Word: kim
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...however many states become involved in trying to defang Pyongyang and ease the North's eventual integration into the international system, it remains the case that for someone who has long been assumed to hold a weak hand, Kim has played his cards well. Using delay and deceit, always threatening, expressly or by implication, to deploy or sell his nukes, he has wheedled cash, fuel and food aid from the outside and used them to prop up his rule. Nothing, as I say, lasts forever. But the unification that Lee maintains is the "long-cherished desire of the 70 million...
...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...
...longing in both countries to become a whole nation again. As the orchestra began to leave the stage, several members turned and waved goodbye, and many in the audience reciprocated. Bassist Jon Deak later said he was near tears. So too was a young Korean-American assistant concertmaster, Michelle Kim, a descendant of a North Korean family who lived in Seoul until she was 11. "Tonight I didn't feel South Korean or North Korean but Korean," she said. "It was very emotional...