Word: kim
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...When Kim Peek was 9 months old, doctors pronounced him so mentally retarded that he would never walk or talk. One physician suggested he be institutionalized; another later recommended a lobotomy. Peek, who died of a heart attack Dec. 19 at 58, was indeed riven by disabilities throughout his life. Born without a corpus callosum--the nerve tissue that connects the brain's hemispheres--he never learned to brush his hair or button his shirt without help...
...soften, beginning with former President Bill Clinton's trip to Pyongyang in August to bring back two hapless American correspondents detained for entering North Korea illegally. Obama responded by sending his special envoy, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang in December bearing a private letter from the U.S. President to Kim Jong Il. In it, Obama offered the North a new era of relations with the U.S. if it first agreed to return to the six-party talks and agree (for the third time since 2005, and the fourth time since 1994) to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program...
...build four state-run churches in Pyongyang in the following years, though critics maintain they're facades to show the world that it supports freedom of religion. "[Foreign missionaries] are allowed to come for relief or other purposes, only if they promise not to spread the word," argues Kim. (See pictures of the key moments in North Korea's history...
...Still, some scholars contend the regime practices a kind of pragmatic tolerance of Christianity, suggesting North Korea's intelligence agency chooses to ignore underground churches because of their political usefulness. "How can they not know the whereabouts of 100,000 Christians?" says Philo Kim, a professor of sociology at Seoul National University in South Korea, who has visited North Korea several times to study Christianity there. "The government takes advantage of them by dispatching spies into the churches. They can gather information about the churches in China and how they help defectors escape...
...That may be, but it's a limit that most are not willing to test. North Koreans still face execution if they're caught evangelizing, prompting most Christians to put aside Christmas for more patriotic holidays. Because useful or not, says Kim, "Among all religions, Christianity is seen as the most threatening to the regime...