【1010G精英组】COMMENTS习作 by Group Ambition－－2010-5-29

xiaohaixxxUID: 2317561

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16214349&source=features_box3

North Korea
Not waving. Perhaps drowningNorth Korea, a nuclear-armed state, seems to be increasingly unstable. What can the big powers do about it?May 27th 2010 | SEOUL AND TUMEN | From The Economist print edition

IT IS typical of China’s entrepreneurial spirit that on its treacherous border with North Korea, you can hire army-style binoculars for ten yuan ($1.50) apiece to peer into one of the most ruthless police states on earth. It also says a lot about North Korea’s couldn’t-care-less attitude to the outside world that it makes no attempt to spruce up what voyeurs can see.
The country’s crushing poverty is on parade. The biggest block of flats opposite the Chinese border town of Tumen, where the rent-a-binoculars trade flourishes, has no lights on in the fading daylight and its inhabitants can be seen drawing water in buckets from a well. The North Korean farms that run down to the river are so dilapidated they make the regimented red-and blue-roofed housing blocks on the Chinese side look cosy by comparison. Farmers work close enough to the river to see you waving. They do not wave back.
It seems a bit surprising that there is no border fence running along the North Korean side of the border. But Chinese locals say that there are North Korean snipers dug into the hillside opposite with a shoot-to-kill policy towards escapers.
The contrast between the two supposedly compatible regimes appears bleakest as a visitor approaches the handsome bridge on China’s far-eastern border with North Korea. This was built in 1938 by Japan to support its colonisation of Manchuria and, on the Chinese side, a modern highway big enough for semi-articulated lorries sweeps down to a sprightly border post. But at noon on one recent day there were no trucks. Instead, a handful of Chinese merchants climbed out of taxis, some carrying heavy bundles on poles slung across their shoulders. Battling against freezing sleet, they continued on foot across the bridge to where a shabby border post awaited them with a welcoming message in blood-red letters: “Guard With Your Life The Spirit Of The Revolution That Has The Great Kim Jong Il As Its Leader”.
Their forlorn-looking journey made it clear that capitalism reaches a dead end on the North Korean side of the Tumen river. The rattle of an engine could just be heard as an old bus took the merchants up a rutted, unpaved road into the mountains. Charitably, you could call those merchants capitalism’s foot soldiers. Less charitably, you could see them as part of a sort of 19th-century Great Game from which China has emerged as the one remaining pillar of support for the economically and morally bankrupt regime in Pyongyang.
It is a relationship that leaves a lot to be desired from China’s point of view. China’s rulers had no choice but to fete Kim Jong Il and his entourage as, earlier this month, he stepped off a lavish train in Beijing to plead for financial help for a country that his economic “reforms” have brought close to ruin. But China, like much of the rest of the world, was angered by his second nuclear test last year (the first was in 2006). It fears that an escalating nuclear threat on the peninsula could upset the region’s delicate security balance, with dangerous consequences for itself. Its attempts to restart the six-party talks that it chairs between North and South Korea, America, Russia and Japan to rid the north of its nuclear weapons have failed.

Evidence produced by international experts that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo that sank a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26th with the loss of 46 sailors’ lives, brought additional demands on China this week in the shape of Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state. The pressure will intensify as South Korea seeks a condemnation of North Korea from the UN Security Council, over which the Chinese have a veto. So far, China has been reluctant to do more than express consternation and call for restraint (see article). Fears of escalation, as both North and South Korea curbed cross-border trade, helped to rattle global financial markets this week, including Shanghai’s.
But the drawbacks of cosseting an unruly ally have long been outweighed for China by the fear of what would happen if the regime running North Korea were to collapse. A paper published in May by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, written by two American academics, Bonnie Glaser and Scott Snyder, details the possible consequences: refugees pouring into China and South Korea, insecure weapons of mass destruction (“loose nukes”) and the threat of unco-ordinated military actions taken in North Korea by South Korea, China and America.
Diplomats in the region conjure up other possible crises, including a civil war between opposing factions loyal to different members of Mr Kim’s family. A particularly alarming prospect is that of Chinese and American troops facing each other in North Korea with no pre-arranged mechanism for defusing a great-power stand-off.
