Word: koreas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...town, the spotlights pointed at the statue were one of the few sources of light. The North Koreans escorting us were so out of touch with the outside world that they showed us their city to boast of their prosperity, not expose their poverty. (See pictures of North Korea going to the polls...
...rare opportunity in 2002 to take a road trip through North Korea. I had been invited into the country by Pyongyang along with several other foreign correspondents, and even though we rode in a modern bus, the journey itself was like going back in time. From the capital, we drove down narrow country roads for nearly six hours, through small farming hamlets of white homes in neat rows. Men in army-green clothing worked the fields by hand; there were few tractors or animals in sight. Trucks with sacks of U.S. food aid passed...
That was seven years ago, but conditions have probably not improved even though Pyongyang continues to funnel scarce resources into weapons programs. Food shortages returned last year, while aid and investment from neighbors such as South Korea and Japan have dwindled. How bad the situation may be is hard to assess since North Korea doesn't reveal significant economic data. Estimates from South Korea's central bank, released on Monday, suggest that North Korea's gross domestic product recovered in 2008 after two years of contraction, with 3.7% growth. The bank attributed the increase to "one-off factors," such...
...North Korea's woes are a direct result of the regime's refusal to change its outdated economic system. Unlike China's leaders, who linked market-oriented reforms to the Communist Party's survival, Kim Jong Il and his cohorts see economic openness as a threat to their power and have in recent years intensified state control over the economy...
Once prohibitively expensive, places such as South Korea and Iceland have been transformed into bargain getaways. The weakening of South Korea's won helped the country attract 7% more tourists last year--a faster rise than that of any other Asian destination--and so far this year, 50% more Japanese tourists have visited. In Iceland, where the krona has fallen sharply, the nation is betting on increased arrivals: this summer Icelandair will open up new routes to nine cities in Europe and North America. And VisitBritain, the official U.K. tourism body, is running a $2.6 million ad campaign urging foreigners...