COVER STORY Northern Exposure
North Korea is a monolithic black box to the rest of the world, but stress cracks can be seen in the aspiring nuclear power
Twilight Time for the Sunshine Policy
Will President Kim Dae Jung's signature engagement strategy, the "Sunshine Policy," be displaced by a "Nuclear Winter Policy"?
Look Who's Got The Bomb
Confronted by the U.S., North Korea brazenly admits it's building nukes. Now what does President Bush do? (October 28, 2002)
The Hermit Kingdom's Bizarre SAR
Having failed to build a communist utopia, North Korea plans to create a capitalist one with its own elected officials and a wall to keep out the riffraff (October 7, 2002)
Accounted for, at Last
North Korea admits it abducted Japanese citizens to help train its spies and says some are still alive (September 30, 2002)
Northern Exposure
North Korea is a monolithic black box to the rest of the world, but stress cracks can be seen in the aspiring nuclear power
Impoverished North Koreans on the Yalu River can watch China develop and prosper on the opposite bank
The teenager looks at least three years younger than his 17 years. His eyes dart around or lock on his shoe tops when he talks. But when you take him to a neighborhood restaurant and put a steaming plate of dumplings in front of him, he suddenly perks up and starts to look you in the eye. Walking for a day from his village in North Korea, he crossed the Tumen River into China in early October, hoping to earn some money to buy food for his parents. He doesn't want you to use his name or take his picture. If a copy of this magazine were to fall into the hands of North Korean authorities, "they'll really beat me up," he says. Jae Young—a pseudonym he agrees to—has heard about the economic reforms unveiled by his country's leaders in July. But all that's happened in his village, Jae Young says, is that the price of grain has gone up, leaving his family hungrier than before. He falls silent at the mention of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the man all North Koreans are taught to revere as a demigod. Jae Young has nothing to say on that topic except "There is nothing to eat."
Without knowing it, the stunted, starving young man speaks for a nation that is beginning to show the stress cracks of a bankrupt leadership. On Oct. 4, North Korea acknowledged that it was secretly trying to build nuclear weapons. The shocking admission, to senior U.S. diplomat James Kelly, was not made as a threat or a taunt. It was as much as anything else the distressed cry of a beleaguered nation running out of options.
In fact, North Korea's nuclear confessions were among a stream of pronouncements issued from Pyongyang over the past few months, each one more surprising than the last. The country is scrambling to prop up its collapsed command economy with a dose of capitalism. The centerpiece of the reform efforts—a Chinese-style special economic zone in the northwestern town of Sinuiju—will probably never get off the ground, according to businessmen across the river in the Chinese city of Dandong. For one thing, the Chinese entrepreneur appointed to run it has been arrested by the mainland for unspecified wrongdoings. For another, the nuclear disclosure has put North Korea in U.S. President George W. Bush's gunsight. Who would invest there now?
To some observers, the reform efforts, however botched, are an indication that North Korea is opening up. Others see the moves as the first visible spasms of a dying regime. It's difficult to know what goes on inside this black box of a nation, where people can be dragged off to prison for making the slightest criticism of the Dear Leader. But if you talk to enough people—defectors in South Korea, border jumpers in China and aid workers—it's possible to catch a glimpse of life on the inside. And there are signs, such as rumors of failed coups, that Kim's position is not secure. An aid worker who has worked in Pyongyang for several years says the country reminds him of East Berlin just before the fall of the Wall. There are beggars in the streets and people are dying unnecessarily for lack of medicine, he says, while the regime tinkers with reforms that have come far too late. Average citizens still look cowed, but lower-level officials show increasing frustration with Pyongyang. "It looks explosive," he says. "The cracks in the system are getting bigger."
