Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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North Korea is great at scaring its neighbors. The isolated dictatorship carries a real nuclear threat, and tested its latest device this May in an underground bunker. Tensions in East Asia heightened this week after Pyongyang threatened "a fire shower of nuclear retaliation" if the U.S. or its allies in the region attempted any provocative action when trying to curb North Korea's missile program. Even those with historically warmer ties to the pariah state, such as Russia and China, have bristled at Pyongyang's latest moves. Still, North Korea may not be without friends...
What it does export is invariably shrouded in mystery. Pyongyang exists frozen outside the global economy and raises funds through a host of backdoor activities, including the manufacture of counterfeit money and dissemination of its military secrets and technological capabilities to a whole network of dubious customers. As a consequence of Pyongyang's recent bellicose behavior, a new U.N. resolution passed this June forbids the country from exporting arms and authorizes member states to search North Korean vessels suspected to be carrying them, though they must first seek Pyongyang's legal consent - effectively, a non-starter. Nevertheless, the U.S.S. John...
...Burmese and North Koreans were not always this close. In 1983, North Korean agents bombed a South Korean delegation visiting a monument in Rangoon. More than 20 people died and Burma severed relations with Pyongyang. But the two nations held secret talks during the 1990s and restored formal ties in 2007. Soon thereafter, North Korean vessels started docking at Burmese ports, reportedly unloading heavy equipment and weapons parts. It is suspected that resource-rich Burma sends minerals, rubber and foodstuffs to North Korea in return for such assistance...
...tense standoff between U.S. ships and the Kang Nam 1 would hardly upset Pyongyang; the Burmese junta has proven to be wholly insensitive to criticism and protest from the outside world. Watchers of both isolated states see a joint circling of wagons in the face of a hostile international community. With many policy makers already tearing at their hair over North Korea's nuclear intransigence, it's a state of affairs that can only deepen global concern...
...North Korea's Internet integration. An initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science - also currently stalled because of the recent chill in bilateral relations - would pave the way for North Korean access to a wide swath of online university databases. That could provide critical assistance to Pyongyang's multiple development challenges, including growing enough food to feed its people; the country suffered a famine in the mid-'90s that claimed 2 million to 3 million lives and still suffers chronic malnutrition...