User:Interiot/Reports/Shortpages

Expanded version of Special:Shortpages, generated via [4]. Feel free to update its contents, especially if this page appears in any non-maintenance categories. Template:TOCright

Smoking [0 bytes]

Smoking is the practice of purposefully inhaling smoke from burning materials, typically a dried plant such as tobacco. The most common form today is cigarette smoking. While smoking has been a habit of many ancient and modern men, it fell out of favor due to association with various cancers - especially lung cancer.

Negative Effects

There are various negative effects of smoking. Every 15 cigarettes someone smokes will cause a mutation in their body, and mutations are how cancers start. The poisons from the tar in cigarettes enter the smoker's blood, making the blood thicker, and increase chances of clot formation. It also increases the blood pressure and heart rate, making their heart work harder than normal and narrows the arteries, reducing the amount of oxygen-rich blood circulating to your organs. Smoking doubles one's risk of having a heart attack, and those who smoke you have twice the risk of dying from coronary heart disease than lifetime non-smoker. Smoking harms the immune system and can affect nearly every organ of the body. Tobacco smoking kills more than six million people every year, translating to one smoking-related death every five seconds. Which is a million more deaths than occurs each year as a result of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. For out every five deaths in American are accounted by smoking, as it kills more than 480,000 Americans die each year.

Other Smoking Methods

Bidis and hookahs have become popular alternatives to smoking cigarettes, and people seem to think they are less harmful than regular cigarettes. However, the truth is that hookah smoke still delivers addictive nicotine, and bidis actually have more nicotine than cigarettes.

Smoking and cancer

Smoking is a causal factor for various cancers such as lung cancer and cancers of the esophagus, larynx, mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, liver, pancreas, stomach, cervix, colon, and rectum, as well as acute myeloid leukemia.

Religion, irreligion and smoking

George Melly was an atheist.

In an article entitled George Melly's battle with cancer and dementia, the Daily Mail reported that Melly "smoked up to 60 cigarettes a day since his teens."

See also: Atheism and smoking

See also: Atheism and smoking

The abstract of the 2012 International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine journal article entitled Religion and smoking: a review of recent literature indicates:

“

Tobacco smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke are a major threat to human health worldwide. The effort to prevent tobacco use should be regarded as an important public health strategy. Given the significance of religion and spirituality in the daily life of more than 90% of the world's population, the relationship of religion and smoking should be seen as a critical research area. Religions are many and varied, but most value human well-being highly and so do not approve of tobacco use, even though they do not prohibit it entirely. In recent years, researchers have shown more interest in the subject of religion and health, including drug and tobacco use. Differences of focus and methodology notwithstanding, most studies have ascertained a deterrent role for religion as regards tobacco use, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the negative relationship between religion or spirituality and smoking.

”

The 2017 journal article Smoking and Religion: Untangling Associations Using English Survey Data published in the Journal of Religion and Health indicates: "Highest levels of smoking characterise people not professing any religion... An association between smoking and the absence of a religious affiliation is sustained. An understanding of the association between smoking and religion is essential to the development of tobacco control programmes."}}

Famous smokers

• Marlene Dietrich
• Keith Richards
• Alex Turner
• Snoop "Doggy" Dogg
• Method Man
• Winston Churchill
• Ernest Hemingway
• Sitting Bull
• George VI
• Humphrey Bogart
• Ronald Reagan
• Nina Dobrev
• Olga Fonda
• Jack Black
• Anne Hathaway
• Megan Fox
• Ron White
• Rush Limbaugh

Keyboard Instruments [9 bytes]

• Celesta
• Harpsichord
• Piano

Modern Terms S [16 bytes]

Soviet Union

Brother [16 bytes]

Brother is a common term meaning a male sibling.

In Catholicism, "Brother" is the title of a monk. In the New Testament, "brother" refers to other Christian converts. The concept of the brotherhood of man is intrinsic to the fatherhood of God.

Sister [17 bytes]

A sister is a female sibling.

In Catholicism Sister is the title of a member of a female religious order, or nun.

900 BC [18 bytes]

900 BC

Glenn Greenwald [19 bytes]

Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American lawyer, journalist, columnist and author. As a columnist, Greenwald has written for The Guardian and Salon magazine and writes on civil liberties and national security matters. Greenwald is a critic of the Obama / Biden surveillance state.

Greenwald was a co-founder The Intercept, which he later left claiming, "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles."

When the Biden junta admitted it was colluding with Big Tech to censor free speech and violate the rights of Americans, Greenwald tweeted, "This is the union of corporate and state power, one of the classic hallmarks of fascism.” In July 2022, Ukrainian dictator Vladimir Zelensky added Greenwald to his blacklist.

Criticism

Greenwald was criticized by Trevor Louden and Cliff Kincaid in 2013 for defending Julian Assange of Wikileaks and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Greenwald has spoken at many Socialist conferences.

Awards

Greenwald was named by Foreign Policy magazine as being one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. For the Snowden revelations The Guardian was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service; Greenwald had been the lead reporter on the story.

Personal

Since 2005, Greenwald has lived in Rio de Janeiro with his (same sex) husband, David Miranda, who is now a (Brazilian) Federal Congressman representing Rio state. In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda adopted two sibling children from Maceió.

Educative [24 bytes]

Educative

Republic of China [24 bytes]

Interiot/Reports/Shortpages
China adopted this red, white, and blue flag when the Nationalists came to power in 1927.
Traditional Chinese	中華民國
Simplified Chinese	中华民国
Transcriptions Mandarin - Pinyin Zhōnghuá Mínguó - Wade-Giles Chung-hua Min-kuo

The Republic of China was a sovereign state that was founded in mainland China in 1912 and ruled there until 1949. It was preceded by the Qing dynasty and followed by the Communist People's Republic. The country was divided among rival warlord cliques in the 1920s, but reunited by the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT, in 1928. The Nationalists moved the capital from Beijing to Nanjing, a city near Shanghai. Shanghai was the Republic's metropolis and an international city. The KMT had been founded by Sun Yat-sen and was later led by Chiang Kai-shek. Much of China was occupied by Japan from 1937 until 1945. In World War II, American pilots flew lend-lease aid to Nationalist China across the Himalayas ("the Hump"). The Republic was a pivotal era of Chinese history that included modernization of culture and gender roles, economic development, World War II, civil war, and Communist conquest. When the Communists gained control of the mainland in 1949, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan.

Overthrow of the monarchy

See also: 1911 Revolution

Chinese soldiers in Wuhan mutinied in October 1911. In a panic, the regent recalled Yuan Shikai, who was supported by the army leaders. On January 1, 1912, a republic was proclaimed in Nanjing with Sun Yat-sen as president. Sun negotiated with Yuan, who was still premier in Beijing. In March, Yuan and Sun agreed to end the dynasty. Sun resigned as president in favor of Yuan.

Yuan Shikai: 1912-1916

Sun's faction merged with several other groups to form the Nationalist Party. Nationalist ideology is based on Sun's "Three Principles of the People" (nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people). The party gained a majority in the 1912 parliamentary elections. Backed by the army, Yuan assassinated parliamentary leader Song Jiaoren, dissolved the Nationalist Party, and ruled as a dictator. Sun responded with a revolt in 1913 called the "Second Revolution."

Yuan's power base was the Beiyang Army. He had appointed Beiyang officers as provincial governors when he first came to power. The onrush of events in Beijing forced the president delegate ever more authority. He grew distant from key officers. In 1913, the military governors were granted wide authority to deal with the KMT rebellion. The Beiyang officers were well-trained for the role of warlords. After all, they had watched Yuan maneuver and frustrate the Qing government for many years.

In 1915, Japan's Twenty-One demands aroused much public opposition. Yuan eventually accepted thirteen of these demands. Yuan proclaimed himself emperor in 1915. Although they had little sense of loyalty to the Republic, the Beiyang officers decided to take advantage of the uproar against Yuan's empire to assert themselves as autonomous warlords. Zhang Zuolin was one of a handful of senior officers who supported Yuan's proclamation. In gratitude, Yuan made Zhang military commander for Manchuria, a large frontier district in the northeast. At this time, Manchuria was thinly populated. But it would develop quickly in the years that followed. Faced with nearly unanimous opposition, Yuan renounced his imperial pretensions after only a few months.

History of China
Xia c. 2070–c. 1600 BC
Shang c. 1600 – 1046 BC
Zhou 1045–256 BC
Qin 221–206 BC
Han 206 BC – 220 AD
Three Kingdoms 220–280
Jin 265–420
Northern and Southern Dynasties 420–589
Sui 581–618
Tang 618–907
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms 907–960
Song 960–1279
Yuan 1271–1368
Ming 1368–1644
Qing 1644–1911
Republic 1912–1949
People's Republic 1949–present

The warlord era: 1916-1930

When Yuan died in 1916, the officers of the Beiyang army divided into rival cliques. Puyi, the former Qing emperor, was briefly restored in 1917. It took eleven days for Premier Duan Qirui, leader of the pro-Japanese Anhui clique, to defeated the imperialists and reinstate the republic. In 1920, the Zhili clique defeated Anhui's forces and Duan was ousted. Zhili warlord Cao Kun gained the presidency in 1923 by paying out bribes of 5,000 silver dollars each to members of the National Assembly. Not reconciled to Zhili's ascendency, the Japanese backed the rival Fengtian clique led by Zhang Zuolin, the pro-Japanese warlord of Manchuria appointed by Yuan. In October 1924, a Zhili commander defected, marched into Beijing, and evicted Puyi from the Forbidden City. The "Beijing coup," as it was called, soon collapsed. But Zhili had lost the upper hand in its war with Fengtian.

The fighting in 1924 was far more destructive than earlier disputes among the warlords, leaving many Chinese fed up with the warlords. In November, Duan was named president. This time around, Duan was no longer a clique leader, but rather a stalking horse for Zhang. Politically, Zhang's Manchuria was a world apart from the rest of China. While attitudes in southern and eastern China had modernized during the May Fourth Movement of 1915-1921, Manchurians still dreamed of an imperial restoration and honored Puyi. A Manchurian warlord at the helm was the last straw for many. There was massive public support for the KMT's May Thirtieth protests in 1925. In October 1926, a facade of civilian government was restored with the respected diplomat Wellington Koo as president. As China's internationally recognized government, Beijing still received the revenue of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, which had international management. In response to the KMT's Northern Expedition, Zhang brushed Koo aside in June 1927 and established a purely military government.

Meanwhile, the economy of Zhang's Manchurian power base was entering a tailspin. The region had long been overtaxed to support Fengtian adventurism. The winter of 1927-1928 saw the Beiyang heartland roiled with strikes, financial chaos, and starving peasants. The Zhang government had only soldiers left, and no future to offer the Chinese people.

Culture and fashion

China in the 1920s and early 1930s was more than squalid tales of greed, corruption, and betrayal among the militarists. This was also the “high modern” period when all things modern and “scientific” were revered. Writers abandoned the refined style of Confucius in favor of báihuà ("plain speech"). This style used idioms and constructions closer to Mandarin, the modern spoken language of northern China. In 1920, language reformer Hu Shi published a volume of experimental poetry in the new style. The vernacular classic The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun was published in 1921. The shift from Classical Chinese to Mandarin can be compared to the shift from Latin to national languages that occurred earlier in Europe.

There were campaigns against footbinding, concubinage, and other abusive practices toward women. By the 1930s, the fashion-conscious "Modern Girl" had displaced the politically-oriented "New Woman." The product of mass advertising, women's magazines, and the influence of Japanese fashion, the Modern Girl had unbound feet, wore her hair bobbed or permed, and sported a tight-fitting qípáo. Was she looking for love, or a chance to work her feminine wiles and con a sap out of his savings? Opinion was divided among writers of the time. The international city of Shanghai was the epicenter of high modern culture. In the early 1930s, the Modern Girl outfit grew in popularity until it was practically a uniform. She could be from any class, rich or poor. Even young women in destitute Shanghai districts were somehow able to come up with money for cosmetics and clothing, although their families could barely afford to eat. In rural China, cultural norms changed more slowly. The arranged marriage was cherished, the focus of the family remained the production of children who would worship the ancestors, and a girl was brought up to be "a good wife and a wise mother."

Nationalist China: 1925-1971

Nationalist Revolution: 1923-1928

Meanwhile, in the South, the Nationalist Party, which had been revived in 1919, was built up by the Soviets. While Comintern agents supplied the party with money and weapons, the purpose of Soviet policy in China was debated in the Kremlin. Trotsky advocated a revolutionary line and condemned the Nationalists as reactionary. Pragmatists emphasized the need for a strong China to counter Japanese influence in the North. A "United Front" was formed between the Nationalists and the communists in 1923. The Whampoa Military Academy, established in 1924, trained a new generation of officers to put nation before clique. Sun died in March 1925. He was succeed by a triumvirate that included leftist Wang Jingwei and conservative Hu Hanmin. After the success of May Thirtieth protests, the KMT proclaimed its Guangzhou-based regime a "national government" in July.

In the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928, Chiang Kai-shek led the Nationalists to a surprisingly easy victory over the far larger forces of the Beiyang warlords. By the time the Nationalists arrived in Shanghai in April 1927, communist attacks on "class enemies" and foreigners had provoked a backlash. Shanghai's communist-led labor unions prepared a seizure of the French Concession and the International Settlement, protected by Britain. The French and British were Russia's enemies, not China's. Fearing a military response, Chiang initiated a bloody purge, not only against leftists in Shanghai, but in other urban centers as well. Hu supported Chiang, but Wang continued the United Front in Wuhan. After the Wuhan Nationalists intercepted a message from Moscow authorizing a coup, they too purged the communists in July. The two wings of the Nationalist Party were reunited and the capital was moved to Nanjing in September. The communists fled to the countryside where they staged the "Autumn Harvest" uprisings in August and October. There was a brief but savage coup in Guangzhou in December. By the end of year, most of the communists had been killed or defected. The rest had been driven into the mountains or the interior.

Zhang's government in Beijing dissolved in late May 1928 as Chiang's forces approached, and Zhang himself fled to Manchuria in early June. Furious with his failure to stop Chiang's advance, the Japanese murdered Zhang when he arrived in Mukden. The United States recognized Nationalist China in July, the first nation to do. The U.S. also signed a treaty with Nanjing restoring China's tariff autonomy. In December, Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin's son, agreed to fly the Nationalist flag in Manchuria and China was reunited, at least nominally.

The Nanjing decade: 1927-1937

Under the Nationalists, China experienced industrialization and modernization, but there was also conflict between the government in Nanjing, the Communist Party, remnant warlords, and Japan. The warlords were finally brought to heel in 1930 when Chiang put down a brief but bloody revolt called the Central Plains War. One party rule, described as "political tutelage," was established. In Nationalist ideology, this was explained as a period in which the nation would be educated and prepared for full democracy.

The Japanese seized Manchuria in the "Mukden Incident" of 1931. They created a puppet state to administer this region with Puyi as emperor. In 1932, Japanese forces attacked Shanghai. This incident featured a number a technological firsts, including the first aerial assault based from an aircraft carrier, as well as the first terror bombing of a civilian target. The ceasefire declared Shanghai a demilitarized zone.

