Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nuclear test and the resulting international outcry, the detention (and subsequent release) of two U.S. journalists for illegal entry, a spat with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (described by a Pyongyang official as looking like "a pensioner going shopping"), serious food shortages. On the face of it, 2009 appears an unlikely year for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) to woo more visitors. But according to British-run, Beijing-based Koryo Tours, a company that has been escorting groups of visitors to North Korea for 16 years, such a push is under...
...North has long derided South Korea's "decadent foreign culture and ideals," and has banned nearly all South Korean, American and Japanese films in favor of 1960s Soviet and Chinese films rife with revolutionary ideas. Foreign films are allowed to be shown in some contexts, such as the Pyongyang International Film Festival held every other fall, and in recent weeks state television has occasionally shown Disney films like Snow White, Cinderella and Robin Hood. But a wide selection of foreign films have always been available to the country's élites, having been smuggled in before the 1990s, though never...
...easy year. The government executed his uncle last year for subversion against the state, the former police commander says, and his constant worry for his family still living in the North sends his gaze to the floor of his office in Seoul. But there were good times in Pyongyang too: evenings with friends when they watched smuggled South Korean soap operas and American films like Superman Returns and Titanic. "North Koreans love foreign dramas," says Myung, using an alias to protect his family living in the North. "Many people watch them in secret, even when the police have tried...
...popularity of South Korean TV shows and music known as the Korean Wave. On the black market in North Korea, American DVDs go for about 35?; South Korean ones go for $3.75, because of the higher risk of execution for smuggling them in, according to two recent defectors from Pyongyang. The nation's films and dramas have become so widespread across North Korea that the regime launched a crackdown this fall on North Korean university students, the movies' biggest audience, and smugglers at the Chinese border, charging some with promoting the ideology of the enemy state. "The government is terrified...
North Korea continued its one-step-forward, one-step-back approach to diplomacy this month, encouraging and alarming nations trying to get Pyongyang to the table to discuss nuclear disarmament...