Word: pyongyang
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...portrait created by these rumors and suspicions--North Korea's Dear Leader was unpredictable and goofy, and because he was thought to control a nuclear weapons program on one side of the world's most fortified border, he was dangerous. Fast forward to last week's summit in Pyongyang. When Kim Jong Il, still pudgy, and still wearing a poufy black hairdo, reached out with both hands to welcome South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the makeover of the madman image was complete. The 58-year-old leader of the world's most mysterious country had been transformed into...
...collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it a steady flow of cheap oil, that sent North Korea's economy into precipitous decline during the '90s. But while Moscow left Pyongyang to its own devices - and China's - for most of the Yeltsin years, President Vladimir Putin has signaled renewed interest in the Korean peninsula by planning to become the first major head of state to visit Pyongyang in the South Koreans' wake. Russia, too, stands to gain from South Korean investments, and its own longstanding territorial conflicts with Japan (over the Kuril Islands) increase the importance of strengthening...
...subsided, years of tough negotiations lie ahead, and Seoul will be in no hurry to relinquish U.S. protection in the interim. And Seoul has it reasons in taking things slowly: South Korea is only beginning to emerge from an economic slump, and even in the unlikely even that Pyongyang were amenable, it can't afford to simply absorb North Korea in the way West Germany did East Germany. Instead, Seoul will be content to take small political steps over a number of years, while expanding investment and aid - and never entirely dropping its guard...
...Pyongyang...
...After all, the worst military confrontation between North and South since the 1953 cease-fire took place barely a year ago, when a Northern vessel that had infiltrated Southern waters was sunk. Still, there was no mistaking the message of reconciliation in the atmospherics he generated during the Pyongyang summit, and his acceptance of an invitation to visit Seoul. Either way, he's not about to allow an influx of foreign influences to undermine his country's monolithic Stalinist ideology, so don't expect to see the Golden Arches popping up alongside Pyongyang's Juche Tower anytime soon. Indeed, even...