Word: lees
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the American journalists who were each handed 12 years in prison yesterday by a North Korean court for committing "hostile acts" by allegedly overstepping the border in March, have received a harsh sentence by Western standards of justice. The news is grim, to be sure. But former prisoners in Pyongyang's horrific penal system speculate that the pair may not have to endure the grimmest conditions, which very few have emerged to talk about...
...peninsula have escalated. In late May, Pyongyang earned global condemnation by undertaking a second nuclear test, and now Kim Jong Il may be preparing another test of a long-range missile. Seoul's response to Pyongyang's actions has been unusually tough. After the nuclear test, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak agreed to join a U.S.-led effort to crack down on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea called Lee's decision tantamount to a declaration of war. "Many [South Koreans] now feel that the North has taken it too far," says Yoo Ho Yeol...
...Some South Koreans place at least part of the blame for the deteriorating North-South relationship on their own conservative President. Lee's two predecessors pursued an agenda of engagement with Pyongyang called the "sunshine policy," in which Seoul gave North Korea aid and investment - including the development of an industrial park just north of the border - in the hopes of defusing tensions. The "sunshine policy" produced two North-South summits - in 2000 and 2007 - but Pyongyang offered Seoul no meaningful concessions in return for its help. Upon taking office last year, Lee changed course and linked further economic cooperation...
...nightmare that began on March 17 for the two American journalists kidnapped by the North Koreans along the Chinese border got worse on Monday: Euna Lee, 36 and the mother of a 4-year-old, and Laura Ling, 32, were each sentenced to 12 years in prison by North Korea's highest court. Their crime: illegal entry into the country and "hostile acts." The sentence - "reform through labor" - raises the prospect that the two could be sent into North Korea's notorious system for political prisoners - the so-called kwan li so, which are infamous for their mistreatment of prisoners...
...called Sunshine Policy run by Roh Moo Hyun, the former South Korean President who committed suicide in May. Pyongyang revoked all the contracts at Gaesong last month and has continued to hold the businessman, apparently as a way to express its anger at current South Korean President Lee Myung Bak's harder line toward the North...