Much of Mr Kim's political support comes from Cholla, in the south-west, South Korea's poorest region.
ECONOMIST: Too many South Koreans are reluctant to change their ways
Japan also faces disputes over islands to its north with Russia and to its west with South Korea.
Even though the North is now reckoned to have enough food to survive, albeit miserably, for another four months, most South Koreans are terrified that their northern neighbour will collapse into their laps much as East Germany collapsed into West Germany's, and that South Korea will find it even harder than West Germany did to meet the enormous costs and social strains of unification.
In the west, Japan and South Korea, digital takes 15-20% of overall adspend and is climbing.
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Tensions between North Korea and the West have spiked in recent years due in part to concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear development program.
There is little to show for this yet in terms of closer economic or political contacts with Japan, South Korea and the West.
An estimated 20, 000 men and boys belonged to the units at their peak, many of them based on islands off North Korea's west coast.
After all, whether acknowledged as such or not, the clear implication is that a single meeting -- however distorted its public relations impact in South Korea and elsewhere in the West -- has actually precipitated a significant, to say nothing of a permanent, change in North Korea's intentions (not to mention its formidable military capabilities).
With characteristic lucidness and verve, syndicated columnist William Safire enumerated in a column published Monday in the New York Times how enemies of freedom in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, the West Bank, Iran and North Korea have all trimmed sail of late.
On March 26, the U.S. and South Korea signed a military contingency plan to respond to possible attacks from North Korea and the U.S. has said it would install additional missile inceptors on the West Coast in response to the threat from North Korea.
Yet rather than internalize this lesson and embrace the deterrent force it provides the West in dealing with Iran and North Korea, the Obama administration has squandered it.
The seminar, produced in partnership with the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, as well as Palmares Cultural Foundation, aims at contributing to the work being conducted by a consulting group made up of specialists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Republic of Korea, Uganda, the West Bank, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland and Brazil.
But nearly everywhere in the West and now in Japan and in South Korea, we're typically seeing spirited election tilts.
Recent weeks have seen China fall out with South Korea (as well as the West) over how to respond to the sinking in March, apparently by a North Korean torpedo, of a South Korean navy ship.
North Korea's neighbors and the West condemn the North's efforts to develop nuclear missiles capable of hitting America as a serious threat to Northeast Asia's delicate security and a drain on the precious resources that could go to North Korea's largely destitute people.
Until that day, the West should keep sanctions and other pressure on North Korea and seek to liberate as many of its people as possible.
The Mount Kuwol Biosphere Reserve, situated on the west coast of the Democratic People s Republic of Korea and 100 kilometres south-east of Pyongyang, consists of a 954 meter-high mountain, adjacent coastal wetlands, lagoons and river estuaries, and agricultural areas.
As ailing dictator Kim Jong Il uses his brinksmanship to secure a smooth transfer of control over his malnourished slave state to his son ahead of his death, it seems as though no one in the West has a clue what to do about North Korea.
The broader message behind this point-scoring may have been that the West needs China's help in calming North Korea and in other trouble spots (such as Myanmar, see article), and that such help comes at a price, even where it appears to be in China's own self-interest.
Kim Dae Jung said President Kim Jong-il's recent suggestion that North Korea would curb its missile programme if the West would help it finance satellite launches should be taken seriously.
On June 16th, North Korean fishing boats once again moved up to the disputed buffer zone marked by the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea off the west coast but this time they and North Korea's navy kept their distance.
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In fact, I believe that this Committee and other participants in the debate over defense spending have an obligation to look beyond the rhetoric and the assertions of benign intentions by adversaries from Moscow to North Korea and the wishful thinking in the West that they usually produce.
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See North Korea and Cuba, or for that matter compare North Korea with South Korea, or the old East Germany with the old West Germany.
Her name is the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, and she has recently been deployed to the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean Peninsula, to begin joint military exercises with South Korea.
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Iran, like North Korea, is also under stiff sanctions, and negotiations with the West over its nuclear program have similarly stalled.
North Korea inherited railways from the former Japanese colonialists that run predominantly up the west of the country.
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Awkwardly for the West, China has the greatest leverage, thanks to its unseemly haste to invest in North Korea's mines and ports.
In his speech, Bush said that states such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran formed an "axis of evil" against which the West must guard itself.
There were no miracles for Ivory Coast in Nelspruit as the west Africans were knocked out of the World Cup despite comfortably beating a defensively-frail North Korea .
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