Word: jong
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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North Korea's woes are a direct result of the regime's refusal to change its outdated economic system.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...
...market 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...
...country's Dear Leader has quietly launched an educational offensive to ramp up his country's computing skills and build an 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...
...slowly opening its economy to foreign business - and the lack of convenient cell-phone service has emerged as a major irritant, especially for the hundreds of Chinese firms active there, which make up the largest group of foreign investors. Those investors now actually have an ally in Kim Jong Il, who has quietly reversed his earlier decision and started upgrading the country's dilapidated communications infrastructure. Toward the end of last year Orascom Telecom, the Middle East's largest wireless firm, was awarded a contract to install a national cell system. The 25-year contract, in a joint venture with...
...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...