Word: pyongyang
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...group at the table. China’s actions have exceeded expectations, and all parties have been generous with praise. Playing up China’s supposed influence only inflates China’s power vis-à-vis the United States, as Beijing can threaten to encourage Pyongyang with its supposed “influence” in order to have Washington back down on other security issues, like Taiwan. China has already done its part to bring the talks together; now the United States must push to conclude...
...order to strengthen its hand against North Korea, the US needs to quickly formulate a serious proposal that draws together most of the other parties at the negotiation table. Pyongyang has throughout the process skillfully played each of the six parties off another, encouraging Korean solidarity with South Korea and even playing up old historic ties with China. Only Japan has resisted North Korean overtures and remained solidly behind US efforts. Russia, China, and South Korea have been plodding along a middle path that has allowed North Korea more wiggle room in evading its responsibilities and promises. Washington can bring...
...Called Yodok Story, the production is set in one of the most notorious of dictator Kim Jong Il's gulags, which alone houses an estimated 20,000 prisoners, including many jailed for what Pyongyang deems political crimes. If you've heard of Yodok, that's because it has already gained a good deal of international infamy. One of Yodok's former inmates, Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector now living in Seoul, wrote a harrowing memoir (The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag) about his imprisonment there as a young boy. The book was translated...
...Pyongyang has consistently dismissed U.S. allegations that it's engaged in such illegal activities. But according to the report, some of these cigarette factories are directly owned by North Korea's military and the internal-security service, giving the state "total control" over these operations. In other cases, says the report, the North's contribution is primarily to provide a "safe haven" to factories run by overseas counterfeiting syndicates. Three of the factories that are said to be located in the Rajin area on the northeast coast of North Korea are allegedly run or financed by crime syndicates from Taiwan...
...atone for them, form the core of South Korean author Hwang Sok-Yong's provocative 2001 novel The Guest, which has just been published in English for the first time. Hwang, one of South Korea's most famous writers, spent five years in prison for a 1989 trip to Pyongyang, flouting a ban on unauthorized contact with the North. He was pardoned by President Kim Dae Jung, but a stint in jail clearly failed to dent his taste for controversy. The Guest, the title of which is a translation of the Korean term for the imported disease of smallpox, describes...