The Sino-German alliance

In May 1933, Seeckt, a senior German general, arrived in Shanghai and submitted a plan to reorganize the Chinese army with German advisers and weapons. The Nazis saw Nationalist China as a fellow anti-Communist state. In 1935, Seeckt was replaced by Falkenhausen. Both generals advised a drastic cut in the size of the army and higher standards of training. The Chinese were not anxious to adopt such reforms. A commander with fewer soldiers lost status and political clout. Regardless of the quality of training, Whampao had a track record of producing officers loyal to Chiang.

An elite corps of 80,000 soldiers was recruited and trained to German standards. Sino-German economic and military cooperation continued even after the Nazis concluded an "anti-Comintern Pact" with Japan in 1936. An ambitious "Three Year Plan" was adopted in 1936 to turn China into an industrial powerhouse with German loans and German-educated technocrats. Leftists asked why Chiang focused on the Communists instead of the Japanese occupying Manchuria, but an anti-Japanese policy would have undermined the rationale for Sino-German collaboration.

The Sino-Japanese War: 1937-1945

A determined campaign of assassination and coup attempts by ultranationalist junior officers left the Japanese leadership cowed by 1936. The budget for fiscal year 1937 proposed a 40 percent increase in spending, and a war was required to justify this sacrifice to the Japanese public. Despite the alliance with Germany, the army leaders had no stomach for war with the Soviets. Instead, they suggested war with China, whose army was not nearly as formidable. The Nationalists and the Communists responded to this threat by forming a "Second United Front" in December 1936.

Despite these preparations, China was quickly overwhelmed when the Japanese finally launched their offensive in July 1937. Three months of savage street-to-street fighting turned Shanghai into an expanse of smoking wreckage. The battle, carefully reported by the world's media from the safety of the International Settlement, marked the end of High Modern China. Besides Shanghai, Japan overran a vast region and cut off China's access to seaports. When Nanjing was captured, Japanese soldiers ran amok in a notorious episode and many Chinese were slaughtered. The Nationalists retreated to Chongqing in the southwest, the Communists to Yan'an in the northwest. A puppet state led by Wang, former head of the leftist Wuhan government, was set up in Nanjing in 1940.

Anxious to counter the Japanese threat so he could focus on Hitler, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Chiang in August 1937. Stalin had no desire to repeat the bloody betrayals and double crosses of 1927. Chuikov, Stalin's man in China, was instructed to follow the agreement strictly. At this point, the Nationalists had about 2 million soldiers, the Chinese Communists about 100,000. Bowing to Moscow's pressure, Communist leader Mao Zedong mounted the "Hundred Regiments Offensive" in late 1940. The Japanese responded with the savage "three all" reprisals ("kill all, burn all, and destroy all"). The Communists never seriously challenged them again.

The Chinese cause received much sympathetic attention in the U.S. press, and the Flying Tigers, a volunteer squadron of American aviators led by Claire Chennault, was lionized. First Lady Soong Meiling, a U.S.-educated Christian, was even more admired as a resistance leader. The Burma Road was built to allow U.S. "lend-lease" aid to reach the Chinese army. After the Japanese conquered Burma in 1942, supplies were flown over the Himalayas until the Ledo Road was completed in January 1945.

U.S. General Joseph Stilwell was given nominal command of the Chinese army in 1942. His disputes with Chiang were epic. Like Seeckt and Falkenhausen before him, Stilwell wanted a smaller force trained to the standard of his own country's soldiers. He also accused Chiang of hording supplies for later use against the Communists. There is little evidence to support such claims. Some 98 percent of the supplies flown over "the Hump" went to U.S. forces in China. The U.S. reequipped and retrained two elite Chinese armies, the X Force and the Y Force. The rest of the Nationalist army received a pittance, only a few hundred guns. Commanded by Stillwell favorite Sun Liren, the Y Force drove back the Japanese in Yunnan during a May–June 1944 offensive. Aside from this modest success, the U.S. had little to show for its extensive involvement in China.

The war ended victoriously all the same. Japan surrendered in August 1945 after a U.S. submarine campaign in the Pacific cut off the country's fuel and other supplies, and atomic bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities. Americans were left with sharply divided views of China. Stilwell's rivalry with Chiang and Chennault was a prelude to years of poisonous political dispute.

Civil War: 1946-1949

The Soviets had supported the Nationalists in the war against Japan and maintained a friendly attitude for some time even after Japan surrendered. They signed a "Treaty of Friendship and Alliance" concerning the status of Mongolia in August 1945. But as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed, this policy was reversed. The Soviets occupied Manchuria in August 1945, where the main Japanese forces and supplies had been maintained. This region was systematically looted, with entire factories transported to Russia. The Chinese Communists were based is the North at this time, while the Nationalists were in Chongqing in the southwest. These two factors gave the Communists the advantage in picking up the spoils of war. The communist army had been a minor factor during the war with Japan, but its manpower expanded dramatically as soldiers from the puppet armies defected.

In 1947, the Constitution of the Republic of China replaced the Organic Law of 1928 as the country's fundamental law. In 1948, "Temporary Provisions" were added to the constitution to allow for emergency rule during the period of "communist rebellion."

Hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed in March 1946. In late 1947, the military initiative shifted to the Communists. The Nationalists lost some 550,000 soldiers in the Huaihai campaign of 1948-1949, the climax of the war.

Nationalist resistance collapsed in January 1949. Beijing fell without a fight and refugees began fleeing to Taiwan. By the end of the year, 600,000 soldiers and 2 million civilians had fled from the mainland. The government fled from Nanjing to Guangzhou in January. In February, China's gold reserves were transferred to Taiwan. Nanjing fell in April, Shanghai in May. Neither city offered resistance. At Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic on October 1, 1949. Guangzhou fell on October 15.

Nationalists on Taiwan: 1949-present

On December 10, 1949, Chiang flew from Chengdu, the last Nationalists bastion on the mainland, to Taiwan and proclaimed Taipei a provisional capital. Despite its vastly reduced territory, Chiang's regime continued to receive diplomatic recognition from the United Nations and from most non-Communist states. The U.N. Security Council has five permanent seats, one of which is assigned to the Republic of China. In 1971, Taipei was expelled from the U.N. and China's seat was reassigned to Beijing.

In 1991, the Temporary Provisions were terminated, the claim to territory on the mainland was withdrawn, and legislators selected in the 1940s to represent mainland districts retired.

Further reading

• Bergere, Marie-Claire. Sun Yat-Sen (1998), 480pp, the standard biography, based on rigorous modern scholarship
• Boorman, Howard L., ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. (Vol. I-IV and Index. 1967-1979). 600 valuable short scholarly biographies excerpt and text search
• Boorman, Howard L. "Sun Yat-sen" in Boorman, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (1970) 3: 170-89, excellent starting place. complete text online
• Dreyer, Edward L. China at War, 1901-1949. (1995). 422 pp.
• Eastman Lloyd. Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937- 1945. (1984)
• Eastman Lloyd et al. The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949 (1991) excerpt and text search
• Fairbank, John K., ed. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12, Republican China 1912-1949. Part 1. (1983). 1001 pp.
• Fairbank, John K. and Feuerwerker, Albert, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part 2. (1986). 1092 pp.
• Gordon, David M. The China-Japan War, 1931–1945. The Journal of Military History v70#1 (2006) 137-182; major historiographical overview of all important books and interpretations; in Project Muse
• Hsiung, James C. and Steven I. Levine, eds. China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945 (1992), essays by scholars; online from Questia; also excerpt and text search
• Hsi-sheng, Ch'i. Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (1982)
• Hung, Chang-tai. War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945 (1994) complete text online free
• Rubinstein, Murray A., ed. Taiwan: A New History (2006), 560pp
• Shiroyama, Tomoko. China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937 (2008)
• Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. (2003). 413 pp. the standard history

North Korea [24 bytes]

조선민주주의인민공화국 Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Flag	Coat of Arms
Capital	Pyongyang
Government	Communist totalitarian state
Language	Korean (official)
President	Kim Jong-un
Area	46,526 sq mi
Population	25,750,000 (2020)
GDP per capita	$1,300 (2016)
Currency	North Korean won

North Korea, officially the democratic people’s Republic of Korea is the world's most severe communist dictatorship and one of the poorest and most famine -stricken nations on earth. It lies in eastern Asia and occupies the Korean peninsula north of a line that roughly follows the 38th parallel. It was ruled by self-absorbed dictator and "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father the "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung. Upon Kim Jong-Il's death, his son Kim Jong-un officially took over.

Its official name is Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but its government does not follow Western ideas of democracy (French Revolution aside). Rather, it is organized along Stalinist lines. Its Supreme People's Assembly is merely a rubber-stamp parliament.

North Korea has socialist prison camps in which children are born and spend their entire lives in the camps.

The official North Korean ideology is known as Juche (which roughly translates as "national self-reliance"), and since the mid 1990s, Songun ("military first"). A cult-like devotion to the "Great Leader" and "Dear Leader" is expected of citizens, and heavily promoted in the North Korean news media which has little actual news and mostly consists of effusive praise toward Kim Jong Un, grandiose and unsubstantiated claims about great feats by him and his father, and repetitious admonitions that the Korean people are totally united as one behind his leadership. In contrast between 600,000 and 3.5 million North Koreans have died of starvation in recent years because the Kim government has so mismanaged the economy, particularly agriculture, and has hampered outside efforts at relief.

People

• Population (2006): 23.1 million.
• Annual growth rate: About +0.98%.
• Ethnic groups: Korean; small ethnic Chinese and Japanese populations.
• Religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Chongdogyo, Christian; autonomous religious activities have been virtually nonexistent since 1945.
• Language: Korean.
• Education: Years compulsory—11. Attendance—3 million (primary, 1.5 million; secondary, 1.2 million; tertiary, 0.3 million). Literacy—99%.
• Health (1998): Medical treatment is free; one doctor for every 700 inhabitants; one hospital bed for every 350; there are severe shortages of medicines and medical equipment. Infant mortality rate—23.29 /1,000 (2006 est.). Life expectancy—males 68 yrs., females 74 yrs. (2006 est.)

Amnesty International published a report in June 2010 which alleges that the North Korean health care system is "in shambles". Interviews with 40 individuals who defected from that country indicate a widespread shortage of medicine and medical implements; a lack of ambulatory services in major cities; the use of unsterilized needles; major operations and amputations done without anesthesia, on a system which spends the equivalent of one dollar per person per year on health care. This discrepancy is compounded by the fact that many citizens are forced to endure a starvation diet by subsisting on grass, tree bark and roots.

Religion

For a more detailed treatment, see Religion and Atheism in North Korea.

North Korea practices state atheism and belief in God is actively discouraged. Open Doors, an organization based in the United States, has put North Korea at the very top of its list of countries where Christians face significant persecution - for 12 years in a row.

The 2007 KINU White Paper indicated that the regime utilizes authorized religious entities for external propaganda and political purposes, and that citizens are strictly barred from entering places of worship. Ordinary citizens consider such sites to be primarily sightseeing spots for foreigners. KINU concluded that the lack of churches or religious facilities in the provinces indicates that ordinary citizens do not enjoy religious freedom.

Little is known about the day-to-day life of religious persons in the country. Members of government-controlled religious groups did not appear to suffer discrimination. Some reports claimed, and circumstantial evidence suggested, that many, if not most of these groups, have been organized by the regime for propaganda and political purposes, including meeting with foreign religious visitors.

The number of religious believers is unknown but was estimated by the Government to be 10,000 Protestants, 10,000 Buddhists, and 4,000 Catholics. Estimates by South Korean and international church-related groups were considerably higher. In addition, the Chondogyo Young Friends Party, a government-approved group based on a traditional religious movement, had approximately 40,000 practitioners, according to the Government.

In Pyongyang there were reportedly four state-controlled Christian churches: two Protestant churches under lay leadership (Bongsu and Chilgol Churches), the Changchung Roman Catholic Church, and the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. The Chilgol Church is dedicated to the memory of former leader Kim Il-sung's mother, Kang Pan-sok, who was a Presbyterian deaconess. The number of congregants regularly worshiping at these churches is unknown.

The Presbyterian Church of Korea in the South was partnering with the Christian Association in North Korea to rebuild Bongsu Church. In the fall of 2006, a delegation of 90 Christians from South Korea visited the Bongsu church to celebrate completion of its first phase of renovation. According to religious leaders who traveled to the country, there were Protestant pastors at these churches, although it was not known if they were resident or visiting.

In its July 2002 report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the Government reported the existence of 500 "family worship centers." However, according to the 2007 Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) White Paper, defectors interviewed were unaware of any such centers. Observers stated that "family worship centers" may be part of the state-controlled Korean Christian Federation, while an unknown number of "underground churches" operate apart from the Federation and are not recognized by the Government. Some NGOs and academics estimate there may be up to several hundred thousand underground Christians in the country. Others question the existence of a large-scale underground church or conclude that no reliable estimate of the number of underground religious believers exists. Individual underground congregations are reportedly very small and confined to private homes. At the same time, some NGOs reported that the individual churches are connected to each other through well-established networks. The regime has not allowed outsiders the access necessary to confirm such claims.

There were an estimated 300 Buddhist temples. Most were regarded as cultural relics, but religious activity was permitted in some. A few Buddhist temples and relics have been renovated or restored in recent years under a broad effort aimed at "preserving the Korean nation's cultural heritage." In 2007 reconstruction was completed on the Shingye or Singyesa (Holy Valley) Temple, which was destroyed during the Korean War. The Republic of Korea (ROK) Government and foreign tourists funded the reconstruction. A South Korean monk, the first to permanently reside in North Korea, has lived at the temple since 2004 but serves primarily as a guide for visiting tourists rather than as a pastor caring for Buddhists living in the area.

The Government announced in June 2007 that 500 monks and Buddhist followers were making day-long pilgrimages to the recently renovated Ryongthong temple in Kaesong strictly for religious purposes. Foreign diplomats in Pyongyang who visited the temple were told that the two monks living there may be joined by more. State-controlled press reported on several occasions that Buddhist ceremonies had been carried out in various locations. Official reporting also linked descriptions of such ceremonies with the broader theme of Korean unification.

The Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church opened in Pyongyang in 2006. The church was reportedly commissioned by Kim Jong-il after he visited an Orthodox cathedral in Russia in 2002. Two North Koreans who studied at the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Moscow have been ordained as priests and are serving at the church. The purported aim of the church was primarily to provide pastoral care of Russians in the country, but one religious leader with access to the country speculated that the church likely extended pastoral care to all Orthodox Koreans as well. Similar to other religious groups, no reliable data exists on the number of Orthodox believers.

Several foreigners residing in Pyongyang attended Korean-language services at the Christian churches on a regular basis. Some foreigners who visited the country stated that church services appeared staged and contained political content supportive of the regime, in addition to religious themes. Foreign legislators attending services in Pyongyang in previous years noted that congregations arrived at and departed services as groups on tour buses, and some observed that they did not include any children. Other foreigners noted that they were not permitted to have contact with congregants. Foreign observers had limited ability to ascertain the level of government control over these groups, but it was generally assumed they were monitored closely. According to the 2007 KINU White Paper, defectors reported being unaware of any recognized religious organizations that maintained branches outside of Pyongyang.

