Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mouse encounter in Prague. Their vignettes make a compelling side narrative to the main tale, but the best feature of the book is how it builds, brick by dirty gray brick, a portrait of North Korean society that feels far more real than any debriefing. Church's Pyongyang is caught in the familiar time warp of the North's long-soured revolution: it's a place of deserted roads, decaying buildings and rusting trains that creak off to the provinces at walking pace. But what's different is the richly quotidian existence he brings to life. O may be under...
...Japan's pacifist constitution, and may move to do so this year. Normally, such a change would threaten to destabilize a region long wary of any resurgence of Japanese militarism. But Abe has worked hard to improve relations with his neighbors-a fact reflected in their muted reaction. While Pyongyang, predictably, took Tokyo to task for "converting the Japanese islands into a 'war state,'" the Chinese Foreign Ministry merely expressed hope that the change would not derail Japan's "peaceful development." "It's significant that China didn't really criticize it," says Hisahiko Okazaki, a foreign-policy adviser...
...North Korea, long a Chinese ally, with whom China once fought a war against the U.S. As North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il developed a nuclear-weapons program in the 1990s, China had to choose between irking the U.S.--which would have implied doing little to rein in Pyongyang--or stiffing its former prot...
...Security Council until December 2005, says Hu had long indicated to visiting groups of Americans his skepticism about Kim's intentions. When the North finally tested a nuke last fall, China joined the U.S. and other regional powers in condemning Kim and supported a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Pyongyang. Says a senior U.S. official: "If you asked experts several years ago, Could you imagine China taking these actions toward a longtime ally in cooperation with us and Japan? Most people would have said...
...nobody in Washington is getting carried away. Beijing has been helpful on North Korea because it's more important to China that Pyongyang not provoke a regional nuclear arms race than it is to deny the U.S. diplomatic support. Contrast such helpfulness with China's behavior on the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions. In December, China signed a $16 billion contract with Iran to buy natural gas and help develop some oil fields, and it has consistently joined Russia in refusing to back the tough sanctions against Tehran sought by the U.S. and Europe. "It's hard...