Word: pyongyang
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...rolling south from Pyongyang toward Kaesong near the DMZ, searching for signs of economic life in North Korea. Pyongyang, the capital, was like a ghost town?its spotless streets scrubbed clean of the messy bustle that defines most Asian capitals. The highway to the country's second-biggest city is nearly deserted. But our government handlers have promised to show us the Kaesong industrial park, where North Koreans are churning out watches, shoes and kitchenware in newly built South Korean-owned factories. After a two-hour drive, the bus stops on a bridge in the middle of nowhere. No industrial...
...self-doubt. After Kim Il Sung died in 1994, his son and apparent successor Kim Jong Il displayed the same steely confidence in his own political correctness. So last September, when a North Korean submarine ran aground on the South's coast and 26 armed infiltrators dashed ashore, Pyongyang erupted with the standard bluster. Not only was the North the "victim," its spokesmen said, but because 24 of its men were killed, it might retaliate a "thousandfold." And, oh yes, the sub must be returned...
Suddenly last week all those precedents were reversed. After 11 meetings between U.S. and North Korean officials in New York, Pyongyang made a rare apology. In a Korean-language broadcast to the world, the North expressed its "deep regret" for the submarine incident, promised to keep such things from happening again and sweetly offered to "work with others for durable peace and stability on the Korean peninsula." The North Koreans also dropped their demand for the sub in return for the remains of their dead. A day later the North agreed to sit down with the U.S. and South Korea...
...Pyongyang has decided to seem cooperative. That way it can count on resuming the vital programs that were frozen after the submarine incident: food and humanitarian-aid shipments, new nuclear power reactors paid for largely by South Korea, relaxation of the U.S. trade embargo. Kim & Co. may still believe they are only becoming more realistic in order to save the regime and stay in power. But, one is scarcely sorry to observe, their turn away from ideology and toward reality could mean the death of Stalinism...
...Meetings Must Continue It is gratifying to note that the private discussions between the U.S. and North Korea about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program [Aug. 8] actually took place and seemed to indicate that the Bush Administration is, after all, willing to deal directly with Kim Jong Il's recalcitrant regime. That is a valuable and significant move toward world peace. But can one expect honest dealings from a despotic nation that persists in saying what it does not mean and meaning what it does not say? Putting aside the lack of candor, such contact (even if it doesn...