Quotes About North Korea

Whether you're dealing with your allies in Europe or you're dealing with a resurgent Russia, whether you're dealing with Iran or North Korea, you have to use the whole panoply of national tools of power to deal with the challenges the world faces.

I thought that, with so much current attention focused on the topic of North Korea, I might share what I think are three books which cast a rare light on the elusive realm of North Korea.

If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

People tend to overlook the fact that North Korea's economy collapsed at about the same time as South Koreans lost faith in their own state. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time when South Koreans were questioning the very legitimacy of their republic.

I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn't work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.

I'm with Christopher Hitchens on this one. Heaven sounds like North Korea — an eternity of mindless conformity spent singing the praises of a powerful tyrant.

In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it.

I am a physical retailer by trade - if your shop is burgled you don't immediately think, 'Is it North Korea? Is it the Mafia?' But with cyber you don't know initially whether you're dealing with a state actor, as they call them, a small-time criminal, an insider.

Any agreement that you have isn't going to be based on North Korea's intentions or trust.

Gaining trust is not difficult for me. I needed to gain the trust of the North Korean supervisors.

Venezuela, a state that is a calamity for Venezuelans and a friend of the most shunned regimes (Pakistan, of course, along with North Korea, Iran, Russia, and others just as odious), while also being the architect of the farcical "Bolivarian alliance.

The North Korean landscape is strikingly beautiful in places. It could be said to resemble America's Pacific Northwest - but substantially drained of color.

I was growing up in Hyesan, right by the closest North Korea-China border. China was just across the river: you could see across. So I was curious. On the river, on both sides, you have houses, then mountains. I wanted to know what was on the other side of the Chinese mountains.

when I arrived in 2011, I found myself in "Juche Year 100." The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) follows a different calendar system, which counts time from the birth of their original Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994; Juche, which roughly means "self-reliance," is at the core of North Korea's foundational philosophy.

The idea that North Korea alone excelled while all other nations were falling behind seemed a near obsession.

What if we were the instigators of his doubt, what if he was beginning to realize that everything he had known thus far was a lie, and that we were the ones who held the key to truth? We agreed that we would never sit with him again, not even if he asked. "A dinner with us might get him killed," Katie said. I wanted to dismiss the comment as the melodrama of a twenty-three-year-old, but I knew it wasn't that. In North Korea, such a consequence was entirely possible.

There was nothing any of us could write about except what we were allowed to see, which was a concert like any other, a few staged welcome performances, and the usual tourist sites. It was a lesson in control and manipulation. The real audience was not those in the concert hall but the journalists whose role was to deliver a sanitized version of North Korea to the outside world, and what shocked me was how easily seduced they were.

Be careful with your terminology: Great Leader, Dear Leader, Precious Leader. Those names have to be carefully used, or better yet, just stay away from discussing them at all.

had met a number of South Korean journalists who were rather jaded by North Korea and uniformly said that to understand the DPRK, you needed to follow the money.

This was always the case with North Korea. It was like the bad boyfriend whose presence could never be depended on, so you always had to seize the opportunity to spend time with him when he made himself available.

Meanwhile, countries that had actually undergone the dreamed-of socialist revolution— North Korea, Cuba, and East Germany, for example—suffered from sputtering economies and totalitarian regimes. To people who had embraced so-called Marxist dogma during their entire careers, the juxtaposition of these two realities was both puzzling and disturbing.

North Korean defectors who speak out against the regime always feel nervous. We never know what the North Korean government is planning. It's really difficult for us to show our faces and speak out, but we feel obligated to do something to inform people about the ongoing tragedy inside North Korea.

I know the truth of North Korea. The oppression and their tragedy. It cannot be silenced.

We have global interests, potential threats from elsewhere, North Korea, Iran, Taiwan Straits and the like. We must be prepared for any future threat. That is why it is important that this be a transition year, 2006.