Several schools for religious education exist. There are 3-year colleges for training Protestant and Buddhist clergy. A religious studies program also was established at Kim Il-sung University in 1989; its graduates usually worked in the foreign trade sector. In 2000 a Protestant seminary was reopened with assistance from foreign missionary groups. Critics, including at least one foreign sponsor, charged that the Government opened the seminary only to facilitate reception of assistance funds from foreign faith-based NGOs. The Chosun Christian Federation, a religious group believed to be controlled by the Government, contributed to the curriculum used by the seminary. The Chosun Christian League operates the Pyongyang Theological Academy, a graduate institution that trains pastors affiliated with the Korean Christian Federation.

Government and Political Conditions

North Korea has a centralized government under the rigid control of the communist Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), to which all government officials belong. A few minor political parties are allowed to exist in name only. Kim Il-sung ruled North Korea from 1948 until his death in July 1994. Kim served both as Secretary General of the WPK and as President of North Korea.

Little is known about the actual lines of power and authority in the North Korean Government despite the formal structure set forth in the constitution. Following the death of Kim Il-sung, his son—Kim Jong-il—inherited supreme power. Kim Jong-il was named General Secretary of the KWP in October 1997, and in September 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) reconfirmed Kim Jong-il as Chairman of the National Defense Commission and declared that position as the "highest office of state." However, the President of the Presidium of the National Assembly, Kim Yong-nam, serves as the nominal head of state. North Korea's 1972 constitution was amended in late 1992 and in September 1998.

The constitution designates the Central People's Committee (CPC) as the government's top policymaking body. The CPC makes policy decisions and supervises the cabinet, or State Administration Council (SAC). The SAC is headed by a premier and is the dominant administrative and executive agency.

Officially, the legislature, the SPA, is the highest organ of state power. Its members are elected every four years. Usually only two meetings are held annually, each lasting a few days. A standing committee elected by the SPA performs legislative functions when the Assembly is not in session. In reality, the Assembly serves only to ratify decisions made by the ruling KWP.

North Korea's judiciary is "accountable" to the SPA and the president. The SPA's standing committee also appoints judges to the highest court for four-year terms that are concurrent with those of the Assembly.

Administratively, North Korea is divided into nine provinces and four provincial-level municipalities--Pyongyang, Chongjin, Nampo, and Kaesong. It also appears to be divided into nine military districts.

Principal Party and Government Officials

• Kim Il-Sung—Eternal President (deceased since 1995)
• Kim Jong-un—First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, First Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission; grandson of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung
• Kim Yong-nam—President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly; titular head of state
• Pak Gil-yon—Ambassador to DPRK Permanent Mission to the UN
• Pak Ui-chun—Minister of Foreign Affairs

Propaganda

The DPRK is notorious for its heavy use of political propaganda, revisionist history and cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il and Kim il-Sung. The media is heavily controlled and only state-controlled radio and television broadcasts are permitted for public consumption. This control allows the regime to propagate its many lies and perceptions of the country.

Cult of Personality

The North Korean state maintains an intense cult of personality surrounding Kim, his son, Kim Jong-il and his grandson Kim Jong-un. All North Koreans wear badges with an image of either (or both) Kims and portraits of the deceased leader are voluminous both in cities and the countryside. The capital city of Pyonyang has over 600 statues of Kim, including a 25-metre bronze statue built in 1972 for his sixtieth birthday.

Kim's personality cult is largely based on historical revisionism and many absurd "facts" to emphasize his "divine" abilities and power. Among these:

• He was born under a double rainbow on the sacred Baektul Mountain in 1942. At the moment of his birth, a bright star lit up the sky, the seasons spontaneously changed from winter to spring and a double rainbow appeared in the sky.(In truth, he was born in Vyatskoye, Siberia in 1941.)

• During the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, he fought in more than 100,000 battles in 15 years (over 20 battles a day). (While Kim was in the Soviet army, he never participated in actual combat.)

• He scored eleven holes-in-one the first time he ever played a game of golf.

• He invented the hamburger.

• He scored a perfect 300 the first time he went bowling.

• When he died, "the skies glowed red above Mount Paektu and the impenetrable sheet of ice at the heart of the mystical volcano cracked with a deafening roar."

In large part because of this cult of personality aspect to propaganda, the various propaganda films for North Korea, in the exact opposite of how state propaganda is generally used to uphold the people of a nation, usually depicts the North Korean people as being weak while the enemy was depicted as strong to reinforce the need of the Kim Dynasty. A notable example of this is in the animated North Korean propaganda film Squirrel and Hedgehog, where the protagonists (representing North Koreans) are depicted largely as effeminate squirrels and ducks and other assorted prey animals that constantly cry, while the antagonists, demonic wolves (representing Americans) were depicted as extremely competent and given a very imposing appearance.

Revisionist history

Despite overwhelming historical and historiographical evidence, North Korean media and schools maintain the myth that the South as well as the United States attacked the North first. They thus responded by counter-attacking to liberate the nation in the "Fatherland Liberation War". They also claim that the North was victorious despite the face that there is no peace treaty and no historical evidence to back such a claim.

Anti-American and other propaganda

As well as the state-sponsored propaganda served up to its own citizens, the DPRK attempts to push its message onto South Koreans as well.

The best examples are found on the North Korean side of the DMZ, where massive hillside signs point to the U.S. as an enemy of reunification and boast of a prosperous life in the North. More absurd is Jikong-dong, also known as "Propaganda village," a fake town intended to show the fine living conditions in the North. The town is devoid of human life and was quickly exposed as a sham when Southern officials noticed that all city lights turned on and off at the same time each day, most windows contained no glass and there was no evident civilian life. The town also boasts the world's tallest flagpole, bearing a North Korean flag weighing 600 pounds.

Censorship

The North Korean government—which controls and owns all media and news outlets within its boundaries—censors information going into and out of the country. Television sets and radios distributed within North Korea are set to only allow watching and listening to state controlled programming. The non-governmental organization Freedom House has rated the regime as "not free" and labeled it as "repressive", due to its censorship of information within its borders.

Within North Korea, access to the internet is limited to a select few people. Other residents of North Korea who are privileged enough to have access to computers can only access a local intranet called Kwangmyong, meaning "bright". Content hosted on the Kwangmyong is tightly restricted, and the email and chat messages sent on it are monitored.

Foreign Relations

North Korea's relationship with the South has determined much of its post-World War II history and still undergirds much of its foreign policy. North and South Korea have had a difficult and acrimonious relationship from the Korean War. In recent years, North Korea has pursued a mixed policy—seeking to develop economic relations with South Korea and to win the support of the South Korean public for greater North-South engagement while at the same time continuing to denounce the R.O.K.'s security relationship with the United States and maintaining a threatening conventional force posture on the DMZ and in adjacent waters. Technically, neither the North or the South recognizes its counterpart as an official nation, and both declare themselves to be the sole legitimate government of the Korean peninsula.

The military demarcation line (MDL) of separation between the belligerent sides at the close of the Korean War divides North Korea from South Korea. A demilitarized zone (DMZ) extends for 2,000 meters (just over 1 mile) on either side of the MDL. Both the North and South Korean governments hold that the MDL is only a temporary administrative line, not a permanent border.

During the postwar period, both Korean governments have repeatedly affirmed their desire to reunify the Korean Peninsula, but until 1971 the two governments had no direct, official communications or other contact.

Reunification Efforts Since 1971

In August 1971, North and South Korea held talks through their respective Red Cross societies with the aim of reuniting the many Korean families separated following the division of Korea and the Korean War. In July 1972, the two sides agreed to work toward peaceful reunification and an end to the hostile atmosphere prevailing on the peninsula. Officials exchanged visits, and regular communications were established through a North-South coordinating committee and the Red Cross. These initial contacts broke down in 1973 following South Korean President Park Chung-hee's announcement that the South would seek separate entry into the United Nations, and after the kidnapping of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung—perceived as friendly to unified entry into the UN—by South Korean intelligence services. There was no other significant contact between North and South Korea until 1984.

Dialogue was renewed in September 1984, when South Korea accepted the North's offer to provide relief goods to victims of severe flooding in South Korea. Red Cross talks to address the plight of separated families resumed, as did talks on economic and trade issues and parliamentary-level discussions. However, the North then unilaterally suspended all talks in January 1986, arguing that the annual U.S.-ROK "Team Spirit" military exercise was inconsistent with dialogue. There was a brief flurry of negotiations that year on co-hosting the upcoming 1988 Seoul Olympics, which ended in failure and was followed by the 1987 bombing of a South Korean commercial aircraft (KAL 858) by North Korean agents.

In July 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo called for new efforts to promote North-South exchanges, family reunification, inter-Korean trade, and contact in international forums. Roh followed up this initiative in a UN General Assembly speech in which South Korea offered for the first time to discuss security matters with the North. Initial meetings that grew out of Roh's proposals started in September 1989. In September 1990, the first of eight prime minister-level meetings between North Korean and South Korean officials took place in Seoul. The prime ministerial talks resulted in two major agreements: the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation (the "Basic Agreement") and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (the "Joint Declaration").

The Basic Agreement, signed on December 13, 1991, called for reconciliation and nonaggression and established four joint commissions. These commissions—on South-North reconciliation, South-North military affairs, South-North economic exchanges and cooperation, and South-North social and cultural exchange—were to work out the specifics for implementing the basic agreement. Subcommittees to examine specific issues were created, and liaison offices were established in Panmunjom, but in the fall of 1992 the process came to a halt because of rising tension over North Korea's nuclear program.

The Joint Declaration on denuclearization was initialized on December 31, 1991. It forbade both sides from testing, manufacturing, producing, receiving, possessing, storing, deploying, or using nuclear weapons and forbade the possession of nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. A procedure for inter-Korean inspection was to be organized and a North-South Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) was mandated to verify the denuclearization of the peninsula.

On January 30, 1992, the D.P.R.K. finally signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as it had pledged to do in 1985 when it acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections to begin in June 1992. In March 1992, the JNCC was established in accordance with the Joint Declaration, but subsequent meetings failed to reach agreement on the main issue of establishing a bilateral inspection regime.

As the 1990s progressed, concern over the North's nuclear program became a major issue in North-South relations and between North Korea and the United States. The lack of progress on implementation of the Joint Declaration's provision for an inter-Korean nuclear inspection regime led to reinstatement of the U.S.-R.O.K. Team Spirit military exercise for 1993. The situation worsened rapidly when North Korea, in January 1993, refused IAEA access to two suspected nuclear waste sites and then announced in March 1993 its intent to withdraw from the NPT. During the next two years, the United States held direct talks with the D.P.R.K. that resulted in a series of agreements on nuclear matters, including the 1994 Agreed Framework (which broke down in 2002 when North Korea was discovered to be pursuing a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons—see below, Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula).

At his inauguration in February 1998, R.O.K. President Kim Dae-jung enunciated a new policy of engagement with the D.P.R.K., dubbed "the Sunshine Policy." The policy had three fundamental principles: no tolerance of provocations from the North, no intention to absorb the North, and the separation of political cooperation from economic cooperation. Private sector overtures would be based on commercial and humanitarian considerations. The use of government resources would entail reciprocity. This policy set the stage for the first inter-Korean summit, held in Pyongyang June 13–15, 2000.

R.O.K. President Roh Moo-hyun, following his inauguration in February 2003, has continued his predecessor's policy of engagement with the North, though he abandoned the name "Sunshine Policy." The United States supports President Roh's engagement policy and North-South dialogue and cooperation. Major economic reunification projects have included a tourism development in Mt. Geumgang, the re-establishment of road and rail links across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and a joint North-South industrial park near the North Korean city of Kaesong (see further information below in the section on the Economy). In August 2007, the R.O.K. and D.P.R.K. announced plans to hold a second inter-Korean summit, scheduled for October 2–4 in Pyongyang.

Relations Outside the Korean Peninsula

Throughout the Cold War, North Korea balanced its relations with China and the Soviet Union to extract the maximum benefit from the relationships at minimum political cost. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan created strains between China and the Soviet Union and, in turn, in North Korea's relations with its two major communist allies. North Korea tried to avoid becoming embroiled in the Sino-Soviet split, obtaining aid from both the Soviet Union and China and trying to avoid dependence on either. Following Kim Il-sung's 1984 visit to Moscow, there was an improvement in Soviet-D.P.R.K. relations, resulting in renewed deliveries of Soviet weaponry to North Korea and increases in economic aid.

The establishment of diplomatic relations by South Korea with the Soviet Union in 1990 and with China in 1992 seriously strained relations between North Korea and its traditional allies. Moreover, the fall of communism in eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in a significant drop in communist aid to North Korea. Despite these changes and its past reliance on this military and economic assistance, North Korea continued to proclaim a militantly independent stance in its foreign policy in accordance with its official ideology of "juche," or self-reliance.

Both North and South Korea became parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1987. (North Korea is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention, nor is it a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR.)

North Korea has maintained membership in some multilateral organizations. It became a member of the UN in September 1991. North Korea also belongs to the Food and Agriculture Organization; the International Civil Aviation Organization; the International Postal Union; the UN Conference on Trade and Development; the International Telecommunications Union; the UN Development Program; the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; the World Health Organization; the World Intellectual Property Organization; the World Meteorological Organization; the International Maritime Organization; the International Committee of the Red Cross; and the Nonaligned Movement.

In the mid-1990s, when the economic situation worsened dramatically and following the death of D.P.R.K. founder Kim Il-sung, the North abandoned some of the more extreme manifestations of its "self reliance" ideology to accept foreign humanitarian relief and create the possibility, as noted below, for foreign investment in the North. In subsequent years, the D.P.R.K. has continued to pursue a tightly restricted policy of opening to the world in search of economic aid and development assistance. However, this has been matched by an increased determination to counter perceived external and internal threats by a self-proclaimed "military first" ("Songun") policy.

During the present period of limited, extremely cautious opening, North Korea has sought to broaden its formal diplomatic relationships. In July 2000, North Korea began participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), with Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun attending the ARF ministerial meeting in Bangkok. The D.P.R.K. also expanded its bilateral diplomatic ties in that year, establishing diplomatic relations with Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, the U.K., Germany, and many other European countries.

In the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement issued at the end of the fourth round of Six-Party Talks, the United States and the D.P.R.K. committed to undertake steps to normalize relations (see below, Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula). The D.P.R.K. and Japan also agreed to take steps to normalize relations and to discuss outstanding issues of concern, such as abductions. The U.S.-D.P.R.K. and Japan-D.P.R.K. bilateral working groups on normalization of relations met in March and September 2007.

Terrorism

North Korea is not officially known to have sponsored terrorist acts since the 1987 bombing of KAL flight 858. Pyongyang continues to provide sanctuary to members of the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction (JRA) who participated in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines flight to North Korea in 1970. It has also supplied training, help and weapons to Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorist groups and maintains relations with Islamic dictatorship and state sponsor of terrorism Iran.