Given such scenarios, China may choose to cling to the hope that it can maintain the status quo in North Korea. The rogue regime serves as a buffer against American forces in South Korea—and its collapse into a failed state could damage China’s prized economic stability.
Thinking the unthinkableBut North Korea-watchers now discuss openly the possibility that the regime in Pyongyang may be less solidly entrenched than was once thought. It looked particularly vulnerable in 2008 when Mr Kim had what was thought to be a stroke. Since then his health seems to have improved somewhat—he withstood a punishing work schedule in China—and people who have visited Pyongyang say he appears still to be firmly in control.
Even so, some diplomats speculate that he may be preparing for a succession of sorts, handing over to his third son, Kim Jong Un. This, they suggest, might happen in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of his father, the revered Kim Il Sung. In a nicely North Korean twist, Kim Jong Il will officially be 70 in 2012, and his son will be close enough to 30 to make the switch look preordained to chime with the regime founder’s centenary.
But a handover of power—whenever that happens—may not be smooth. So a number of academics, in China as well as in America and South Korea, are arguing that the three countries—and perhaps Japan and Russia too—should consider a new co-ordinated approach to deal with the eventuality that the hermit kingdom spins dangerously out of control.
In gauging the regime’s stability, analysts look at the economy, the armed services and the political powerbrokers likely to survive Mr Kim’s eventual demise. There is a great deal of uncertainty about each—North Korea-watchers have remarkably little to go on. Economic problems are the most apparent but may also be the least important: for years the regime has shown that it can carry on with its policies regardless of the hunger of its people.
Yet it is plain that the economy has suffered appallingly from the crackdown on private markets that started in 2005, culminating in a botched currency reform at the end of last year. Ironically, in a godless country where possession of a Bible can carry the death penalty, Christian missionaries operating not-for-profit factories producing food and other goods inside North Korea provide some of the best first-hand evidence of this, though they speak on condition of anonymity.
Some missionaries, even American ones, are allowed in and out of the country, provided they do not evangelise. They are rarely able to speak to the closely watched North Koreans. But they say they can see with their own eyes that the level of hunger has become considerably worse in the past few years—in a country where famine led to the deaths of some 1m people, or nearly 5% of the population, in the 1990s.

For instance, one man who works there says the number of orphans has surged recently as hunger has claimed their parents’ lives. Since the state food-distribution system does not provide people with enough to live on, and the main private markets, the jangmadang, were closed, people, he says, have survived on “skeleton markets” operating in back alleys. Even though many of the bigger markets have now reopened, the supply of food is still meagre.
Many Chinese merchants have been put off trading because they lost fortunes when they were forced to convert their yuan, dollars and euros in North Korea into the new currency during the reforms. North Korean middlemen, whose savings were confiscated during the redenomination of the currency, have been forced out of business. And the shortages, coupled with a lack of faith in the new won, have caused extreme fluctuations in the price of rice, as well as in the exchange rate.
Another man who works in the north-eastern enclave of Rajin-Sonbong, where foreign investment is allowed, says he has seen open expressions of defiance by North Koreans. After the currency reforms, angry citizens threw anonymous notes on the ground criticising the debacle. He says a restaurant he regularly visits with his North Korean police guard allows him to pay in foreign currency, even though there is a notice on the door saying such tender is illegal. On a trip on a rickety bus from the border, he sat alone with a North Korean doctor while the driver mended a puncture. He says she vented her anger over the currency reforms, claiming she had lost her life savings of 20m won ($20,000). Then she asked wistfully how much more she could earn as a doctor in China.
Saved by the markets, for a timeTo understand the scale of the damage wrought by the crackdown on markets, it is important to recognise what a survival mechanism they had become after famine in the mid-1990s exposed the failure of the state distribution system. The government initially acquiesced in their growth, and they quickly became relatively well stocked and sophisticated.
According to Park In-ho, an editor at Daily NK, a web-based news agency based in Seoul but with informants inside North Korea, the markets not only supplied food but also functioned as labour exchanges, gave birth to a private transport industry and led to the emergence of financial services, such as street-corner currency exchanges. There was even, he says, a type of “mutual fund” in which villagers would pool their savings to buy goods from China. When they were sold in North Korea, the profits were distributed.
