kim Il Sung University and Kim Chaek University, which some have dubbed the MIT of North Korea. Although currently stalled because of troubled bilateral relations with South Korea, another technical university, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), is scheduled to open soon; foreign professors are supposed to eventually teach there...
...world of the sort that presumably reduces the likelihood of certain types of conflict," argues Stuart Thorson, an IT and governance expert at Syracuse who oversees the program with Kim Chaek, which he says has been hampered by ineffectual U.S. export controls. (View suspected doctored pictures of Kim Jong Il...