North Korea has made several statements claiming to condemning terrorism. In October 2000, the United States and North Korea issued a joint statement on terrorism in which "the two sides agreed that international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global security and peace, and that terrorism should be opposed in all its forms." The United States and North Korea agreed to support the international legal regime combating international terrorism and to cooperate with each other to fight terrorism. North Korea became a signatory to the Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism and a party to the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages in November 2001. In the February 13, 2007 Initial Actions agreement, the United States of America agreed to begin the process of removing the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. On Saturday October 11, 2008. The United States officially removed North Korea from the Terrorism Watch List.

Abductions

In the past, the D.P.R.K. has also been involved in the abduction of foreign citizens. In 2002, Kim Jong-il acknowledged to Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi the involvement of D.P.R.K. "special institutions" in the kidnapping of Japanese citizens between 1977 and 1983 and said that those responsible had been punished. While five surviving victims and their families were allowed to leave the D.P.R.K. and resettle in Japan in October 2002, 12 other cases remain unresolved and continue to be a major issue in D.P.R.K.-Japanese relations. In October 2005, the D.P.R.K. acknowledged for the first time having kidnapped R.O.K. citizens in previous decades, claiming that several abductees, as well as several POWs from the Korean War, were still alive. In June 2006, North Korea allowed Kim Young-nam, a South Korean abducted by the North in 1978, to participate in a family reunion.

In 2001, a series of articles in foreign and Russian Federation newspapers, resting on reports from Russian Federation human rights activists and Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged the D.P.R.K. abduction of up to 30,000 North Korean dissidents as well as common citizens to work in the Siberian labor and forestry camps in a scheme to pay off billions owed by North Korea to the Russia of both Soviet and Federation times. This forced labor was similar in nature and form to the gulags of Soviet Russia (see Essay: KAL 007 Survivors and Gulags of Russia).

North Korea and cyber crime

See: North Korea and cyber crime

United States policy towards North Korea

U.S. Support for North-South Dialogue and Reunification

The United States supports the peaceful reunification of Korea on terms acceptable to the Korean people and recognizes that the future of the Korean Peninsula is primarily a matter for them to decide. The United States believes that a constructive and serious dialogue between the authorities of North and South Korea is necessary to resolve outstanding problems, including the North's nuclear program and human rights abuses, and to encourage the North's integration with the rest of the international community.

Efforts to Denuclearize the Korean Peninsula

Locations of major hard-labor/re-education camps where the inmate population exceeds 20,000 each, nuclear-related facilities, and the test bomb site

North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state in 1985. North and South Korean talks begun in 1990 resulted in the 1992 Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula (see, under Foreign Relations, Reunification Efforts Since 1971). However, the international standoff over the North's failure to implement an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the inspection of the North's nuclear facilities led Pyongyang to announce in March 1993 its intention to withdraw from the NPT. A UN Security Council Resolution in May 1993 urged the D.P.R.K. to cooperate with the IAEA and to implement the 1992 North-South Denuclearization Statement. It also urged all UN Member States to encourage the D.P.R.K. to respond positively to this resolution and to facilitate a solution to the nuclear issue.

The United States opened talks with the D.P.R.K. in June 1993 and eventually reached agreement in October 1994 on a diplomatic roadmap, known as the Agreed Framework, for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The Agreed Framework called for the following steps:

• North Korea agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program and allow monitoring by the IAEA.
• Both sides agreed to cooperate to replace the D.P.R.K.'s graphite-moderated reactors with light-water reactor (LWR) power plants, by a target date of 2003, to be financed and supplied by an international consortium (later identified as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization or KEDO).
• As an interim measure, the United States agreed to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually until the first reactor was built.
• The United States and D.P.R.K. agreed to work together to store safely the spent fuel from the five-megawatt reactor and dispose of it in a safe manner that did not involve reprocessing in the D.P.R.K.
• The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.
• The two sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
• The two sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

In accordance with the terms of the Agreed Framework, in January 1995 the U.S. Government eased economic sanctions against North Korea in response to North Korea's freezing its graphite-moderated nuclear program under United States and IAEA verification. North Korea agreed to accept the decisions of KEDO, the financier and supplier of the LWRs, with respect to provision of the reactors. KEDO subsequently identified Sinpo as the LWR project site and held a groundbreaking ceremony in August 1997. In December 1999, KEDO and the (South) Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) signed the Turnkey Contract (TKC), permitting full-scale construction of the LWRs.

In January 1995, as called for in the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States and D.P.R.K. negotiated a method to store safely the spent fuel from the D.P.R.K.'s five-megawatt nuclear reactor. Under this method, United States and D.P.R.K. operators worked together to can the spent fuel and store the canisters in a spent fuel pond; canning began in 1995. In April 2000, canning of all accessible spent fuel rods and rod fragments was completed.

In 1998, the United States identified an underground site in Kumchang-ni, North Korea, which it suspected of being nuclear-related. In March 1999, after several rounds of negotiations, the United States and D.P.R.K. agreed that the United States would be granted "satisfactory access" to the underground site at Kumchang-ni. In October 2000, during D.P.R.K. Special Envoy Marshal Jo Myong-rok's visit to Washington, and after two visits to the site by teams of U.S. experts, the United States announced in a Joint Communiqué with the D.P.R.K. that U.S. concerns about the site had been resolved.

As called for in former Defense Secretary William Perry's official review of U.S. policy toward North Korea, the United States and the D.P.R.K. launched Agreed Framework Implementation Talks in May 2000 The United States and the D.P.R.K. also began negotiations for a comprehensive missile agreement, pursuant to the Perry recommendations.

In January 2001, the Bush Administration discontinued nuclear and missile talks, specifying that it intended to review the United States' North Korea policy. The Administration announced on June 6, 2001, that it was prepared to resume dialogue with North Korea on a broader agenda of issues—including North Korea's conventional force posture, missile development and export programs, human rights practices, and humanitarian issues.

In October 2002, a U.S. delegation confronted North Korea with the assessment that the D.P.R.K. was pursuing a uranium enrichment program, in violation of North Korea's obligations under the NPT and its commitments in the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the Agreed Framework. North Korean officials asserted to the U.S. delegation, headed by then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James A. Kelly, the D.P.R.K.'s "right" to a uranium enrichment program and indicated that that it had such a program. The U.S. side stated that North Korea would have to terminate the program before any further progress could be made in U.S.-D.P.R.K. relations. The United States also made clear that if this program were verifiably eliminated, it would be prepared to work with North Korea on the development of a fundamentally new relationship. Subsequently, the D.P.R.K. has denied the existence of a uranium enrichment program. In November 2002, the member countries of KEDO's Executive Board agreed to suspend heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea pending a resolution of the nuclear dispute.

In late 2002 and early 2003, North Korea terminated the freeze on its existing plutonium-based nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, expelled IAEA inspectors, removed seals and monitoring equipment at Yongbyon, announced its withdrawal from the NPT, and resumed reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium for weapons purposes. North Korea announced that it was taking these steps to provide itself with a deterrent force in the face of U.S. threats and U.S. "hostile policy." Beginning in mid-2003, the North repeatedly claimed to have completed reprocessing of the spent fuel rods previously frozen at Yongbyon and publicly said that the resulting fissile material would be used to bolster its "nuclear deterrent force." There is no independent confirmation of North Korea's claims. The KEDO Executive Board suspended work on the LWR Project beginning December 1, 2003.

President Bush has made clear that the United States has no intention to invade or attack North Korea. The President has also stressed that the United States seeks a peaceful end to North Korea's nuclear program in cooperation with North Korea's neighbors, who are directly affected by the threat the nuclear program poses to regional stability and security.

In early 2003, the United States proposed multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. North Korea initially opposed such a process, maintaining that the nuclear dispute was purely a bilateral matter between the United States and the D.P.R.K. However, under pressure from its neighbors and with the active involvement of China, North Korea agreed to three-party talks with China and the United States in Beijing in April 2003 and to Six-Party Talks with the United States, China, R.O.K., Japan and Russia in August 2003, also in Beijing. During the August 2003 round of Six-Party Talks, North Korea agreed to the eventual elimination of its nuclear programs if the United States were first willing to sign a bilateral "non-aggression treaty" and meet various other conditions, including the provision of substantial amounts of aid and normalization of relations. The North Korean proposal was unacceptable to the United States, which insisted on a multilateral resolution to the issue and opposed provision of benefits before the D.P.R.K.'s complete denuclearization. In October 2003, President Bush said he would consider a multilateral written security guarantee in the context of North Korea's complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons program.

China hosted a second round of Six-Party Talks in Beijing in February 2004. The United States saw the results as positive, including the announced intention of all parties to hold a third round by the end of June and to form a working group to maintain momentum between plenary sessions.

At the third round of Six-Party Talks in Beijing, in June 2004, the United States tabled a comprehensive and substantive proposal aimed at resolving the nuclear issue. All parties agreed to hold a fourth round of talks by the end of September 2004. Despite its commitment, the D.P.R.K. refused to return to the table, and in the months that followed issued a series of provocative statements. In a February 10, 2005, Foreign Ministry statement, the D.P.R.K. declared that it had "manufactured nuclear weapons" and was "indefinitely suspending" its participation in the Six-Party Talks. In Foreign Ministry statements in March, the D.P.R.K. said it would no longer be bound by its voluntary moratorium on ballistic missile launches, and declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

Following intense diplomatic efforts by the United States and other parties, the fourth round of Six-Party Talks were held in Beijing over a period of 20 days from July–September 2005, with a recess period in August. Discussions resulted in all parties agreeing to a Joint Statement of Principles. In the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement, the six parties unanimously reaffirmed the goal of verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner. The D.P.R.K. for the first time committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and to return, at an early date, to the NPT and to IAEA safeguards. The other parties agreed to provide economic cooperation and energy assistance. The United States and the D.P.R.K. agreed to take steps to normalize relations subject to bilateral policies, which for the United States includes our concerns over North Korea's ballistic missile programs and deplorable human rights conditions. While the Joint Statement provides a vision of the end-point of the Six-Party process, much work lies ahead to implement the elements of the agreement.

A fifth round of talks began in November 2005, but ended inconclusively as the D.P.R.K. began a boycott of the Six-Party Talks, citing the "U.S.' hostile policy" and specifically U.S. law enforcement action that had led in September to a freeze of North Korean accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA). The United States held discussions in Kuala Lumpur (July 2006) and New York in (September 2006) with other Six-Party partners, except North Korea, along with representatives from other regional powers in the Asia-Pacific region, to discuss Northeast Asian security issues, including North Korea. On July 4–5, 2006 (local Korea time), the D.P.R.K. launched seven ballistic missiles, including six short- and medium-range missiles and one of possible intercontinental range. In response, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1695 on July 15, which demands that the D.P.R.K. suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program and reestablish existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching. The resolution also requires all UN Member States, in accordance with their national legal authorities and consistent with international law, to exercise vigilance and prevent missile and missile-related items, materials, goods and technology from being transferred to the D.P.R.K.'s missile or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, prevent the procurement of missiles or related items, materials, goods and services from the D.P.R.K., and the transfer of any financial resources in relation to the D.P.R.K.'s missile or WMD programs. The D.P.R.K. immediately rejected the resolution.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced the successful test of a nuclear explosive device, verified by the United States on October 11. In response, the United Nations Security Council, citing Chapter VII of the UN Charter, unanimously passed Resolution 1718, condemning North Korea and imposing sanctions on certain luxury goods and trade of military units, WMD and missile-related parts, and technology transfers.

The Six-Party Talks resumed in December 2006 after a 13-month hiatus. Following a bilateral meeting between the United States and D.P.R.K. in Berlin in January 2007, another round of Six-Party Talks was held in February 2007. On February 13, 2007, the parties reached an agreement on "Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement" in which North Korea agreed to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and to invite back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verification of these actions as agreed between the IAEA and the D.P.R.K. The other five parties agreed to provide emergency energy assistance to North Korea in the amount of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the initial phase and the equivalent of 950,000 tons of HFO in the next phase of North Korea's denuclearization. The six parties also established five working groups to form specific plans for implementing the Joint Statement in the following areas: denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, normalization of D.P.R.K.-U.S. relations, normalization of D.P.R.K.-Japan relations, economic and energy cooperation, and a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. All parties agreed that the working groups would meet within 30 days of the agreement, which they did. The agreement also envisions the directly-related parties negotiating a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum. As part of the initial actions, North Korea invited IAEA Director General ElBaradei to Pyongyang in early March for preliminary discussions on the return of the IAEA to the D.P.R.K.

The sixth round of Six-Party Talks took place on March 19–23, 2007. The parties reported on the first meetings of the five working groups. At the invitation of the D.P.R.K., Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang in June 2007 as part of ongoing consultations with the six parties on implementation of the Initial Actions agreement. In July 2007, the D.P.R.K. shut down the Yongbyon nuclear facility, as well as an uncompleted reactor at Taechon, and IAEA personnel returned to the D.P.R.K. to monitor and verify the shut-down and to seal the facility. In July 2007, the R.O.K. provided the first shipment of 50,000 tons of HFO under the Initial Actions agreement. The Six-Party Heads of Delegation met July 18–20, 2007 to discuss implementation of the D.P.R.K.'s next phase commitments, including the D.P.R.K.'s provision of a complete declaration of all nuclear programs and disablement of existing nuclear facilities. All five working groups met in August and September to discuss detailed plans for implementation of the next phase of the Initial Actions agreement, and will report the results of those discussions to the next Six-Party plenary meeting. As part of the denuclearization process, the D.P.R.K. invited a team of experts from the United States, China, and Russia to visit the Yongbyon nuclear facility in September 2007 to discuss specific steps that could be taken to disable the facility.

North Korea and torture

See also: Atheistic communism and torture

The Christian Post published an article entitled North Korean Defector Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Camp Details Hunger, Torture, and Cannibalism in the DPRK which stated:

“

More than 200,000 North Koreans, including children, are imprisoned in camps where many perish from forced labor, inadequate food, and abuse by guards, according to Human Rights Watch. The isolated, secretive nation has no media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom, and pervasive problems include arbitrary arrest, lack of due process, and torture.

”

Military

Although North Korea has no enemies, its government says it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against "the U.S. nuclear threat".

North Korea now has the fourth-largest army in the world. It has an estimated 1.21 million armed personnel, compared to about 680,000 in the South. Military spending is estimated at as much as a quarter of GNP, with about 20% of men ages 17–54 in the regular armed forces. North Korean forces have a substantial numerical advantage over the South (between 2 and 3 to 1) in several key categories of offensive weapons—tanks, long-range artillery, and armored personnel carriers. The North has perhaps the world's second-largest special operations force, designed for insertion behind the lines in wartime. While the North has a relatively impressive fleet of submarines, its surface fleet has a very limited capability. Its air force has twice the number of aircraft as the South, but, except for a few advanced fighters, the North's air force is obsolete. The North deploys the bulk of its forces well forward, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Several North Korean military tunnels under the DMZ were discovered in the 1970s.