Even more important, he says, the markets served as a place for valuable information exchange. Illegal DVDs showing South Korean soap operas gave northerners a taste of the better life their former countrymen enjoyed, helping to destroy the myth of South Korea as a downtrodden Yankee colony. Smuggled mobile telephones could be bought, tapping into signals from across the Chinese border. Financial information helped make the markets more efficient. Mr Park believes the gap between rice prices in different parts of the country fell thanks to the new mobile-communication networks.
This is not to say that North Korea came to resemble anything like a modern economy. In just one sign of long-standing deprivation, many women still have no choice but to use dried leaves as sanitary towels: a Korean-American missionary says the greatest gift you can give to a North Korean woman is a washable one made of fabric. “They cry with joy.”
In public statements, the regime in Pyongyang justified the economic measures as a step towards bolstering the socialist economy ahead of the 2012 centenary. Yet in what is seen as an almost unprecedented admission of failure, most of the reforms have been rolled back. A top official is said to have been publicly shot for orchestrating them—though it is barely credible that they could have taken place without Mr Kim’s blessing.
The struggle withinSome North Korea-watchers believe the roots of the debacle go deeper, stemming from power struggles between senior army officers and party officials during and after Mr Kim’s illness. According to Park Hyung-jung, of the government-affiliated Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, the army was “the artery and backbone” of the growth of the markets after the famine. It had the people (with 1.1m troops, it is the world’s fourth-largest standing army), the transport systems and control of the border to enable markets to flourish—and almost every unit had its own trading firm. As one resident of Pyongyang wryly notes, most of the flashy cars in the capital have military licence plates.
But since 2005 Mr Kim has overseen anti-market measures that seem also to be aimed at returning the soldiers to their garrisons. There are many possible reasons. He may have been worried about the threat that increased private wealth posed to the regime. He may have wanted to erase the stain of corruption and profiteering from his supposedly upstanding soldier-heroes. Or he may have thought that he had done enough to stave off threats to his rule and could go into reverse.
Mr Kim begins to look a rather frail asset for China’s Mr Hu
Whatever the reason, the army’s role in business has waned. Since Mr Kim’s illness in 2008, conservative hardliners including his powerful brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek, are thought to have become stronger. Mr Chang, who as head of domestic security runs North Korea’s equivalent to the KGB, was elected to the powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) last year. He and other NDC members travelled with Mr Kim on his recent visit to China, leading some to suspect they were being presented to China as a government-in-waiting to maintain continuity during the handover of power to his son.
Perhaps in compensation for its business losses, the army seems to be flexing its muscles. Some analysts reckon that the sinking of the Cheonan has to be seen in this context. Though North Korea has denied its involvement both to its own people and to the outside world, some suspect that the attack was a way to burnish military pride—and also reinforce North Koreans’ useful fear of invasion.
If that is indeed the case, it has met a stern foe. Since receiving resounding evidence of North Korea’s culpability, Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s pro-business president, has reacted resolutely, shutting off the South’s sea lanes to North Korean ships, halting much of the $1.7 billion in inter-Korean trade and reintroducing propaganda broadcasts hurled at the north.
But the Cheonan incident also comes at a time when influential voices in America, China and South Korea are starting to worry that none of the countries involved has a contingency plan to cope with an even more momentous event—such as a sudden collapse of the regime. Some outspoken Chinese scholars are raising that previously taboo idea in public, albeit with caveats. Zhu Feng, professor of the School of International Studies at Peking University, told a symposium in Seoul in April that, though Mr Kim appears in control for now, a combination of his poor health, soaring inflation and a succession crisis could finish off the regime. He stressed that the risks of such an eventuality were too great to ignore and that countries needed to prepare an “emergency plan”.
The governments themselves do not, at least publicly, rate the possibility of collapse very high. South Korean officials play it down, arguing that sometimes North Korea acts illogically for no apparent reason. The North Koreans, says Wi Sung-lac, the foreign ministry’s main representative in the six-party process, “sometimes build with one hand, demolish with the other. The currency-exchange reform and its aftermath have disillusioned people. But in talking about the nature of this regime, disillusion does not make much difference.”
