Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more pleasant surprises about Pyongyang is that the North Korean capital - surely the most isolated capital city on earth - has a handful of bookshops for foreigners. Less surprisingly, most of the books have been written by either Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader and founder of North Korea, or his son the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Most are stern instruction manuals on how to be a better communist. There are also a number of guides and glossy souvenir books, more than enough for a place than receives less foreign visitors in a year than the Louvre does...
...ancient Soviet Koryo Airways Ilyushin, departing from Beijing, I was handed the English-language Pyongyang Times. That day's front page showed a photo of a smiling Kim Jong Il under the headline "DPRK Shines Under the Leadership of Brilliant Commander." The "glorious" and "superb" Dear Leader was mentioned in nearly every article inside, giving "on-the-spot guidance" to industrial workers, farms or his generals...
...passing the entrance formalities, we were loaded onto a bus with four state guides. The photographer in me was ecstatic at what I was seeing. The visual texture of North Korea is different from any country on earth. It is stark and bizarre to the point of being surreal. Pyongyang may have more monuments and wide avenues than Washington or Paris - all built in the past 50 years to the specs of the Kims' jarring taste - yet cars and pedestrians are nearly absent. It's like an empty movie...
...year 2000, Kim made a historic mark diplomatically. He traveled to Pyongyang for a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il - the first meeting between North and South Korean leaders since the end of the war. The meetings came as part of Kim's so-called Sunshine Policy, which sought economic and diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. His hope was that a more dovish stance toward the North would convince Pyongyang to rid itself of its nuclear-weapons program. He explicitly stated that reunification of the Korean peninsula would come only after a long period of "peaceful coexistence" with...
...went poorly. At one point in a 2001 summit, Bush publicly called the South Korean head of state "this man," instead of President Kim. Kim's supporters in Seoul were furious. Both sides would later acknowledge that the two Presidents had very differing views on how to deal with Pyongyang. (Read about Kim Jong Il's secret family...