Over the last several years, North Korea has moved more of its rear-echelon troops to hardened bunkers closer to the DMZ. Given the proximity of Seoul to the DMZ (some 25 miles), South Korean and U.S. forces are likely to have little warning of any attack. The United States and South Korea continue to believe that the U.S. troop presence in South Korea remains an effective deterrent. North Korea's nuclear weapons program has also been a source of international tension (see below, Reunification Efforts Since 1971; Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula).

In 1953, the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) was created to oversee and enforce the terms of the armistice. Over the past decade, North Korea has sought to dismantle the MAC in a push for a new "peace mechanism" on the peninsula. In April 1994, it declared the MAC void and withdrew its representatives.

North Korea the Nuclear-Weapon State: A Likely Nuclear Target Structure

North Korea is considered a "nuclear-weapon state" (NWS) since it has nuclear weapon capabilities making it one of the primary targets among the world's major nuclear target structures in a possible nuclear war.

Ballistic missiles

On 7 February 2016, North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket, carrying the satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, from the Sahoe launching station. Critics suggest that the real purpose of the launch was test a ballistic missile. The launch was strongly condemned by the UN Security Council. A statement broadcast on Korean Central Television said that a new Earth observation satellite, Kwangmyongsong-4, had successfully been put into orbit less than 10 minutes after lift-off from the Sohae space centre in North Phyongan province. North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration stated the launch was "an epochal event in developing the country's science, technology, economy and defence capability by legitimately exercising the right to use space for independent and peaceful purposes". The launch prompted South Korea and the United States to discuss the possibility of placing an advanced missile defence system in South Korea, a move strongly opposed by both China and Russia.

North Korea has fired a number of well-publicized intercontinental ballistic missiles since the beginning of the Trump presidency. Some were aimed at US territory, such as Guam, although they fell harmlessly into the ocean. A couple flew high over Japan.

• The U.S. military has not attempted to shoot down ballistic missiles test-launched by North Korea because they have not been on a trajectory to hit U.S. or allies’ territory.

Economy

North Korea's energy usage and carbon emissions are somewhat limited by state policy and government decrees. Deforestation and flooding have become problems as people cut down trees for home heating rather than burn fossil fuels or use electricity from coal-fired plants. Tree bark also has become a food source under the socialist regime.

North Korea's economy declined sharply in the 1990s with the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of bloc-trading with the countries of the former socialist bloc. Gross national income per capita is estimated to have fallen by about one-third between 1990 and 2002. The economy has since stabilized and shown some modest growth in recent years, which may be reflective of increased inter-Korean economic cooperation. Output and living standards, however, remain far below 1990 levels. Other centrally-planned economies in similar situations opted for domestic economic reform and liberalization of trade and investment. North Korea formalized some modest wage and price reforms in 2002, and has increasingly tolerated markets and a small private sector as the state-run distribution system has deteriorated. The regime, however, seems determined to maintain control. In October 2005, emboldened by an improved harvest and increased food donations from South Korea, the North Korean Government banned private grain sales and announced a return to centralized food rationing. Reports indicate this effort to reassert state control and to control inflation has been largely ineffective. Another factor contributing to the economy's poor performance is the disproportionately large share of GDP (thought to be about one-fourth) that North Korea devotes to its military.

North Korean industry is operating at only a small fraction of capacity due to lack of fuel, spare parts, and other inputs. Agriculture is now 30% of GDP, even though agricultural output has not recovered to early 1990 levels. The infrastructure is generally poor and outdated, and the energy sector has collapsed. About 80% of North Korea's terrain consists of moderately high mountain ranges and partially forested mountains and hills separated by deep, narrow valleys and small, cultivated plains. The most rugged areas are the north and east coasts. Good harbors are found on the eastern coast. Pyongyang, the capital, near the country's west coast, is located on the Taedong River.

• GNI (2004 estimate): $20.8 billion; 26.7% in agriculture and fishery, 27.2% in mining, 13.7% in manufacturing, 32.3% in services (2004).
• Per capita GNI (2004): $914.
• Agriculture: Products--rice, potatoes, soybeans, cattle, pigs, pork and eggs.
• Mining and manufacturing: Types—military products; machine building; chemicals; mining (gold, coal, iron ore, limestone, magnesite, etc.); metallurgy; textiles; food processing; tourism.
• Trade (2006): Exports--$1.47 billion: minerals, non-ferrous metals, garments, machinery, electric and electronic products, chemicals, precious metals, wood products, and shellfish products. The D.P.R.K. is also thought to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the unreported sale of missiles, narcotics and counterfeit cigarettes, and other illicit activities. Imports--$2.88 billion: minerals, petroleum, machinery, textiles, chemicals, non-ferrous metals, and animal products.
• Major trading partners (2006): (1) China, (2) R.O.K., (3) Thailand, (4) Russia and (5) Japan.

North Korea experienced a severe famine following record floods in the summer of 1995 and continues to suffer from chronic food shortages and malnutrition. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) provided substantial emergency food assistance beginning in 1995 (2 million tons of which came from the United States), but the North Korean Government suspended the WFP emergency program at the end of 2005. It has since permitted the WFP to resume operations on a greatly reduced scale through a Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation. External food aid now comes primarily from China and South Korea in the form of grants and long-term concessional loans. South Korea also donates fertilizer and other materials, while China provides energy. South Korea suspended food and fertilizer shipments to the North in response to North Korea's missile launches in July 2006. However, when severe floods later that month threatened to produce another humanitarian crisis, South Korea announced a one-time donation of 100,000 tons of food, matching contributions from South Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs). South Korea resumed fertilizer shipments to North Korea in late March 2007. In early July, South Korea announced that it would provide $20 million worth of food assistance to the D.P.R.K. through the World Food Program. South Korea also resumed bilateral food aid in June 2007. Following severe flooding in North Korea in August 2007, South Korea announced that it would provide $7.5 million worth of emergency aid materials to North Korea, and $3.2 million to NGOs providing flood assistance in North Korea. The R.O.K. also provided $39.4 million in construction materials to the D.P.R.K. to assist with reconstruction efforts following the floods. The United States provided $100,000 to two U.S. NGOs for antibiotics in the wake of the floods. The United States also announced that is was prepared to engage in discussions with the D.P.R.K. of monitoring arrangements to provide additional substantial humanitarian assistance, including food aid, to the country.

Development Policy

In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and termination of subsidized trade arrangements with Russia, other former Communist states, and China, North Korea announced the creation of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the northeast regions of Najin (sometime rendered "Rajin"), Chongjin, and Sonbong. Problems with infrastructure, bureaucracy, and uncertainties about investment security and viability have hindered growth and development of this SEZ. The government announced in 2002 plans to establish a Special Administrative Region (SAR) in Sinuiju, at the western end of the North Korea-China border. However, the government has taken few concrete steps to establish the Sinuiju SAR, and its future is uncertain. In addition, North Korea and South Korea have established a special economic zone near the city of Kaesong, where about 20 South Korean companies operate manufacturing facilities employing North Korean workers (see further information under North-South Economic Ties).

North Korea implemented limited micro- and macroeconomic reforms in 2002, including increases in prices and wages, changes in foreign investment laws, a steep currency devaluation, and reforms in industry and management. Though the changes have failed to stimulate recovery of the industrial sector, there are reports of changed economic behavior at the enterprise and individual level. One unintended consequence of the 2002 changes has been severe inflation. An increasing number of North Koreans now try to work in the informal sector to cope with growing hardship and reduced government support.

North-South Economic Ties

Two-way trade between North and South Korea, legalized in 1988, had risen to more than $1 billion by 2005, much of it related to out-processing or assembly work undertaken by South Korean firms in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). A significant portion of the total also includes donated goods provided to the North as humanitarian assistance or as part of inter-Korean cooperation projects. Although business-based and processing-on-commission transactions continued to grow, the bulk of South Korean exports to North Korea in 2006 was still non-commercial.

Since the June 2000 North-South summit, North and South Korea have reconnected their east and west coast railroads and roads where they cross the DMZ and are working to improve these transportation routes. North and South Korea conducted tests of the east and west coast railroads on May 17, 2007. Much of the work done in North Korea has been funded by the South. The west coast rail and road are complete as far north as the KIC (six miles north of the DMZ), but little work is being done north of Kaesong. On the east coast, the road is complete but the rail line is far from operational. Since 2003, tour groups have been using the east coast road to travel from South Korea to Mt. Geumgang in North Korea, where cruise ship-based tours had been permitted since 1998.

As of August 2007, 26 South Korean firms were manufacturing goods in the KIC, employing nearly 17,000 North Korean workers. Most of the goods are sold in South Korea; a small quantity is being exported to foreign markets. Ground was broken on the complex in June 2003, and the first products were shipped from the KIC in December 2004. Plans envision 250 firms employing 350,000 workers by 2012.

History

The Korean Peninsula was first populated by peoples of a Tungusic branch of the Ural-Altaic language family, who migrated from the northwestern regions of Asia. Some of these peoples also populated parts of northeast China (Manchuria); Koreans and Manchurians still show physical similarities. Koreans are racially and linguistically homogeneous. Although there are no indigenous minorities in North Korea, there is a small Chinese community (about 50,000) and some 1,800 Japanese wives who accompanied the roughly 93,000 Koreans returning to the North from Japan between 1959 and 1962. Although dialects exist, the Korean spoken throughout the peninsula is mutually comprehensible. In North Korea, the Korean alphabet (hangul) is used exclusively.

Korea's traditional religions are Buddhism and Shamanism. Christian missionaries arrived as early as the 16th century, but it was not until the 19th century that major missionary activity began. Pyongyang was a center of missionary activity, and there was a relatively large Christian population in the north before 1945. Although religious groups exist in North Korea today, the government severely restricts religious activity.

By the first century AD, the Korean Peninsula was divided into the kingdoms of Shilla, Koguryo, and Paekche. In 668 AD, the Shilla kingdom unified the peninsula. The Koryo dynasty—from which Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century derived the Western name "Korea"—succeeded the Shilla kingdom in 935. The Choson dynasty, ruled by members of the Yi clan, supplanted Koryo in 1392 and lasted until Japan annexed Korea in 1910.

Throughout its history, Korea has been invaded, influenced, and fought over by its larger neighbors. Korea was under Mongolian occupation from 1231 until the early 14th century. The unifier of Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, launched major invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597. When Western powers focused "gunboat" diplomacy on Korea in the mid-19th century, Korea's rulers adopted a closed-door policy, earning Korea the title of "Hermit Kingdom." Though the Choson dynasty recognized China's hegemony in East Asia, Korea was independent until the late 19th century. At that time, China sought to block growing Japanese influence on the Korean Peninsula and Russian pressure for commercial gains there. The competition produced the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan emerged victorious from both wars and in 1910 annexed Korea as part of the growing Japanese empire. Japanese colonial administration was characterized by tight control from Tokyo and ruthless efforts to supplant Korean language and culture. Organized Korean resistance during the colonial era was generally unsuccessful, and Japan remained firmly in control of the Peninsula until the end of World War II in 1945. The surrender of Japan in August 1945 led to the immediate division of Korea into two occupation zones, with the United States administering the southern half of the peninsula and the U.S.S.R. taking over the area to the north of the 38th parallel. This division was meant to be temporary until the United States, U.K., Soviet Union, and China could arrange a trusteeship administration.

In December 1945, a conference was convened in Moscow to discuss the future of Korea. A five-year trusteeship was discussed, and a joint Soviet-American commission was established. The commission met intermittently in Seoul but deadlocked over the issue of establishing a national government. In September 1947, with no solution in sight, the United States submitted the Korean question to the UN General Assembly. Initial hopes for a unified, independent Korea quickly evaporated as the politics of the Cold War and domestic opposition to the trusteeship plan resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate nations with diametrically opposed political, economic, and social systems. Elections were held in the South under UN observation, and on August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) was established in the South. Syngman Rhee, a nationalist leader, became the Republic's first president. On September 9, 1948, the North established the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) headed by then-Premier Kim Il-sung, who had been cultivated and supported by the U.S.S.R.

Soviet supervision over the setting up and initial administration of the North Korean government was vested in a Soviet Civil Administration Bureau which carried out policies formulated in the Politburo and passed down through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Political Administration Department of the Sovie Red Army. Through ministrations of this agency, a veritable flood of Soviet advisors permeated the governmental, economic, social and educational structures of North Korea. Although outwardly maintaining an advisory status, Soviet advisors, in fact, exercised control and supervision over all policy matters. In this manner the USSR created a satellite state which was politically subservient and subject to economic manipulation.

By 1949 nationalization of banking, heavy industry and communications, the agrarian redistribution program and the political monopoly of unions had taken place and the new regime demonstrated a willingness to lower the standard of living of its people by exporting vitally needed foodstuffs and raw materials in order to obtain the instruments of war.

Korean War of 1950-53

For a more detailed treatment, see Korean War.
Almost immediately after establishment of the D.P.R.K., guerrilla warfare, border clashes, and naval battles erupted between the two Koreas. North Korean forces launched a massive surprise attack and invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The United Nations, in accordance with the terms of its Charter, engaged in its first collective action and established the UN Command (UNC), to which 16 member nations sent troops and assistance. Next to South Korea, the United States contributed the largest contingent of forces to this international effort.

North Korean forces quickly overran Southern ones, capturing almost the entire peninsula save the southern city of Busan. To relieve the Busan perimeter, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur led a massive amphibious landing at Inchon, over 100 miles behind the North Korean flanks. Kim's forces were pushed back and the battle line fluctuated north and south, and after large numbers of Chinese "People's Volunteers" intervened to assist the North, the battle line stabilized north of Seoul near the 38th parallel.

Armistice negotiations began in July 1951, but hostilities continued until July 27, 1953. On that date, at Panmunjom, the military commanders of the North Korean People's Army, the Chinese People's Volunteers, and the UNC signed an armistice agreement. Neither the United States nor South Korea is a signatory to the armistice per se, although both adhere to it through the UNC. No comprehensive peace agreement has replaced the 1953 armistice pact.

Atrocities of the Korean War

Fred Schwarz wrote:

When the Communists retreated in North Korea, they took with them all the able-bodied personnel to serve as laborers. Those who could not stand the rigors of the northward journey-- old men and women, pregnant women, very young children and babies-- they massacred and buried in a mass grave if they belonged to the untrustworthy social classes. The advancing American troops time and again found mass graves filled with the bodies of those murdered by the Communists.

North Korea and dog meat eating

See also: Atheists and dog meat eating

In 2018, USA Today published an article entitled 'It's healthier than other kinds of meat': North Koreans eat dog meat to beat the heat. The USA Today article declares: "In North Korea, summer is not a good time to be a dog."

