Word: seoul
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...With reporting by Stephen Kim / Seoul...
...according to North Korea watchers in Seoul, Chang has effectively taken the youngest Kim under his wing, acting as a sort of regent to the Prince. "He is the bridge from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un," says Baek Seung Joo, who watches North Korea at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis...
...1990s Jong Un studied, as did one of his older brothers, at the International School of Berne, in Switzerland, using a pseudonym to hide his identity as a member of North Korea's ruling family. But several North Korea watchers in Seoul dispute that, and believe Jong Un has never been outside North Korea. From 2002 to 2007 he attended the Kim Il Sung military academy in Pyongyang. He's said to be about 5 ft. 9 in. (175 cm) tall, is overweight (nearly 200 lb., or 90 kg) and may suffer from diabetes, according to South Korean press reports...
...from the fact that China prefers North Korea to exist, even in its impoverished and infuriating current form, as opposed to what it sees as the other possibility: a unified Korean peninsula that at minimum slouches toward the U.S., if it doesn't become an outright U.S. ally under Seoul's direction. Klingner says Beijing has feared a North Korean implosion for years, in the manner of East Germany, that would come with costs both economic (refugees coming across the Chinese border) as well as diplomatic (the loss of a buffer state in a region that, though stable, is inhabited...
That effort will now at least go into abeyance, if only because Pyongyang clearly has no interest in accepting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's invitation, issued this week, to return to the six-party talks. South Korean President Lee Myung Bak in Seoul flatly told President Obama earlier this week not to go back to simply trying to bribe the North out of its nuclear program. Japan is more or less in the same place. China, which could inflict considerable economic pain on Pyongyang by cutting off trade and fuel shipments, now must decide whether...