China’s president, Hu Jintao, speaks of passing on the two countries’ friendship “from generation to generation”—which sounds a bit as if he were extending the hand of friendship to Mr Kim’s eventual heir. Meanwhile China continues to invest in mines in North Korea and a potentially valuable docking facility in Rajin-Sonbong that gives it its first access to the Sea of Japan. As Ms Glaser of the CSIS puts it, China still sees North Korea more as a strategic asset than a liability.
If China is wrong, however, and a meltdown does occur, the risks are enormous. North Korea’s GDP per head is about 6% that of South Korea’s (see chart), which is far lower than East Germany’s was compared with West Germany when the Berlin Wall collapsed. This means that unifying the two countries could be treacherous, with costs that the South Korean central bank has put as high as $900 billion over four decades. There could be arguments over which special forces—China’s or America’s—would secure the north’s nuclear weapons. And if a desperate North Korea started shooting missiles at its enemies in the region, how would America and China react?
It is for reasons like this that people are beginning to believe that it would be good for the countries involved to have talks at some level—albeit secret ones. Planning in advance should help to avoid potentially catastrophic misunderstandings. The outside world’s knowledge of the regime in Pyongyang is minimal and China may not want to offend an old ally. But sooner or later, Mr Kim will go, and that will mark a moment of immense tension in a country where his personality cult is about the only thing the people have left. No one needs a pair of binoculars to see that.

annkeUID: 2605122

North Korea
Not waving. Perhaps drowningNorth Korea, a nuclear-armed state, seems to be increasingly unstable. What can the big powers do about it?May 27th 2010 | SEOUL AND TUMEN | From The Economist print edition

[IT IS typical of China’s entrepreneurial spirit that on its treacherous[危险的，不牢靠的] border with North Korea, you can hire army-style binoculars[双筒望远镜] for ten yuan ($1.50) apiece to peer into one of the most ruthless police states on earth. It also says a lot about North Korea’s couldn’t-care-less attitude to the outside world that it makes no attempt to spruce up what voyeurs [偷窥狂]can see.][用视觉比喻北朝鲜的边界情况]
peer  
v 凝视（专心地或较为费劲地看）；n 同辈；同等的人（在爵位、阶级或年龄上相当的人）
【记】ee与眼睛有关"
spruce  
（象声词）n 斯普卢斯云杉（四季常绿树，有针叶、球果，和通常用于纸桨的软木，最大的特点是不用修剪就有整洁的外表，可以直接装饰）；adj （衣着或外表）整洁漂亮的"
crushing adj [usu attrib 通常作定语]
1 overwhelming 压倒的: a crushing defeat, blow, etc 惨重的失败﹑ 打击等.
2 intended to subdue or humiliate 企图制服或羞辱对方的: a crushing look, remark, etc 让人受不了的脸色﹑ 话语等
on parade taking part in a parade; being paraded 接受检阅; 参加游行; 展示: The regiment is on parade. 该团正接受检阅.

The country’s crushing poverty is on parade. The biggest block of flats opposite the Chinese border town of Tumen, where the rent-a-binoculars trade flourishes, [has no lights on][没有迹象表明] in the fading daylight and its inhabitants can be seen drawing water in buckets from a well. The North Korean0020farms that [run down to the river][流入河中] are so [dilapidated荒废的，毁坏的] they make the [regimented受管制的] red-and blue-roofed housing blocks on the Chinese side look cosy [by comparison]. Farmers work [close enough to] the river to see you waving[近得足以看见挥手]. They do not wave back.
It seems a bit surprising that there is no[ border fence边篱] running along the North Korean side of the border. But Chinese locals say that there are North Korean [snipers狙击手] dug into the hillside [opposite with] a shoot-to-kill policy towards escapers.
