Love in the Time of Kim

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Frustrated negotiators dealing with North Korea can take comfort: one foreigner, at least, got what he wanted from Kim Jong Il's regime. And it only took 30 years.

In 1971, Pham Ngoc Canh was a 23-year-old Vietnamese exchange student in Pyongyang. There he fell in love with Ri Yong-hui, 24, a North Korean factory worker. Their governments were communist soul mates, but relationships with foreigners were taboo in both countries. "I saw no chance," says Canh. Both were devastated when he left in 1973. A year later, Ri asked a Vietnamese student to smuggle a letter to Canh. Thus began three decades of furtive exchanges.

They saw each other in 1978 and 1982, when Canh acted as an interpreter for Vietnamese delegations to North Korea. In 1992, he began lobbying the North Korean embassy for Ri's hand, bearing 40 yellowing letters as proof of his devotion. He was told she had married, and later that she was dead. But he was still receiving letters from her. Through contacts of his ex-diplomat father, Canh last year persuaded Vietnam's President Tran Duc Luong to plead his case. It worked. Ri was allowed to leave North Korea, and they wed last month in Hanoi. "She's still beautiful," beams Canh. He sees his bliss as a sign that North Korea is changing. Ri disagrees: "It was all (due to) the great efforts of my lover." True love, like diplomacy, can require heroic persistence.