Word: pyongyang
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North Korea's recent agreement to halt nuclear arms development, besides being a potentially important step for world peace, makes for a pretty amazing PR coup for Canadian comix publisher Drawn & Quarterly. They have just released a hardcover book that couldn't be more topical: Guy Delisle's Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea (176 pages; $20), giving it one of the largest initial printings in the publisher's history. D&Q's ambitions seem justified given the surprising commercial success of other graphical memoirs set in dangerous or mysterious locations, such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis books, about growing...
...Pyongyang chronicles the two months that Guy Delisle, a French-Canadian animator, spent in North Korea in 2001, prior to September 11, supervising work on a French TV cartoon outsourced to inexpensive North Korean animators. His expectations are indicated by two of the items in his baggage: a copy of George Orwell's 1984 and a clandestine AM/FM radio. Those expectations appear to be immediately validated when, at the airport, he can't make out anyone's face because the lights are off. Delisle soon learns that the lights stay off throughout most of the city, to save on power...
...statement, signed in Beijing by diplomats from the U.S., North Korea, China Russia, Japan and South Korea, represented the first breakthrough since North Korea withdrew from international agreements in 2002 and announced its intention to build nuclear weapons. Since then, Pyongyang has declared itself a nuclear power and is believed to possess as many as seven atom bombs...
...passage confirmed Pyongyang's commitment to disassemble its nuclear weapons program-and the weapons themselves-in a "verifiable" way. It also expressed North Korea's willingness to return to the international agreements it pulled out of in 2002 when it acknowledged its nuclear program, specifically the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and safeguards outlined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In exchange, The United States offered energy aid and the possibility of diplomatic relations, confirmed that it does not intend to invade North Korea, and agreed to a step-by-step approach to disarmament. Previously, the U.S. had insisted...
...sticking point is peaceful nuclear power: The U.S. wants to deprive North Korea of all its nuclear capabilities, including nuclear power reactors, in exchange for aid and respect. But Pyongyang wants a deal that would replace its current reactor with a light-water reactor, whose fuel cycle is not conducive to a weapons program, paid for by the other parties to the talks. China supports North Korea's position and wishes the U.S. would just give in. After all, the U.S. in 1994 had promised to build a nearly identical light-water reactor for North Korea as part...