Books

• The Aquariums of Pyong Yang by Kang Chol-hwan
• Eyes of the Tailless Animals (1999) by Soon Ok Lee
• North Korea by Bruce Cuming
• Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea (graphic novel) by Guy Deslisle
• The Two Koreas by Don Oberdorfer
• Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World (2006) by Gordon G. Chang

See also

• Communism
• Nuclear target structures
• Big government Welfare state leads to Nanny state, leads to Police state
• Liberal totalitarianism

External links

• Korea, North - 2007 Geographic.org
• Testimony of a high-ranking defector
• An Open Secret: the Gulags of the Russian Federation (the North Korean camps on Russian territory)
• Nuclear War Simulation North Korea, Military and Foreign Affairs Network, Mar 25, 2023

South Korea [24 bytes]

大韓民國 대한민국 Daehan Minguk Republic of Korea
Flag	Coat of Arms
Capital	Seoul
Government	Presidential republic
Language	Korean (official)
President	Yoon Suk-yeol
Prime minister	Han Duck-soo
Area	38,492 sq. miles
Population	52,500,000 (2020)
GDP	1,600,000,000,000 (2020)
GDP per capita	$30,476
Currency	Won

The Republic of Korea, commonly called South Korea, is a democratic ally of the U.S. in East Asia. Its capital is Seoul, and it shares a border—the most heavily fortified border in the world—with North Korea. South Korea was formed in 1945 after the Japanese colonial control was ended, and the Communists took control of the north, dividing Korea along the 38th parallel according to an agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

• South Korea, a democratic country since 1987, has grown to become the world's 12th-largest economy, and a leader in consumer electronics.

With the de-industrialization of the United States and Europe in the West, South Korea emerged during the NATO war in Ukraine as a major arms producer and exporter to the world.

South Korea -- smaller in area than the state of Kentucky -- is a country of many bridges, which span numerous rivers and hilly terrain. American soldiers who fought during the Korean War often faced tactical decisions whether to destroy a bridge or leave it standing, and some would later say in humor that "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

Geography

Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul.

• Area: 98,477 km². (38,022 sq. mi.); about the size of Indiana.
• Cities (2005): Capital--Seoul (10.3 million). Other major cities—Busan (3.7 million), Daegu (2.5 million), Incheon (2.6 million), Gwangju (1.4 million), Daejeon (1.5 million), Ulsan (1.0 million).
• Terrain: Partially forested mountain ranges separated by deep, narrow valleys; cultivated plains along the coasts, particularly in the west and south.
• Climate: Temperate.

People

Yongsan Fall Festival.

Korea's population is one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogenous in the world. Except for a small Chinese community (about 20,000), virtually all Koreans share a common cultural and linguistic heritage. With 48.85 million people, South Korea has one of the world's highest population densities. Major population centers are located in the northwest, southeast, and in the plains south of the Seoul-Incheon area.

Korea has experienced one of the largest rates of emigration, with ethnic Koreans residing primarily in China (1.9 million), the United States (1.52 million), Japan (681,000), and the countries of the former Soviet Union (450,000).

A large number of Chinese cognates exist in Korean. Chinese ideograms are believed to have been brought into Korea sometime before the second century BC. The learned class spoke Korean, but read and wrote Chinese. A phonetic writing system ("hangul") was invented in the 15th century by King Sejong to provide a writing system for commoners who could not read classical Chinese due to its large number of characters and difficulty. Hangul was almost never used until it was brought back by the Japanese who created a mixed script between the Chinese and hangul characters. The Chinese character were banned from being taught in schools and in use for official documents in 1970 and now modern Korean uses hangul almost exclusively with Chinese characters in limited use for word clarification. English is taught as a second language in most primary and secondary schools. Chinese and Japanese are widely taught at secondary schools.

• Population (2006): 48,846,823.
• Population annual growth rate (2006): 0.42%.
• Ethnic groups: Korean; small Chinese minority.
• Religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Shamanism, Confucianism, Chondogyo.
• Language: Korean.
• Education: Years compulsory—9. Enrollment—11.5 million. Attendance—middle school 99%, high school 95%. Literacy—98%.
• Health (2006): Infant mortality rate—6.16/1,000. Life expectancy—77.0 yrs (men 73.6 yrs.; women 80.8 yrs).
• Work force (2005): 23.53 million. Services—67.2%; mining and manufacturing—26.4%; agriculture—6.4%.

Religion

Buddhist architecture, Gangneung.

According to 2005 census data, the% ages of adherents to the predominant religious communities are: Buddhist, 22.8%; Protestant, 18.3%; Roman Catholic, 10.9%; and non-religious, 46.5%.

No official figures were available on the membership of other religious groups, which include Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Seventh-day Adventist Church, Daesun Jinrihoe, Unification Church, and Islam.

According to Gallup Korea's 2004 survey on the state of religion in the country, 36% of those who practiced a faith reported that they attended religious services or rituals at a church or temple more than once a week, 11% attended two to three times per month, 21% attended once or twice a year, and 4.9% did not attend services. Of those who attended more than once a week, Protestants had the highest attendance rate at 71%, Catholics 43%, and Buddhists 3.5%.

The Government observes Buddha's Birthday and Christmas as national holidays. The Government does not permit religious instruction in public schools. Private schools are free to conduct religious activities.

Religious leaders regularly met both privately and under government auspices to promote mutual understanding and tolerance. The media gave public meetings wide and favorable coverage. For example, the Korean Council of Religious Leaders holds an annual event, the Republic of Korea Religious Culture Festival, which aims to promote reconciliation and mutual understanding among religious groups. The most recent festival, which was held on October 20, 2007, in Seoul, was attended by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Christian Churches of Korea, Won Buddhism, the Korea Religious Council, and the Catholic Church, among others.

Government and Political Conditions

The Republic of Korea (commonly known as "South Korea") is a republic with powers nominally shared among the presidency, the legislature, and the judiciary, but traditionally dominated by the president. The president is chief of state and is elected for a single term of 5 years. The 299 members of the unicameral National Assembly are elected to 4-year terms. In the upcoming general elections on April 9, 2008, a total of 245 members will be elected from single-seat districts and 54 members will be chosen by proportional representation. South Korea's judicial system comprises a Supreme Court, appellate courts, and a Constitutional Court. The judiciary is independent under the constitution. The country has nine provinces and seven administratively separate cities—the capital of Seoul, along with Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, Incheon and Ulsan. Political parties include the Grand National Party (GNP), United Democratic Party (UDP), Liberal Forward Party (LFP), and Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Suffrage is universal at age 19 (lowered from 20 in 2005).

Principal Government Officials

• President—Park Geun-hye
• Prime Minister—Lee Wan-koo
• Minister of Strategy and Finance—Kang Man-soo
• Minister of Education, Science and Technology—Kim Do-yeon
• Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade—Kim Sung-hwan
• Minister of Unification—Kim Ha-joong
• Minister of Justice—Kim Kyung-han
• Minister of National Defense—Lee Sang-hee
• Minister of Public Administration and Security—Won Sei-hoon
• Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism—Yu In-chon
• Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries—Chung Un-chun
• Minister of Knowledge Economy—Lee Youn-ho
• Minister of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs—Kim Soung-yee
• Minister of Environment—Lee Maan-ee
• Minister of Labor—Lee Young-hee
• Minister of Gender Equality—Byun Do-yoon
• Minister of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs—Chung Jong-hwan
• Director of the National Intelligence Service—Kim Sung-ho
• Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs and National Security—Kim Byung-kook

Foreign Relations

In August 1991, South Korea joined the United Nations along with North Korea and is active in most UN specialized agencies and many international forums. The Republic of Korea also hosted major international events such as the 1988 Summer Olympics, the 2002 World Cup Soccer Tournament (co-hosted with Japan), and the 2002 Second Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies.

Economic considerations have a high priority in Korean foreign policy. The R.O.K. seeks to build on its economic accomplishments to increase its regional and global role. It is a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and chaired the organization in 2005.

The Republic of Korea maintains diplomatic relations with more than 170 countries and a broad network of trading relationships. The United States and Korea are allied by the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty. Korea and Japan coordinate closely on numerous issues. This includes consultations with the United States on North Korea policy.

Korean Reunification

For almost 20 years after the 1950-53 Korean War, relations between North and South Korea were minimal and very strained. Official contact did not occur until 1971, beginning with Red Cross contacts and family reunification projects in 1985. In the early 1990s, relations between the two countries improved with the 1991 South-North Basic Agreement, which acknowledged that reunification was the goal of both governments, and the 1992 Joint Declaration of Denuclearization. However, divergent positions on the process of reunification and North Korean weapons programs, compounded by South Korea's tumultuous domestic politics and the 1994 death of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, contributed to a cycle of warming and cooling of relations.

Kim Jong-il of North Korea meets South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, 2000.

Relations improved again following the 1997 election of Kim Dae-jung. His "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the D.P.R.K. set the stage for the historic June 2000 inter-Korean summit between President Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. President Kim was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for the policy, but the prize was somewhat tarnished by revelations of a $500 million "payoff" to North Korea that immediately preceded the summit.

Relations again became tense following the October 2002 North Korean acknowledgement of a covert program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Following this acknowledgement, the United States, along with the People's Republic of China, proposed multilateral talks among the concerned parties to deal with this issue. At the urging of China and its neighbors, the D.P.R.K. agreed to meet with China and the United States in April 2003. In August of that year, the D.P.R.K. agreed to attend Six-Party Talks aimed at ending the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons that added the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Russia to the table. Two more rounds of Six-Party Talks between the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, and the D.P.R.K. were held in February and June 2004. At the third round, the United States put forward a comprehensive proposal aimed at completely, verifiably, and irreversibly eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

A fourth round of talks was held in two sessions spanning a period of 20 days between July and September 2005. All parties agreed to a Joint Statement of Principles on September 19, 2005, in which, among other things, the D.P.R.K. committed to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards." The Joint Statement also committed the United States and other parties to certain actions as the D.P.R.K. denuclearized. The United States offered a security assurance, specifying that it had no nuclear weapons on R.O.K. territory and no intention to attack or invade the D.P.R.K. with nuclear or other weapons. Finally, the United States and the D.P.R.K., as well as the D.P.R.K. and Japan, agreed to undertake steps to normalize relations, subject to their respective bilateral policies. On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced a successful nuclear test, verified by the United States on October 11. In response, the United Nations Security Council, citing Chapter VII of the UN Charter, unanimously adopted Resolution 1718, condemning North Korea's action and imposing sanctions on certain luxury goods and trade of military units, weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related parts, and technology transfers. The Six-Party Talks resumed in December 2006 after a 13-month hiatus. Following a bilateral meeting between the United States and D.P.R.K. in Berlin in January 2007, another round of Six-Party Talks was held in February 2007. On February 13, 2007, the parties reached an agreement on "Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement" in which North Korea agreed to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility, and to invite back International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verification of these actions. The other five parties agreed to provide emergency energy assistance to North Korea in the amount of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the initial phase (within 60 days) and the equivalent of up to 950,000 tons of HFO in the next phase of North Korea's denuclearization. The six parties also established five working groups to form specific plans for implementing the Joint Statement in the following areas: denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, normalization of D.P.R.K.-U.S. relations, normalization of D.P.R.K.-Japan relations, economic and energy cooperation, and a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. All parties agreed that the working groups would meet within 30 days of the agreement, which they did. The agreement also envisions the directly-related parties negotiating a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum. As part of the initial actions, North Korea invited IAEA Director General ElBaradei to Pyongyang in early March for preliminary discussions on the return of the IAEA to the D.P.R.K. The sixth round of Six-Party Talks took place on March 19–23, 2007. The parties reported on the first meetings of the five working groups. At the invitation of the D.P.R.K., Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang in June 2007 as part of ongoing consultations with the six parties on implementation of the Initial Actions agreement. In July 2007, the D.P.R.K. shut down the Yongbyon nuclear facility, as well as an uncompleted reactor at Taechon, and IAEA personnel returned to the D.P.R.K. to monitor and verify the shut-down and to seal the facility. Concurrently, the R.O.K., China, United States, and Russia initiated deliveries of approximately 50,000 metric tons of HFO per month, with the R.O.K. completing delivery of the first tranche of 50,000 metric tons in August, China the second in September, the United States the third in November, and Russia the fourth in January. These four parties are expected to continue to provide monthly shipments of HFO as the D.P.R.K. continues to implement denuclearization steps. All five working groups met in August and September to discuss detailed plans for implementation of the next phase of the Initial Actions agreement, and the D.P.R.K. invited a team of experts from the United States, China, and Russia to visit the Yongbyon nuclear facility in September 2007 to discuss specific steps that could be taken to disable the facility. The subsequent September 27–30 Six-Party plenary meeting resulted in the October 3, 2007 agreement on "Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement."

Demilitarized Zone of Korea, Imjingang, 2005.

Under the terms of the October 3 agreement, the D.P.R.K. agreed to disable all existing nuclear facilities subject to abandonment under the September 2005 Joint Statement and the February 13 agreement. The parties agreed to complete by December 31, 2007 a set of disablement actions for the three core facilities at Yongbyon—the 5-MW(e) Experimental Reactor, the Radiochemical Laboratory (Reprocessing Plant), and the Fresh Fuel Fabrication Plant—with oversight from a team of U.S. experts, The D.P.R.K. also agreed to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs in accordance with the February 13 agreement by December 31, 2007 and reaffirmed its commitment not to transfer nuclear materials, technology, or know-how.

In November 2007, the D.P.R.K. began to disable the three core facilities at Yongbyon and complete most of the agreed disablement actions by the end of the year. Due to health and safety concerns, disablement activities at the 5-MW(e) reactor continued beyond December 31, 2007. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang again in December 2007 as part of ongoing consultations on the implementation of Second-Phase actions and carried with him a letter from the President of the United States to Kim Jong-il. The D.P.R.K. missed the December 31 deadline to provide a complete and correct declaration, but efforts to secure a declaration continued into January 2008.

Relations with the United States

The United States believes that the question of peace and security on the Korean Peninsula is, first and foremost, a matter for the Korean people to decide.

Gen. MacArthur statue in Jayu Park, Incheon.

Under the 1953 U.S.-R.O.K. Mutual Defense Treaty, the United States agreed to help the Republic of Korea defend itself against external aggression. Since that time in support of this commitment, the United States has maintained military personnel in Korea, including the Army's Second Infantry Division and several Air Force tactical squadrons. To coordinate operations between these units and the over 680,000-strong Korean armed forces, a Combined Forces Command (CFC) was established in 1978. The head of the CFC also serves as Commander of the United Nations Command (UNC) and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK). The current commander is General Burwell Baxter "B.B." Bell.

Several aspects of the security relationship are changing as the U.S. moves from a leading to a supporting role. In 2004, agreement was reached on the return of the Yongsan base in Seoul—as well as a number of other U.S. bases—to the R.O.K. and the eventual relocation of all U.S. forces to south of the Han River. In addition, the U.S. and R.O.K. agreed to move 12,500 of the 37,500 U.S. troops out of Korea by 2008. At the same time U.S. troops are being redeployed from Korea, the U.S. will bolster combined U.S./R.O.K. deterrent and defense capabilities by providing $11 billion in force enhancements in Korea and at regional facilities over the next four years.

