Word: ils
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When he was younger, Lee Chek says, he wanted to be a soldier for Kim Jong Il, and "fight Japan." He'd have been fighting from behind enemy lines, of course, because the ethnic-Korean Lee was born and raised in Japan, where has always lived. The 35-year-old is a third-generation zainichi, one of 600,000 ethnic Koreans who dwell in Japan. And, like many zainichi, he grew up identifying with the North Korean regime. Lee attended Korean-language schools run by Chongyron, the fiercely pro-Pyongyang Korean residents association in Japan, where he was taught that...
...unmistakably hopeful sign that the deal Pyongyang signed in February but ignored until last week was still in force, and that North Korea dictator Kim Jong Il might actually be living up to its terms. Days after Hill's visit, North Korea allowed into the country a group of U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are there to verify the shutdown of the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang has also agreed to account for and eliminate its stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-making material the North may have accumulated in the years since Kim kicked...
...unmistakably hopeful sign that the deal Pyongyang signed in February but ignored until last week was still in force, and that North Korea dictator Kim Jong Il might actually be living up to its terms. Days after Hill's visit, North Korea allowed into the country a group of U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are there to verify the shutdown of the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang has also agreed to account for and eliminate its stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-making material the North may have accumulated in the years since Kim kicked...
Studying Kim Jong Il requires, as one of the few who made a living at it once declared, "a certain defective personality type." Said retired U.S. diplomat Daniel Jackson, "Not only do you have to enjoy banging your head against a wall, you have to feel vaguely guilty about it on those rare occasions when you don't, in fact, have a headache." With the dramatic, surprise trip by U.S. envoy Christopher Hill to Pyongyang after the regime's promise about nuclear inspection - all part of a recent slew of backing-and-forthing between the Hermit Kingdom and the rest...
...skeptics roll their eyes at these notions. They believe, simply, that the outside world - or at least, the diplomats in the outside world - has never been able to get it through its head that Kim Jong Il, as head of the North Korean regime, is simply interested in his obstreperous hold on power. Period. He doesn't give a whit about economic reform because it might come back and bite him - he watched democracy come to an increasingly prosperous South Korea, after all - and now will backtrack, delay and obfuscate until he finds an excuse...