[The contrast] between the two supposedly compatible regimes [appears bleakest] as a visitor approaches the handsome[ bridge] on China’s far-eastern border with North Korea. [这句话的as a visitor approaches the handsome bridge作什么成分，怎么理解呢？ ]This was built in 1938 by Japan to support its colonisation of Manchuria and, on the Chinese side, a modern highway big enough for[ semi-articulated lorries半自动拖车] [sweeps down突袭] to[ a sprightly border post活泼的边防哨所，？]. But at noon on one recent day there were no trucks. Instead, [a handful of] Chinese merchants climbed out of taxis, some carrying heavy [bundles on poles slung across their shoulders][挑扁担]. [Battling against freezing sleet], they continued on foot across the bridge to where a shabby border post awaited them with a welcoming message in blood-red letters: “Guard With Your Life The Spirit Of The Revolution That Has The Great Kim Jong Il As Its Leader”.
Their [forlorn-looking看上去绝望的] journey made it clear that capitalism reaches a dead end on the North Korean side of the Tumen river. [The rattle喋喋不休，响个不停] of an engine could just be heard as an old bus took the merchants up a [rutted, unpaved] road into the mountains. Charitably, you could call those merchants capitalism’s foot soldiers. Less charitably, you could see them as part of a sort of 19th-century Great Game from which China has emerged as the one remaining pillar of support for the economically and morally bankrupt regime in Pyongyang.
It is a relationship that leaves a lot to be desired from China’s point of view. China’s rulers had no choice but to [fete宴请] Kim Jong Il and his [entourage随从] as, earlier this month, he stepped off a lavish train in Beijing to [plead for请求] financial help for a country that his economic “reforms” have brought close to ruin.[请教！！as 后面的, 是什么意思] But China, like much of the rest of the world, was angered by his second nuclear test last year (the first was in 2006). It fears that an [escalating逐步上升的] nuclear threat on the peninsula could upset the region’s delicate security balance, with dangerous consequences for itself. Its attempts to restart the six-party talks that it chairs between North and South Korea, America, Russia and Japan to rid the north of its nuclear weapons have failed.[很恶心这种中间加了拖布长成分的句子，再加上本来政治的敏感性，阴阳怪气的措辞，费好大劲才理解。恼火]

[Evidence] produced by international experts that a North Korean submarine fired a[ torpedo鱼雷] that sank a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26th with the loss of 46 sailors’ lives, [brought additional demands] on China this week [in the shape of Hillary Clinton以HC的形式], America’s secretary of state. The pressure will intensify as South Korea seeks a [condemnation谴责] of North Korea [from] the UN Security Council, [over which-指代condemnation] the Chinese have a veto. So far, China has been reluctant to do [more than不仅仅] [express consternation惊愕，愤怒] and call for restraint (see article). [Fears of escalation], as both North and South Korea [curbed cross-border trade限制越界交易], [helped to rattle] global financial markets this week, including Shanghai’s.
But the drawbacks of cosseting an unruly ally have long [been outweighed] for China[ by 后者超过前者]the fear of what would happen if the regime running North Korea were to collapse. A paper published in May by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, written by two American academics, Bonnie Glaser and Scott Snyder, details the possible consequences: refugees pouring into China and South Korea, insecure weapons of mass destruction (“loose nukes”) and the threat of [unco-ordinated未调整的] military actions taken in North Korea by South Korea, China and America.
Diplomats in the region [conjure up想象，魔法召唤，在脑海中显现] other possible [crises危机], including a civil war between opposing factions loyal to different members of Mr Kim’s family. A particularly [alarming prospect] is that of Chinese and American troops facing each other in North Korea with no pre-arranged mechanism for defusing a great-power stand-off.
[Given such scenarios=considering], China may choose to cling to the hope that it can maintain [the status quo维持现状] in North Korea. The [rogue regime野蛮凶猛的政权] serves as a [buffer against缓冲] American forces in South Korea—and its collapse into a failed state could damage China’s prized economic stability.
Thinking the unthinkable But North Korea-watchers now discuss openly [the possibility] that the regime in Pyongyang [may be less solidly entrenched稳固的，根深蒂固的] than was once thought. It looked particularly vulnerable in 2008 when Mr Kim had what was thought to be a [stroke中风]. Since then his health seems to have improved somewhat—he [withstood禁得起] a punishing work schedule in China—and people who have visited Pyongyang say he appears still to be firmly in control.