As Korea's economy has developed, trade has become an increasingly important aspect of the U.S.-R.O.K. relationship. The U.S. seeks to improve access to Korea's expanding market and increase investment opportunities for American business. The implementation of structural reforms contained in the IMF's 1998 program for Korea improved access to the Korean market, although a range of serious sectoral and structural barriers remained. Korean leaders appear determined to successfully manage the complex economic relationship with the United States and take a more active role in international economic fora as befits Korea's status as a major trading nation. On April 1, 2007, the U.S. and Korea successfully concluded Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. Eight rounds of formal talks held over the course of 10 months culminated in a deal that will "further enhance the strong United States-Korea partnership, which has served as a force for stability and prosperity in Asia," as stated by President Bush. The agreement was signed by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong on June 30, 2007 and is currently awaiting ratification in the U.S. Congress and the Korean National Assembly. The FTA is expected to stimulate billions of dollars in trade through the removal of trade barriers and increased investment.

Economy

Korean peninsula by night.

The Republic of Korea's economic growth over the past several decades has been spectacular. Per capita GNP, only $100 in 1963, is approaching $33,333. South Korea is now the United States' seventh-largest trading partner and is the twelfth-largest economy in the world.

In the early 1960s, the government of Park Chung Hee instituted sweeping economic policy changes emphasizing exports and labor-intensive light industries, leading to rapid debt-financed industrial expansion. The government carried out a currency reform, strengthened financial institutions, and introduced flexible economic planning. In the 1970s Korea began directing fiscal and financial policies toward promoting heavy and chemical industries, consumer electronics, and automobiles. Manufacturing continued to grow rapidly in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In recent years, Korea's economy moved away from the centrally planned, government-directed investment model toward a more market-oriented one. Korea bounced back from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis with some International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance, but based largely on extensive financial reforms that restored stability to markets. These economic reforms, pushed by President Kim Dae-jung, helped Korea maintain one of Asia's few expanding economies, with growth rates of 10% in 1999 and 9% in 2000. The slowing global economy and falling exports slowed growth to 3.3% in 2001, prompting consumer stimulus measures that led to 7.0% growth in 2002. Consumer over-shopping and rising household debt, along with external factors, slowed growth to near 3% again in 2003. Economic performance in 2004 improved to 4.6% due to an increase in exports, and remained at or above 4% in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Economists are concerned that South Korea's economic growth potential has fallen because of a rapidly aging population and structural problems that are becoming increasingly apparent. Foremost among these structural concerns is the rigidity of South Korea's labor regulations, the need for more constructive relations between management and workers, the country's underdeveloped financial markets, and a general lack of regulatory transparency. Restructuring of Korean conglomerates ("chaebols") and creating a more liberalized economy with a mechanism for bankrupt firms to exit the market are also important unfinished reform tasks. Korean policy makers are increasingly worried about diversion of corporate investment to China and other lower wage countries.

• Nominal GDP: $1.6 trillion (2020)
• GDP growth rate: 2.2% (2020)
• GDP per capita: $30,476 (2020)
• Consumer price index: 2004, 3.6%; 2005, 2.8%; 2006, 2.2%.
• Natural resources: Limited coal, iron ore, limestone, kaolinite, and graphite.
• Agriculture, including forestry and fisheries: Products—rice, vegetables, fruit, root crops, barley; cattle, pigs, chickens, milk, eggs, fish. *Arable land—17% of land area.
• Industry: Types—Electronics and electrical products, telecommunications, motor vehicles, shipbuilding, mining and manufacturing, petrochemicals, industrial machinery, steel.
• Trade (2007 est.): Exports--$386.6 billion f.o.b.: electronic products (semiconductors, cellular phones and equipment, computers), automobiles, machinery and equipment, steel, ships, petrochemicals. Imports--$359.5 billion f.o.b.: crude oil, food, machinery and transportation equipment, chemicals and chemical products, base metals and articles. Major markets (2006)--China (21.3%), U.S. (13.3%), Japan (8.1%), Hong Kong (5.9%). Major suppliers (2006)--Japan (16.8%), China (15.7%), U.S. (11%), Saudi Arabia (6.7%), U.A.E. 4.2%.

North-South Economic Ties

Two-way trade between North and South Korea, legalized in 1988, hit almost $1.35 billion in 2006, much of it related to out-processing or assembly work undertaken by South Korean firms in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). A significant portion of the total also includes donated goods provided to the North as humanitarian assistance or as part of inter-Korean cooperation projects. According to R.O.K. figures, about 60% of the total trade consisted of commercial transactions, much of that based on processing-on-commission arrangements. The R.O.K. is North Korea's second-largest trading partner.

Since the June 2000 North-South summit, North and South Korea have reconnected their east and west coast railroads and roads where they cross the DMZ and are working to improve these transportation routes. North and South Korea conducted tests of the east and west coast railroads on May 17, 2007 and began cross-border freight service between Kaesong in the D.P.R.K. and Munsan in the R.O.K. in December 2007. Much of the work done in North Korea has been funded by South Korea. The west coast rail and road are complete as far north as the KIC (six miles north of the DMZ), but little work is being done north of Kaesong. On the east coast, the road is complete but the rail line is far from operational. Since 2003, tour groups have been using the east coast road to travel from South Korea to Mt. Geumgang in North Korea, where cruise ship-based tours had been permitted since 1998.

As of August 2007, 65 South Korean firms were manufacturing goods in the KIC, employing nearly 22,000 North Korean workers. Most of the goods are sold in South Korea; a small quantity is being exported to foreign markets. Ground was broken on the complex in June 2003, and the first products were shipped from the KIC in December 2004. Plans envision 250 firms employing 350,000 workers by 2012.

R.O.K.-organized tours to Mt. Kumgang in North Korea began in 1998. Since then, more than a million visitors have traveled to Mt. Kumgang.

History

Giant stone statue of Buddha in Gyeongju.

The myth of Korea's foundation by the god-king Tangun in BC 2333 embodies the homogeneity and self-sufficiency valued by the Korean people. Korea experienced many invasions by its larger neighbors in its 2,000 years of recorded history. The country repelled numerous foreign invasions despite domestic strife, in part due to its protected status as a vassal state to China in the Sino-centric regional political model during Korea's Chosun dynasty (1392-1910). Historical antipathies to foreign influence earned Korea the title of "Hermit Kingdom" in the 19th century.

Cheongnyangsa Temple, Gyeongbuk.

With declining Chinese power at the end of the 19th century, Korea was open to Western and Japanese encroachment. In 1910, Japan began a 35-year period of colonial rule over Korea. As a result of Japan's efforts to supplant the Korean language and aspects of Korean culture, memories of Japanese annexation still recall fierce animosity and resentment, especially among older Koreans. Nevertheless, import restrictions on Japanese movies, popular music, fashion, and the like have been lifted, and many Koreans, especially the younger generations, eagerly follow Japanese pop culture. Aspects of Korean culture, including television shows and movies, have also become popular in Japan.

Japan's surrender to the Allied Powers in 1945, signaling the end of World War II, only further embroiled Korea in foreign rivalries. Division at the 38th parallel marked the beginning of Soviet and U.S. trusteeship over the North and South, respectively. On August 15, 1948 the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) was established, with Syngman Rhee as the first President. On September 9, 1948 the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) was established under Kim Il Sung.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. Led by the U.S., a 16-member coalition undertook the first collective action under United Nations Command (UNC). Following China's entry on behalf of North Korea later that year, a stalemate ensued for the final two years of the conflict. Armistice negotiations, initiated in July 1951, were ultimately concluded on July 27, 1953 at Panmunjom, in what is now the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The Armistice Agreement was signed by representatives of the Korean People's Army, the Chinese People's Volunteers, and the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC). Though the R.O.K. supported the UNC, it refused to sign the Armistice Agreement. A peace treaty has never been signed. The war left almost three million Koreans dead or wounded and millions of others homeless and separated from their families.

In the following decades, South Korea experienced political turmoil under autocratic leadership. President Syngman Rhee was forced to resign in April 1960 following a student-led uprising. The Second Republic under the leadership of Chang Myon ended after only one year, when Major General Park Chung-hee led a military coup. Park's rule, which resulted in tremendous economic growth and development but increasingly restricted political freedoms, ended with his assassination in 1979. Subsequently, a powerful group of military officers, led by Lieutenant General Chun Doo Hwan, declared martial law and took power.

Throughout the Park and Chun eras, South Korea developed a vocal civil society that led to strong protests against authoritarian rule. Composed primarily of students and labor union activists, protest movements reached a climax after Chun's 1979 coup and declaration of martial law. A confrontation in Gwangju in 1980 left at least 200 civilians dead. Thereafter, pro-democracy activities intensified even more, ultimately forcing political concessions by the government in 1987, including the restoration of direct presidential elections.

In 1987, Roh Tae-woo, a former general, was elected president, but additional democratic advances during his tenure resulted in the 1992 election of a long-time pro-democracy activist, Kim Young-sam. Kim became Korea's first civilian elected president in 32 years. The 1997 presidential election and peaceful transition of power marked another step forward in Korea's democratization when Kim Dae-jung, a lifelong democracy and human rights activist, was elected from a major opposition party. The transition to an open, democratic system was further consolidated in 2002, when self-educated human rights lawyer, Roh Moo-hyun, won the presidential election on a "participatory government" platform. Most recently, South Koreans voted for a new president in December 2007. Former business executive and Mayor of Seoul Lee Myung-bak's 5-year term began with his inauguration on February 25, 2008.

Korean Airlines

The national air carrier of the State is Korean Airlines. The most famous incident involving the airline is the shooting down by the Soviets of Korean Airlines Flight 007 near Moneron Island just west of the Soviet Sakhalin Island on Sept. 1, 1983. Among the 269 people on board this flight was a sitting conservative congressman (Democratic) from the state of Georgia, Larry McDonald, a younger cousin of General George Patton. Staunchly anti-communist, Larry McDonald, just three months earlier, had been elected the second head of the John Birch Society. Senator Jesse Helms was scheduled to also be aboard KAL 007 but was spared by boarding the sister flight for the trip from the U.S.to Korea, KAL 015. Both McDonald and Helms, with other congressmen, were on their way to Korea to celebrate the 30th year anniversary of the U.S.-Korea Mutual Defense Treaty.

See also

• Korea
• Asian painting

References

Copyright Details
License:	Some content for this article is in the Public Domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the U.S. Code
Source:	File available from the United States Federal Government [5].

Cretan [27 bytes]

Crete (Kriti), is a Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea and, with an area of 8,336 km², is the largest island in that sea. The oldest evidence for human habitation dates back to the pre-Pottery era, around 6100 - 5700 B.C. and was discovered in Knossos, later the capital of the Minoan Civilization. United with Greece in December 1913, the current capital of Crete is Heraklion (also spelled Iraklion).

Part of the Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Empire until 1204 and the Western Christian sack of Constantinople, the island was allocated to the Genoese but sold to the Venetians for 1000 silver marks. The Venetians occupied the island and initially tried to impose Roman Catholicism on the Greek Orthodox inhabitants. This imposition, and the high taxes that the Venetiians brought with them, was resisted by the Cretans and the early Venetian rule was marked by a series of revolts against the conquerors. The later Venetian period was generally more stable.

In 1669, after a twenty three-year struggle, the island finally fell into the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman rule was marked by an almost continuous series of uprisings as the Cretans fought against their Muslim rulers. Notable events during these uprisings included the mass suicide of the Cretan rebels in the Monastery of Arkadi in 1866 and, later that year, the evacuation of Christian refugees from the south coast of the island by ships of the Royal Navy, French, Prussian and Russian Navies; evacuations carried out in breach of the Ottoman naval embargo in the island.

In 1897, with the total collapse of the Ottoman administration and amid scenes of violent ethnic cleansing as Christian Cretans sought revenge on Muslim Cretans for the latter's support of the Ottoman regime and Cretan Muslims sought to maintain their favoured economic position, the island was occupied by forces from Italy, France, Britain and Russia. It then became a semi-autonomous state within the Ottoman Empire, its ruler being appointed by Greece but having to be approved by the Sublime Porte. The island finally achieved ‘enosis,’ union with Greece, following the end of the Second Balkan War in 1913.

The island was invaded by German forces in May 1941. Spearheaded by paratroops, Operation Merkuri, though successful in gaining control of Crete, was a disaster for the German forces. In spite of the fact that the Greek Dictator Metaxas had disarmed the islanders because of their opposition to his right wing rule, the islanders rose up against the invaders with whatever weapons they had at hand and, aiding the Greek, New Zealand and British troops present, made the Germans pay dearly for every metre of ground they gained. Over 4,000 paratroopers were killed and the German 7th Airborne Division was virtually wiped out. The effect of the German setback was such that Hitler ordered that no German paratroop assaults were ever to be launched again. The islanders continued to resist the Germans until the very end of the occupation, paying a high price as towns and villages, such as Kandanos and Floria, were wiped out and their populations executed in reprisal for partisan attacks.

Cretans continued to display their thirst for freedom after the war, the island being one of the major sources of opposition to the right wing military regime of the ‘Colonels Junta’ who ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.

The island is now a major tourist and agricultural centre.

Notable features of Crete include the Samaria Gorge, the longest gorge in Europe, the Minoan remains at Knossos and the former leper colony at Spinalonga.

In Greek mythology, Crete was the home of the Minotaur, a beast with the head of a bull on the body of a man. According to Cretan legend Zeus, the King of the Gods, was born on the island. However, the ancient Greeks believed that Zeus was born on Mount Olympus in northern Greece and this dispute gave rise to the ancient Greek saying "All Cretans are liars."

Psycom [28 bytes]

Psycom

Spaniards [29 bytes]

Spaniards may refer to those who live or come from Spain. More commonly, though, "Spanish" is used. "Spaniards" more often refers to the Spanish settlers of the Americas in the 1500s.

Regina Peruggi [30 bytes]

Regina Peruggi was the first wife of Rudy Giuliani.

Donna Hanover [30 bytes]

Donna Hanover is the second wife of Rudy Giuliani.

Priory [32 bytes]

Priory is a medieval term for a monastery.

Pharoah [33 bytes]

Thutmose III of the 18th Dynasty. This statue depicts him in a way that perfectly displays the official iconographic conventions of Egyptian art and ideology, with the Pharaoh as eternally serene, young and beautiful. The statue is considered a masterpiece of Egyptian sculpture. Greywacke, from Karnak Temple Cachette, now in Luxor Museum.

Pharaoh is the term generally used today to refer to the Kings of Ancient Egypt, including the Hyksos and Ptolemaic rulers, but usually not the Persian rulers, though many of them did have a formal Egyptian royal titulary drawn up.

Etymology of the Word

The term "pharaoh" derives from the Egyptian word pr-'3, reconstructed as "per-'aa" and literally translates as "Great House", i.e. the royal palace. The word itself occurs from the Old Kingdom onward, but only within that context, i.e. smr pr '3 "Courtier of the Great House", rather than referring to the ruler in person.

Towards the end of the 12th Dynasty, the context has shifted somewhat, being used in blessing or as a wish "Great House, may it liver, prosper and be in health", which although still referring to the palace the context appears to be shifting somewhat. It is from the late 18th Dynasty onward in the Amarna Letters that we obtain the first clear usage of the term pr-'3 to refer to the person of the King himself, and from the 19th dynasty onwards it is used in exactly the same manner as "His Majesty" (Hm.f). The term continues to be used into the Greco-Roman era, where it even finds use in temple inscriptions.

