Word: pyongyang
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Afew years ago, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, a Beijing-based business and tax consultant, was in the bar at Pyongyang's Koryo Hotel when he ran into another foreigner. "The guy's name was Vlad," Devonshire-Ellis says. "He'd come from Moscow on a train to sell tractors to the North Koreans. He had all these guys around him. Turns out, they were his team of bodyguards. The North Koreans paid him in cash--1 million in U.S. dollars--and that's why he needed the bodyguards. He was comfortable doing business with the North Koreans. He said they always...
...about 150 Chinese companies are doing business there. "Once the political situation stabilizes and medium-size enterprises begin to discover North Korea, it will have a dramatic impact," says Alexandre Mansourov, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and a former Soviet diplomat in Pyongyang. "I don't see why North Korea should be an exception to the economic miracle in which every country around China is benefiting from Chinese economic growth...
North Korea is already benefiting--a little. In 2005, the Chinese trading company Tianjin Digital invested $650,000 to open a joint-venture bicycle plant in Pyongyang. "The conditions are really favorable," says Tianjin manager Liang Tongjun, whose company was granted a 20-year monopoly on bicycle manufacturing in the North. A month after the factory opened, the Dear Leader himself paid a visit...
...party deal was a bright moment in what has turned out to be a fairly unsatisfying summit for Roh. The longtime foes were able to ink a deal promising to work toward a permanent peace agreement and boost economic ties between Seoul and Pyongyang. But the joint statement didn't really break any new ground. "We shouldn't be too impressed," says Kim Tae Woo, analyst at the Korea Institute of Defense Analysis. "The agreement does not create any dramatic changes to inter-Korean relations...
...North Korea, but also by the Bush Administration. Persuading North Korea to put down its nukes required reversing the position Washington has adopted since the advent of the current Bush Administration, of refusing to countenance security guarantees for a regime famously "loathed" by President Bush, and insisting that Pyongyang not be rewarded for behaving badly...