[Even so虽然如此], some diplomats speculate that he may be preparing for a succession of sorts, handing over to his third son, Kim Jong Un. This, they suggest, might happen in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of his father, the revered Kim Il Sung. In a nicely North Korean twist, Kim Jong Il will officially be 70 in 2012, and his son will be close enough to 30 to make the switch [look preordained to chime with预先注定的和谐] the regime founder’s centenary.
But a handover of power—whenever that happens—may not be smooth. So a number of academics, in China as well as in America and South Korea, are arguing that the three countries—and perhaps Japan and Russia too—should consider a new co-ordinated approach to deal with the [eventuality可能性，可能发生的事，不测的事] that [the hermit kingdom隐士王国，] spins dangerously out of control.
In gauging the regime’s stability, analysts look at the economy, the armed services and the political [power brokers权力掮客] likely to survive Mr Kim’s eventual demise. There is a great deal of uncertainty about each—North Korea-watchers have remarkably little to go on. Economic problems are the most apparent but may also be the least important: for years the regime has shown that it can [carry on with继续下去，调情] its policies regardless of the hunger of its people.
Yet it is plain that the economy has [suffered appallingly毛骨悚然地糟糕] from the [crackdown on对…制裁] private markets that started in 2005, [culminating结果是，以…告终] in a [botched currency reform办砸了的货币改革] at the end of last year. Ironically[请教一下，这个讽刺体现在哪里呢？], in a godless country where possession of a Bible can carry the death penalty, Christian missionaries[传教士] operating not-for-profit factories producing food and other goods inside North Korea provide some of the best first-hand evidence of this, though they speak [on condition of anonymity匿名的条件下].
Some missionaries, even American ones, are allowed in and out of the country, provided they do not evangelise[传教]. They are rarely able to speak to the closely watched North Koreans. But they say they can see with their own eyes that the level of hunger has become considerably worse in the past few years—in a country where famine led to the deaths of some 1m people, or nearly 5% of the population, in the 1990s.

For instance, one man who works there says the number of orphans has [surged=soared=shoot up] recently as hunger has claimed their parents’ lives. Since the state food-distribution system does not provide people with enough to live on, and the main private markets, the jangmadang, were closed, people, he says, have survived on “skeleton markets” operating in back alleys. Even though many of the bigger markets have now reopened, the supply of food is still [meager贫乏].
Many Chinese merchants have been put off trading because they lost fortunes when they were forced to [convert兑换] their yuan, dollars and euros in North Korea into the new currency during the reforms. North Korean middlemen, whose savings were [confiscated没收的] during the redenomination of the currency, have been forced out of business. And the shortages, [coupled with加上] a lack of faith in the new won, have caused extreme fluctuations in the price of rice, as well as in the exchange rate.
Another man who works in the north-eastern enclave of Rajin-Sonbong, where foreign investment is allowed, says he has seen open expressions of defiance by North Koreans. After the currency reforms, angry citizens threw anonymous notes on the ground criticising the [debacle大灾难]. He says a restaurant he regularly visits with his North Korean police guard allows him to pay in foreign currency, even though there is a notice on the door saying such tender is illegal. On a trip on a [rickety摇晃的] bus from the border, he sat alone with a North Korean doctor while the driver mended a puncture. He says she [vented发泄] her anger over the currency reforms, claiming she had lost her life savings of 20m won ($20,000). Then she asked [wistfully渴望地] how much more she could earn as a doctor in China.
Saved by the markets, for a time
To understand the scale of the damage [wrought by由…造成] the crackdown on markets, it is important to recognise what a survival mechanism they had become after famine in the mid-1990s exposed the failure of the state distribution system. The government initially acquiesced in their growth, and they quickly became relatively well stocked and sophisticated.
According to Park In-ho, an editor at Daily NK, a web-based news agency based in Seoul but with informants inside North Korea, the markets not only supplied food but also functioned as labour exchanges, gave birth to a private transport industry and led to the emergence of financial services, such as street-corner currency exchanges. There was even, he says, a type of “mutual fund” in which villagers would pool their savings to buy goods from China. When they were sold in North Korea, the profits were distributed.
