Word: pyongyang
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...vaunted reputation as the world's "Hermit Kingdom" - the ostensibly inscrutable nation that leaves the outside world guessing about what goes on inside its borders - North Korea can also be predictable. Since at least the early 1990s, Pyongyang's relations and level of engagement with its neighbors and with Washington have swung wildly from outright hostility toward rapprochement and back again. No matter how tense things get, Kim Jong Il (like his father Kim Il Sung before him) always steps back from the ledge and tries to re-engage...
Bill Clinton's mission to rescue the two journalists held captive by Pyongyang marked the start of the latest North Korean charm offensive, with Kim trying to play the affable host to the serious ex-President of the U.S. It continued when Pyongyang released a South Korean businessman it was also holding as a hostage, and it intensified last weekend, when North Korea sent a delegation of officials - including its chief spymaster, head of intelligence Kim Yang Gon - to the funeral for the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The delegation stayed an extra day, requesting and getting...
...passing the entrance formalities, we were loaded onto a bus with four state guides. The photographer in me was ecstatic at what I was seeing. The visual texture of North Korea is different from any country on earth. It is stark and bizarre to the point of being surreal. Pyongyang may have more monuments and wide avenues than Washington or Paris - all built in the past 50 years to the specs of the Kims' jarring taste - yet cars and pedestrians are nearly absent. It's like an empty movie...
...year 2000, Kim made a historic mark diplomatically. He traveled to Pyongyang for a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il - the first meeting between North and South Korean leaders since the end of the war. The meetings came as part of Kim's so-called Sunshine Policy, which sought economic and diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. His hope was that a more dovish stance toward the North would convince Pyongyang to rid itself of its nuclear-weapons program. He explicitly stated that reunification of the Korean peninsula would come only after a long period of "peaceful coexistence" with...
...went poorly. At one point in a 2001 summit, Bush publicly called the South Korean head of state "this man," instead of President Kim. Kim's supporters in Seoul were furious. Both sides would later acknowledge that the two Presidents had very differing views on how to deal with Pyongyang. (Read about Kim Jong Il's secret family...