Word: south
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...Some South Koreans place at least part of the blame for the deteriorating North-South relationship on their own conservative President. Lee's two predecessors pursued an agenda of engagement with Pyongyang called the "sunshine policy," in which Seoul gave North Korea aid and investment - including the development of an industrial park just north of the border - in the hopes of defusing tensions. The "sunshine policy" produced two North-South summits - in 2000 and 2007 - but Pyongyang offered Seoul no meaningful concessions in return for its help. Upon taking office last year, Lee changed course and linked further economic cooperation...
...many in South Korea have become more wary of engaging the North, and more dubious of the results it might produce. "For the past 10 years, we've been giving them things and now that they're not getting it, they're acting up," says Youn Bong Sug, 57. "If we give, they should know how to be grateful. The nature of those people is rotten." Some in Seoul have become annoyed that Pyongyang continued to spend money on its weapons programs even as South Korea donated large amounts of fertilizer and food to its much poorer Northern brethren. "What...
...such sentiment holds, it is unlikely that North Korea's saber-rattling will scare Seoul into making new concessions or opening the aid spigot anytime soon. For now, frustrated South Koreans seem content to wait until North Korea shows some signs it is more willing to cooperate. Kim Jong Il "is like a frog in a well living in his own world," complains Kim, the retiree. "If he opens up, the North Koreans would be better off, and we would be better off, too, but he doesn't seem to understand that." Until he does, the conflict on the Korean...
...regime has also kidnapped several hundred South Koreans over the years - usually also to help train its spies, but not always. Since late March, the North has detained a South Korean business executive who was working at the Gaesong Industrial District, a site just across the border, where scores of South Korean companies set up light manufacturing operations. The project was arguably the most visible success of the so-called Sunshine Policy run by Roh Moo Hyun, the former South Korean President who committed suicide in May. Pyongyang revoked all the contracts at Gaesong last month and has continued...
...passion for movies, but he evidently believed North Korea's cinema wasn't up to his standards. In the late '70s, when his father Kim Il Sung was running the country, Kim apparently ordered the abduction of Shin Sang-ok, then perhaps the most famous film producer in the South, and his wife, Choi Eun-hee, a famous actress. Shin was imprisoned for four years, then forced to make a socialist-friendly version of Godzilla. He and his wife eventually escaped during a business trip to Vienna in 1986. Shin died...