Even more important, he says, the markets served as a place for valuable information exchange. Illegal DVDs showing South Korean soap operas gave northerners a taste of the better life their former countrymen enjoyed, helping to destroy the myth of South Korea as a [downtrodden被践踏了的] Yankee colony. [Smuggled走私的] mobile telephones could be bought, [tapping into接进] signals from across the Chinese border. Financial information helped make the markets more efficient. Mr Park believes the gap between rice prices in different parts of the country fell thanks to the new mobile-communication networks.
This is not to say that North Korea came to resemble anything like a modern economy. In just one sign of long-standing deprivation, many women still have no choice but to use dried leaves as [sanitary towels卫生巾]: a Korean-American missionary says the greatest gift you can give to a North Korean woman is a washable one made of fabric. “They cry with joy.”
In public statements, the regime in Pyongyang justified the economic measures as a step towards bolstering the socialist economy ahead of the 2012 centenary. Yet in what is seen as an almost unprecedented admission of failure, most of the reforms have been rolled back. A top official is said to have been publicly shot for orchestrating them—though it is barely credible that they could have taken place without Mr Kim’s blessing.
The struggle within
Some North Korea-watchers believe the roots of the [debacle崩溃，灾难] go deeper, stemming from power struggles between senior army officers and party officials during and after Mr Kim’s illness. According to Park Hyung-jung, of the government-[affiliated相关联的] Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, the army was “the artery and backbone[动脉和脊柱]” of the growth of the markets after the famine. It had the people (with 1.1m troops, it is the world’s fourth-largest standing army), the transport systems and control of the border to enable markets to flourish—and almost every unit had its own trading firm. As one resident of Pyongyang [wryly挖苦地] notes, most of the flashy cars in the capital have military licence plates.
But since 2005 Mr Kim has overseen anti-market measures that seem also to be aimed at returning the soldiers to their [garrisons要塞]. There are many possible reasons. He may have been worried about the threat that increased private wealth posed to the regime. He may have wanted to erase the stain of corruption and profiteering from his supposedly upstanding soldier-heroes. Or he may have thought that he had done enough to [stave off避开，延缓] threats to his rule and could go into reverse.
Mr Kim begins to look a rather frail asset for China’s Mr Hu
Whatever the reason, the army’s role in business has [waned衰弱]. Since Mr Kim’s illness in 2008, conservative hardliners including his powerful brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek, are thought to have become stronger. Mr Chang, who as head of domestic security runs North Korea’s equivalent to the KGB, was elected to the powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) last year. He and other NDC members travelled with Mr Kim on his recent visit to China, leading some to suspect they were being presented to China as a government-in-waiting to maintain continuity during the handover of power to his son.
Perhaps in [compensation赔偿] for its business losses, the army seems to be flexing[弯曲，扭曲] its muscles. Some analysts [reckon估计，认为] that the sinking of the Cheonan has to be seen in this context. Though North Korea has denied its involvement both to its own people and to the outside world, some suspect that the attack was a way to burnish military pride—and also reinforce North Koreans’ useful fear of invasion.
[If that is indeed the case, it has met a stern foe如果这样的话，就遇到了难缠的对手]. Since receiving [resounding响亮的，坚实的] evidence of North Korea’s [culpability过失，有罪], Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s pro-business president, has reacted resolutely, shutting off the South’s sea lanes to North Korean ships, [halting犹豫] much of the $1.7 billion in inter-Korean trade and [reintroducing propaganda再引出宣传] broadcasts hurled at the north.
But the Cheonan incident also comes at a time when influential voices in America, China and South Korea are starting to worry that none of the countries [involved has a contingency plan有应急计划] to cope with an even more momentous event—such as a sudden collapse of the regime. Some outspoken Chinese scholars are raising that previously taboo idea in public, albeit with caveats. Zhu Feng, professor of the School of International Studies at Peking University, told a symposium in Seoul in April that, though Mr Kim appears in control for now, a combination of his poor health, soaring inflation and a succession crisis could finish off the regime. He stressed that the risks of such an eventuality were too great to ignore and that countries needed to prepare an “emergency plan”.
