Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il had any inclination to leverage the moment of good feeling generated by last week's New York Philharmonic concert in Pyongyang, he has a funny way of showing it. North Korea earlier this week publicly executed 15 of its citizens for trying to flee the country by crossing the Tumen River on the border with China, a South Korean human rights organization reported on Wednesday...
...There are tens of thousands of North Korean refugees now living in China-no one knows the precise number-but in the past 18 months, aid groups say, Pyongyang has cracked down on what was a growing human tide seeking a slightly better life across the border. If accurate, the report of the executions, which came from Seoul's Good Friends Center for Peace, Human Rights and Refugees, sends a chilling message to those thinking about sneaking out of the country...
...swings between humor and pathos ended that evening at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, an ornate, three-tier orchestra hall whose stage had recently been fitted with a new acoustic shell to make the venue worthy of the New York Philharmonic. About 1,400 people jammed the hall--a few dozen foreign diplomats and business people, the rest North Koreans. When Maazel took the podium, it quickly became clear that the evening would be one of emotion. North Korean and U.S. flags stood at either end of the stage, and the audience rose as both nations' anthems were played...
...were deposited in Yanggakdo International Hotel, a 47-story structure that sits on an island in Pyongyang's Taedong River and abuts a nine-hole golf course, where I imagine it's pretty easy to get a tee time. The hotel is in an isolated spot, far from the streets where we might encounter ordinary North Koreans. And that was the point: our hosts plainly didn't want us mingling. When I later groused about it to the Pyongyang correspondent for the Russian news agency ITAR TASS, he just chuckled. "Don't you know what foreigners here call your hotel...
While the orchestra rehearsed, our minders took the journalists on a whirlwind tour of Pyongyang. One highlight: a hill overlooking the city, where a gigantic bronze statue of the Great Leader stands in front of the Korean Revolutionary Museum. There was no one around as we snapped photos of one another in front of the Big Man, but as we were about to leave, a group of around 40 people walked up in orderly rows, approaching the statue reverentially and then bowing deeply. But before we could ask what, exactly, the Great Leader meant to them, their tour guide herded...