Word: kim
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...sundered the Korean peninsula, leaving half allied with the Soviet Union, half with the U.S. Ready to reunify the country by force -- and, with help from Moscow, strong enough to dare it -- North Korea sent its tanks south across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. Communist leader Kim Il Sung hoped to destroy the U.S.-backed regime of South Korean President Syngman Rhee in a bold blitzkrieg. Kim nearly succeeded before U.S. troops and a hastily assembled United Nations force pushed the North Koreans back to the Yalu River on the Chinese border, prompting the intervention...
...deep gulf continues to separate the two Koreas. Technically North and South Korea are still at war, and they have moved no closer to reunification. As long as Kim, now 78, continues to rule the North, significant reform or concessions to the South are unlikely. And even though millions in North and South Korea share a yearning for reunification, the two countries have pursued different paths for too long to reconcile easily. As a Korean proverb says, "We may sleep in the same bed, but we have different dreams...
South Korean politicians unanimously support retaining U.S. troops. They note that while Seoul fields a 650,000-man army, North Korea's Soviet-equipped force is more than 1 million strong. Just as worrisome is Kim Il Sung's unpredictability, amply demonstrated in his complicity in terrorist acts like the bombing of a Korean Air Lines flight in 1987 that killed 115 people. Many fear he could become even more dangerous if he felt threatened by the kind of reforms that have toppled communist dictators in Eastern Europe...
Only 120 miles north of Seoul lies another world. There, from a drab, cheerless capital, the self-proclaimed "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung presides over an Orwellian state where the radios have dials that cannot be tuned and loudspeakers broadcast propaganda 20 hours a day into every home. Such totalitarianism is fast becoming extinct everywhere else in the world, but Kim not only survives, he is virtually worshiped by his people...
...Kim's popularity is all the more impressive given the failures of his rule. Food shortages are common, and energy is scarce. Hardships, when they are acknowledged at all, are attributed to the need to maintain a strong defense. Internal travel is carefully monitored, and households are organized into groups of five, with each family encouraged to report subversive activities by its neighbors. Still, few North Koreans admit envying their brethren in the South. Most accept their government's description of South Korea as an undemocratic U.S.-puppet regime plagued by AIDS, pollution and prohibitive costs...