Word: koreans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When North Korean authorities caught Jeong Young Sil helping Christians escape to China seven years ago, they did not take her transgression lightly. First, they pulled out her teeth and fingernails to get information about her underground church in the country's northeast. Then, they threw her in prison for four years. "They demanded to know who was helping me and where they were," says Jeong, an evangelist in her 50s now living in South Korea, who uses an alias to protect her family back home. Despite their efforts, the Northern officials could not stop her. After she fled...
...most North Koreans, Christmas has long been a nonevent, in part because the government keeps a tight rein on information about religious holidays from entering the country, and in part because Christians can be arrested for celebrating it. Though the country's constitution does grant freedom of religion to all citizens, North Korean authorities don't seem to pay the idea much heed. The government also monitors other religions - such as Buddhism and Cheondoism, a popular Korean belief system that combines elements of several faiths - but underground churches are particularly feared by authorities because they're estimated to have helped...
...catch on as widely), building religious schools and universities across the capital. Later, as Christianity gained popularity, worshippers held group prayers in public every Christmas. But after the Japanese government took control of Korea in 1910, the new administration began suppressing religious gatherings, and by the 1950s, - after the Korean War left the peninsula split into a communist north and capitalist south, - the northern government began to carry out executions of thousands of Christians for the years to come...
Fake "North Korean" missiles have been hurtling over the Pacific toward the U.S. for years, providing test fodder for the Pentagon's missile-defense systems. But next month, the fake enemy missiles flying over the same ocean are going to be "Iranian." The timing of the test, however, has nothing to do with a missile test-fired by Iran on Tuesday. That was a medium-range Sajjil-2 missile capable of targeting Israel or U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. Next month's U.S. interceptor test will, instead, be aimed at the as-yet-hypothetical threat of an Iranian intercontinental...
...Next month's missile test not only will be aimed at a threat deemed less than urgent but will also involve tougher technical challenges. Destroying a "North Korean" missile involves hitting it as it zooms from left to right across an interceptor's field of view, but the locations of the "Iranian" missile and the U.S. interceptors require more of a head-on collision. That means the closing speed between the two projectiles will be faster than in previous tests: close to 18,000 m.p.h., compared with 15,000 m.p.h. in prior exercises...