Word: pyongyang
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...Jenkins' world suddenly began to brighten two years ago. The breakthrough was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il (the son and successor of Kim Il Sung) in Pyongyang. Kim confirmed Japan's long-held suspicion that North Korea had been kidnapping Japanese citizens and forcing them to teach at its spy schools. Soga, Jenkins' wife, was acknowledged to be among the abductees. After the summit, she and the four others Pyongyang said were still alive returned to Japan for what was meant to be a 10-day visit. They never went back...
...After a series of negotiations to find a suitably neutral country to receive Jenkins, Japan and North Korea finally arranged for the American and his daughters to fly in July to meet Soga in Indonesia. Jenkins had assured Pyongyang that he would return with his daughters and try to persuade Soga to accompany them. "They promised me all kinds of things if I came back with my wife," he says. "They would give me a new car, a new house, new clothes, a new television. They told me everything I wanted would be Kim Jong Il's gift." But Jenkins...
...North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, is eager to raise the profile of human rights in North Korea. But to date, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has been unwilling to bring up the matter. His government fears that doing so could hurt Seoul's slowly improving relationship with Pyongyang-and conceivably divert attention from resolving the issue of the North's nuclear program...
...coal-mine shaft was called cutting face no. 2, located deep in the mountains of North Korea, near a town called Kaechon, 200 km north of Pyongyang. Coal mining anywhere is dirty, dangerous work, but this was no ordinary coal mine. It was part of a camp for political prisoners in North Korea where "perceived political wrongdoers," as a recent human-rights report put it, are sent without trial or charge for sentences of unspecified lengths...
...response to such stories, the outside world has begun to stir. Senior British diplomat Bill Rammell raised issues of human rights in a visit to Pyongyang in September, during which, he later said, the North Koreans admitted to the existence of reeducation-through-labor camps. The U.N. this summer named a special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea. In the case of North Korea, the world remains a long way from getting an answer to Evgenia Ginzburg's pointed question. But it has started asking...