Word: kim
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...northeastern frontier. The experiment failed: the zone didn't attract much beyond a few hotels and a casino catering to Chinese tourists. Another special economic zone in Sinuiju, across the Yalu River from the Chinese city of Dandong, faltered in 2002 after the Chinese-Dutch orchid entrepreneur handpicked by Kim to run the place was arrested by China for fraud...
...North was emulating an obvious precedent: Shenzhen, the special economic zone where China first experimented with capitalism. In January 2006, Kim made a rare foreign visit, traveling by train (he reportedly abhors flying) to the booming southern Chinese city. Kim may see China as more than a path to prosperity. "To him it's an assuring message," says Mansourov. "Even if you open up economically, you can still maintain political control for his regime and his family...
...often as North Korea has opened the door a crack, it has slammed it shut. In 2005, for instance, the government suddenly reversed its decision to allow private markets, forcing many North Koreans back into food-rationing. And at April's meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly, Kim's government sacked Prime Minister Pak Pong Ju, who had led a Cabinet-level economic think tank and was seen by some as friendly to reformers. "All of a sudden the wind seems to have gone out of the sail," says Brad Babson, a former North Korea specialist at the World...
Skeptics, meanwhile, see North Korea's current eagerness for investment as another in Kim's endless series of feints designed to keep his opponents off balance--and the foreign aid handouts flowing so the country stays fed. "The North Korean economic approach has always been to extract resources from outsiders," says Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The North Korean Economy. "It's like what they say about champagne: In success, you feel like you deserve it. In failure, you need...
...late September, North Korea agreed to dismantle all its nuclear facilities and disclose the scope of its nuclear program by the end of the year in exchange for 950,000 tons of fuel oil or the equivalent in economic aid. And at this month's summit in Pyongyang between Kim and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun, the two nations agreed to pursue a formal peace treaty to officially end the Korean War and made broad, if vague, plans for increased economic cooperation...