The governments themselves do not, at least publicly, rate the possibility of collapse very high. South Korean officials play it down, arguing that sometimes North Korea acts illogically for no apparent reason. The North Koreans, says Wi Sung-lac, the foreign ministry’s main representative in the six-party process, “sometimes build with one hand, demolish with the other. The currency-exchange reform and its [aftermath后果] have [disillusioned唤醒] people. But in talking about the nature of this regime, disillusion does not make much difference.”
China’s president, Hu Jintao, speaks of passing on the two countries’ friendship “from generation to generation”—which sounds a bit as if he were extending the hand of friendship to Mr Kim’s eventual heir. Meanwhile China continues to invest in mines in North Korea and a potentially valuable docking facility in Rajin-Sonbong that gives it its first access to the Sea of Japan. As Ms Glaser of the CSIS puts it, China still sees North Korea more as [a strategic asset战略筹码] than a liability[负债].
If China is wrong, however, and a meltdown does occur, the risks are enormous. North Korea’s GDP per head is about 6% that of South Korea’s (see chart), which is far lower than East Germany’s was compared with West Germany when the Berlin Wall collapsed. This means that unifying the two countries could be treacherous, with costs that the South Korean central bank has put as high as $900 billion over four decades. There could be arguments over which special forces—China’s or America’s—would secure the north’s nuclear weapons. And if a desperate North Korea started shooting missiles at its enemies in the region, how would America and China react?
It is for reasons like this that people are beginning to believe that it would be good for the countries involved to have talks at some level—albeit secret ones. Planning in advance should help to avoid potentially catastrophic misunderstandings. The outside world’s knowledge of the regime in Pyongyang is minimal and China may not want to offend an old ally. But sooner or later, Mr Kim will go, and that will mark a moment of immense tension in a country where his personality cult is about the only thing the people have left. No one needs a pair of binoculars to see that.
[This article is fairly difficult for me, considering the weak knowledge about international political relations, especially the indifference on northeastern part of Asia. More importantly, numerous distractions conglomerating from subtle expressions, bigots, satirical writing style cause backtrack again and again, definitely lowering the reading pace.
The most impressive point I draw from the article is that my clear recognition of how precious the happiness we Chinese have owned now. It is impossible for dreaming flying west to study or expand horizons for North Korea young people as we taking for granted, for they not only have to care about the next meal, but also have immerged in blindingly intensive fever about their alleged leader-Kim Jong. What a shame I really feel about them!
Firstly, I believe in everyone born with rights to be free and happy, though there are initial unfairness exist. Christian redemption cannot be the last straw, or people totally lose control about their fate and all they have to do is follow the  destine floating .In this way, I really sorry about northern Koreans.
Secondly, northern Korea regime sacrifice the lives of their nationals to exchange ideology success by obtaining the title of hermit country. Couldn’t I brave enough to call this behavior is absolutely grim and cold? All I have received are each individual is so distinguished that no one no matter how powerful he or she is legalize to deprive one’s live, which counting as basic right of a person. However, in this particular country, a bit like China, the benefits of group overweigh individuals’ anything, including lives. To this extent that I understand why so many people around me suggesting once get out of China I had better stay oversea, in case encountering the group threats in such socialization country, individuals cannot figure out what happened then they have say goodbye to the world. What a terror!
Thirdly, international powers, such as Korea, Japan, Russia and America waved in the virtually complex current situation in northern Korea. As the second nuclear test passed in northern Korea, there is highly possibility that the regime have gained mass destruction weapon, even nuclear mission. If it is really the case, war must break out eventually, then by the case, new forces in Asia incline to shuffle and every relevant countries try hard to take advantages of this coming turmoil. Right now, each force might has its own prediction in the future of korea peninsula and corresponding actions, and all matter are self benefits. For example, China hope to maintain the embarrassing situation between the northern and the southern due to avoid intervening domesticated economy developing. America’s plan has little referred in the article probably in case leakage.
Anyway, peace is the approach that we ordinary people wish to settle the dilemma, and I really feel helpless about these difficulties.    ]