For North Asia, Korea is the prime candidate to see consumption-led demand in 2006, given the turnaround of domestic spending.

All of North Korea is a jail.

Given the domestic demand-led recovery, I would expect Japan to increase imports from China and other Asian economies this year, in a move to share the role with the United States as a major driving force in the world economy.

Inside, I’m assaulted by the evening propaganda broadcasts coming over the apartment’s hardwired loudspeaker. There’s one in every apartment and factory floor in Pyongyang

I felt like a frog that had just come out of its pit, from which it had contemplated the circle of sky outlined by the rim, and taken it for the whole of the world. I had passed through to the other side of the mirror. (162)

So this is the way we live now: conditioned by the awareness that no North Korean provocation, however egregious, can be confronted, lest it furnish the occasion or pretext for something truly barbarous and insane.