Joanne

Ryu

9/30/11 8:29 AM
artillery focused on Seoul, and has regularly engaged in provocations like kidnappings, submarine incursions and missile tests over the Sea of Japan. Away from the capital, North Korea is a land of
leadership

fter setting off its first atomic device, the secretive, isolated, heavily militarized and desperately poor country slowly moved away from confrontation and then slowly moved back toward it. In 2009 it successfully conducted its second nuclear test, again defying crisis was sparked by the sinking in March 2010 of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, by a North Korean torpedo. In November 2010, in the most serious clash in decades, North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire after an estimated 175 shells fired from the North struck a South Korean island near the countries disputed maritime border. The North asserted that the South had fired first. Leadership The country's founder, the so-called Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, was succeeded at his death in 1994 by his son, the "Dear Leader," Kim Jongil, an eccentric playboy invariably seen (in his public appearances) in platform shoes and a khaki jumpsuit. In 2008, Mr. Kim disappeared from sight for several months, and it was later revealed that he had suffered a stroke. Due to his age and health problems, speculation deepened about succession plans. Self-Imposed Isolation and Poverty North Korea took steps in the 1990s toward warmer relations with South Korea, before questions about its nuclear ambitions plunged it back into isolation. But more broadly, North Korea has taken a consistent anti-Washington line since its creation in 1948, denouncing both the United States and South Korea as its puppet. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the North has not attacked its neighbor, but to this day keeps large concentrations of troops and

Isolation

Nuclear Program

shuttered factories and skimpy harvests. Residents, especially in northern provinces, report that child beggars haunt street markets, families scavenge hillsides for sprouts and mushrooms and workers at state enterprises receive nominal salaries, at best. Nuclear Program The United States came close to military action against North Korea in 1994, as President Clinton weighed the idea of air strikes against its nuclear sites. Instead, in a last-minute deal, North Korea agreed to shelve its nuclear program. In 2002, President Bush included Pyongyang in the "axis of evil," and American officials charged later that year that North Korea had violated the earlier agreement. Pyongyang declared the agreement void and expelled international nuclear inspectors. China joined with the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia

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