Word: pyongyang
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...incident came a week after Pyongyang said it was continuing to produce weapons-grade plutonium and just before an expected U.S. decision to restart talks with Pyongyang, under the auspices of the Chinese, about the North's nuclear program. The combination of the attack and Pyongyang's defiant announcement that it is still reprocessing plutonium may seem like aberrant behavior on what may be the eve of the North's re-engagement with the outside world. But for Pyongyang, it's more like standard operating procedure. "Unpredictable surprises are the strength of North Korea," says Jeung Young-tae, a senior...
...Koreas. Earlier this year, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il staged a bit of a charm offensive, ending a period of silence while he recovered from a stroke. Kim said he would again agree to talks about his nuclear program, and he hosted former President Bill Clinton in Pyongyang, who traveled to the North to win the release of two U.S. journalists who had been arrested there. But there's little sign of any thaw with Seoul. Pyongyang has been infuriated that South Korean President Lee Myung Bak hasn't continued the so-called Sunshine Policy of his two predecessors...
...tour were familiar, like the impressive, 66-ft. (20 m) bronze statue of late President Kim Il Sung, and the iconic Juche Tower with its excellent city views. But softer handling from our state-mandated Korean chaperones, and the minor but noticeable improvements in the lives of some of Pyongyang's citizens, were unexpected...
...touted a cell phone (a gift, she beamed with an endearing mix of shyness and pride, from her North Korean boyfriend). Cockerell says that up to 50,000 personal cells are rumored to be in use in Pyongyang. There are three models - all Chinese brands - available in local shops and priced roughly between $210 to $280. Locals can use them to arrange meetings at Pyongyang's new and popular fried-chicken restaurant (the colloquial term for fried chicken there is kentucky, and a mixed platter is about $12.50 or the equivalent in euros, which is the preferred foreign currency...
Cell phones? Pizza? "Kentucky" fried chicken? They even have a busy bowling alley or two, and we benefited from rolling BBC News in our hotel rooms. This was not the Pyongyang we'd come to expect. And yet such developments should not come as a shock, argued Cockerell over a microbrewed ale (70 cents) in Pyongyang's downtown Paradise Bar. "Foreign reporting on the D.P.R.K. is macro in scale - it's always, 'But aren't they testing nuclear weapons up there?' Subtle changes in the lives of Koreans don't fit the reporting paradigm; those changes are considered too trivial...