The Divine Kingship

The Pharaoh was a divine King (sometimes referred to as a God-King), who ruled as an absolute monarch. He was associated with numerous Egyptian gods, but the most significant relationship was the Pharaoh being the living image or earthly incarnation of Horus. This was an extremely important foundation for Pharaonic ideology, as Horus is closely associated with the ideals of Kingship in theology, being the rightful successor to the murdered Osiris. It is also the oldest of the divine associations, dating back at least as far as the reign of Narmer, at the beginning of the Dynastic period. The Horus name in the royal titulary links directly to this association.

The Pharaoh was also the Son of Ra, as explicitly stated in the royal titulary from the reign of Djedfra (4th Dyn.) onward. This was a very important association in the Old and Middle Kingdom, when Ra was the supreme state god, and remained significant throughout Pharaonic history. When Amun became solarised in the 18th dynasty as Amun-Ra, the Pharaoh came to be seen as the son of this combined form of the sun god as well.

The Pharaoh was also considered to be the son of Geb, Nut, Isis, Osiris, and Hathor. In addition he was also imbued with the traits of others gods at particular times. On the battlefield, Thutmose III was likened to the Theban war god Montu, and Ramesses II to Sekhmet, the avenging Eye of Ra.

The Pharaoh could also be directly worshipped as an independent god in his own right, and it is known that temples to Senusret III, Ahmose I, Amunhotep II, Amunhotep III, and Ramesses II existed. In addition to these, every Pharoh was worshipped after his death in a mortuary cult, the central temple of which was the pyramid complex in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and the mortuary temple in later periods. These cults were state sponsored, sometimes for centuries following the death of the ruler concerned. Several Pharaohs were also worshipped outside Egypt.

The Dual Kingship

Egyptian philosophy was highly dualistic in nature, seeing two aspects being necessary to form a whole picture. For example, order could not exist without chaos, perhaps best seen in the Contendings of Horus and Set. The role of the Pharaoh was seen in a similar way, and by extension Egypt as a whole. Egypt was the “Two Lands”, which has is generally seen today as Upper and Lower Egypt, reflecting both philosophical view and political history. The title Lord of the Two Lands was an important part of the royal titulary, and is reflected in the idea of the dual crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (red crown, white crown, and joined crowns), and also the “two ladies” name of the royal titulary. The two ladies were the vulture goddess Nekhbet (patron of Upper Egypt) and cobra goddess Wadjet (patron of Lower Egypt). The latter reared up upon the brow of the Pharaoh to spit and strike at his enemies, and quite commonly the head of Nekhbet was depicted alongside her, as on the mask of Tutankhamun.

The idea of the Two Lands, as well as fitting in the with Egyptian thinking regarding the nature of the universe also preserved the historic memory of the original act of unification of Egypt into one nation circa 3200 – 3100 BC. Although unified, the administration maintained some divisions, including having two national treasuries, though usually under one treasurer.

The Royal Names

The Pharaoh had five sets of royal names and titulary, as well as additional epithets and titles not discussed here. The main five names and titles were:

• The Horus Name: The oldest title, dating from the 1st Dynasty, links the Pharaoh to the god Horus. It is written in a serekh. This name was given to the Pharaoh upon his ascension to the throne, and was his “official” name during the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods.
• The Nebty Name: Sometimes called the “Two Ladies” name, links the Pharaoh with the patron goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt. Used first by Den of the 1st Dynasty, and clearly states that the Pharaoh is ruler of all Egypt. It was taken upon coronation.
• Golden Horus Name: It’s exactly symbolism is disputed, but apart from the obvious link to the Pharaoh as the incarnation of Horus (already established in the Horus name) the golden element most likely relates to the idea of enduring or eternity, qualities with which the metal was associated by the Egyptians. In addition Egyptian religion also mentions certain gods as having skin made of gold. It was taken upon coronation.
• The Prenomen: The nisw-bity or “King of Upper and Lower Egypt” name, was enclosed in a cartouche and from the 11th Dynasty onward always included the name of Ra within the name. I.e. User-Ma’at-Ra Setep-n-Ra (Translated as “Strong is the Justice of Ra, Chosen of Ra”) is the prenomen of Ramesses II. This was “official” name used from the Middle Kingdom onward. Is is often followed by the title “Lord of the Two Lands”. It too, was taken upon coronation.
• The Nomen: The “Son of Ra” name was also enclosed in a cartouche, and is the name used today to describe a particular individual. Ramesses was the nomen of Ramesses II. It was the Pharaoh’s birth name. Sometimes, and not uncommonly, the epithet “The Perfect God” is used in place of the “Son of Ra” prefix.

Amenhotep II, with Nemes headdress, false beard, and uraeus (cobra) upon his brow

Coffinette of Tutankhamun, with Nemes headdress, false beard,bearing the ceremonial crook and flail. The traditional ureaus aupon the brow is accompanied by the vulture head of Nekhbet

Pharaonic Regalia

There is a rich variety of Pharaonic regalia, each element with its own symbolism.

Piece	Symbolism
Crook and Flail	Links to Osiris. Crook is symbolic of the Pharaoh’s responsibility to guide the country and people. As a sign in Egyptian hieroglyphs it forms the tri-consonantal HkA, most commonly used in the word “rule” and related words. The fail is of less certain original meaning, but is most likely related to the harvest, symbolic of the Pharaoh’s role as provider for the people.
Nemes Headdress	A striped multi-piece headdress worn by Pharaohs from at least the beginning of the 3rd Dynasty, it’s originally symbolism is unknown, but was a core part of Pharaonic regalia to the end of Pharaonic period. It remains one of the most iconic symbols of Pharaonic Egypt today.
False Beard	The false beard was platted, and intended to appear false, the strap holding it often appearing in sculptural depictions of the gods and Pharaohs. A beautiful example is on the coffin of Psusennes I.
Deshret (Red) Crown	The crown of Lower Egypt, the delta region.
Hedjet (White) Crown	The crown of Upper Egypt, the Nile valley.
Pshent (Double) Crown	The joined crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.
Khepresh Crown	Small, closer fitting blue crown, seen from the New Kingdom onwards, often called a “war crown” though there no evidence to suggest it was regarded as such by the Egyptians.
Was Sceptre	Not commonly seen being held by the Pharaoh, more often ascribed to “literal” gods, but found in royal burials. The was sceptre symbolises dominion.
Cobra	Symbolises Wadjet, patron goddess of Lower Egypt, and universally seen upon the brow of the Pharaoh, often along with a vultures head, symbolising Nekhbet.

Ma’at

Although an absolute monarch, the Pharaoh was obliged to rule in accordance with ma’at, an Egyptian concept generally translated as “just”, but actually a wider ranging concept of “rightness” or “the correct order of things”. As a filial divine son, and as High Priest of Every Temple, the Pharaoh had an obligation to the gods to uphold ma’at on Earth, for it was described as both “what sustains the gods”. Those who did not live up to the obligation were treated harshly by future generations, their name being either blackened, or completely eliminated from monuments and King lists.

Egyptian culture also strongly emphasised continuity and tradition, stressing constantly the need to keep things as they always had been. As such, with a single exception, the Pharaohs of Egypt did not, contrary to Hollywood myth, rule purely on whim, but rather held the country on a pre-existing course, respecting institutions and traditions that were already ancient. As an example, the titulary Late Period officials are often identical to those from the Old Kingdom, having first appeared some 2,500 years before.

Temple, State and Army

The Pharaoh was first and foremost the head of state. Contrary to popular belief, he was not the state itself. Upon the death of a Pharaoh, most administrative staff would remain and serve the successor, thus ensuring the machinery of government could continue to function efficiently. This process was smoothed in the Middle Kingdom with the introduction of co-regencies. Towards the end of one reign, the Pharaoh would make his successor co-regent alongside him, to help ensure a smooth succession. Day-to-day management of government offices was aided by a vizier, and on occasion two viziers, one for Upper, and another for Lower Egypt.

The Pharaoh was also head of all temple cults. Egypt did not, technically, have high priests. The Pharaoh was the High Priest of Every Temple. All offerings were made in his name. High priests were simply his stand-ins. From the New Kingdom onwards, a prominent woman of his family (often a daughter, sometimes a wife) would hold the position of God’s Wife of Amun. There was no conflict between church and state, for the temples were, in effect, government offices.

He was also head of the military forces, both army and navy, and was advised by a military council.

Great Pharaohs

There are any number of “great” Pharaohs, but those generally recognised are:

• Narmer / Menes(?): Most likely unified Egypt.
• Djoser: Oversaw the world’s first large stone building.
• Neferirkara Kakai: Noted for being particularly kind.
• Senusret III: Took the Egyptian border south of the 2nd Cataract for the first time in history, with fortifications of great sophistication. Worshipped in Nubia.
• Ahmose I: Expelled the Hyksos. Re-unified Egypt. Founded the New Kingdom.
• Thutmose III: “Napoleon of Egypt”. Military genius who crossed the Euphrates and Orontes rivers to the north and advanced to Gebel Barkal in the south. Also a great patron of the arts and literature.
• Amunhotep III: Largely credited with transforming the New Kingdom from a militaristic to cultural super-power. Worshipped in Nubia.
• Ramesses II: Great and prolific builder. The “Ozymandias” of Shelley’s poem.
• Necho II: A great and ambitious ruler who won the reputation of being a failure by virtue of reigning during the Late Period. Started a canal to link the Nile to the Red Sea.

Biblical References

Biblical writers exclusively use the term "Pharaoh" when referring to the King of Egypt. There are only three instances in the Bible in which a Pharaoh was referred to by name: Shishak, Necoh, and Hophra, possibly corrosponding to Shoshenq I (22nd Dyn, reigned circa 943-922BC), Necho II (26th Dyn, reigned circa 610-595BC) and Haibra, better known by the hellenized name "Apries", (26th Dyn, reigned 589-570BC).

King Lists

For a modern King List of the Pharaonic dynasties see King List

The Egyptians regarded a list of the reigns of all legitimate Pharaohs to be the single most important way of recording history, and numerous “King Lists” remain today, giving valuable information in aiding a reconstruction of Egyptian history. Early archaeologists relied heavily on these king lists, particularly that of Manetho, an Egyptian who wrote at the very beginning of the Ptolemaic era, which prior to the decipherment of hieroglyphs was the only King list known to historians.

With Champollion’s decipherment cam access to addition material, particularly the Abydos king lists, preserved in the Temple of Seti I, and later the Turin Canon.

The problem with the King Lists is that they preserve the history of Egypt in much the same way modern governments do, brush over or simply point black denying aspects of it which did not fit it with official ideology. In Egypt this led to striking of Pharaohs perceived s illegitimate being erased from record. As such it is only with the science of modern archaeology being able to more accurately interpret the archaeological record that we have been able to build a more complete and accurate King List.

Bibliography

Note: This bibliography covers all aspects of the above article except the Biblical References section.

• Dodson, A and Hilton, D (2004), The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, London
• Frankfort, H (1948), Kingship and the Gods, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
• Gardiner, A (1957), Egyptian Grammar (3rd edition), Griffith Institute, Oxford
• Montet, P (1964), Eternal Egypt: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt From Earliest Times to Conquest by Alexander the Great, Phoenix, London
• Shaw, I et al. (2000), Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Wilkinson, R (2000), The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, London
• Wilkinson, R (2003), The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, London
• Ziegler, C and Tiradritti, F (2002), The Pharaohs, Thames and Hudson, London

Controversial [33 bytes]

Controversial

Diana Rose [33 bytes]

Diana Rose

Reaganomics [34 bytes]

Supply-side economics is a concentration of economic forces on incentives, in contrast with demand-side economics that imposes mandates on producers with the assumption goods and services will be available for consumers and beneficiaries of government entitlements.

Supply-side economics recognizes the existence of infinite potential, while demand-side economics denies it as an illustration of liberal denial.

A technical definition

Technically, supply-side economics can be defined as recognition that demand is not independent of supply: demand for a good or service often increases if its affordable supply increases. For example, construction of a toll-free highway will result in its increasing use over time.

In macroeconomics, the implications of this insight are that cutting tax rates increases the supply of goods and services, and increases demand and consumption, with an overall result of increasing tax revenues. Conversely, high taxes, such as on income, carbon emissions, or mandatory payments for healthcare, slows job creation, and reduces the supply of goods and services that otherwise would be, thus reducing tax revenues. Simply put, increasing taxes often decreases government revenue.

History

John F. Kennedy's fiscal policy stance made it clear that he believed in pro-growth, supply-side tax measures.

These ideas were taken up as a popular political movement during the 1980 election campaign, with Ronald Reagan proposing a modified policy of supply-side economics (which liberals disparagingly caricatured as "trickle-down" economics)--a term they have used against conservatives since William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The decreased regulation begun in the late 1970s, together with lower marginal tax rates would provide enough savings and investment to pool new capital and drive economic growth. Manufacturers for example, would hire more people, produce more, and create more demand and economic activity. The idea gained wide popular support, and became known as "Reaganomics".

During the presidential campaign of 1980, Ronald Reagan argued that high marginal tax rates were hurting economic output, but contrary to what many people think, neither Reagan nor his economic advisers believed that cuts in marginal tax rates would increase tax revenue.

One key aspect of Reagan's program in 1982 was tax cuts for Research and Development (R&D) in high technology firms intended to make United States more competitive with Japanese electronics manufacturers which had dominated the industry since the late 1960s. Liberals were critical of the idea, claiming "tax cuts for business" only benefited "the rich"; however, the "trickle down effect" became a flood of prosperity in high tech industries starting in the 1980s and continuing on ever since.

Murray Rothbard wrote:

“

Specifically, Reagan called for a massive cut in government spending, an even more drastic cut in taxation (particularly the income tax), a balanced budget by 1984 (that wild-spender, Jimmy Carter you see, had raised the budget deficit to $74 billion a year, and this had to be eliminated), and a return to the gold standard, where money is supplied by the market rather than by government. In addition to a call for free markets domestically, Reagan affirmed his deep commitment to free­dom of international trade.

”

The idea that all tax cuts raise revenue is an oversimplification, sometimes used by politicians with a poor grasp of mathematics or the Laffer curve.

Some people have falsely claimed that Karl Marx was the earliest advocate of supply-side economics in an attempt to discredit the theory.

Criticism

Critics of supply-side economics generally support demand-side economics, usually considered to be part of the Keynesian school of thought. These critics believe that the capacity for supply is not enough, and that there needs to be demand for goods and services in order to drive the need for supply and create economic growth. They also believe that money in the hands of the middle and lower classes is more effective at creating this demand because their money has more "velocity" (i.e. it gets re-spent more often). Essentially, proponents of supply-side economics believe supply creates its own demand, whereas supporters of demand-side economics believe demand is required before supply can create economic growth. Critics of supply-side economics point towards the increasing income gap in the U.S. since Reagan's election as evidence of the failure of supply-side policies.

Most criticism comes from the Left, but some on the Right have been skeptical as well. George H.W. Bush during a campaign debate famously referred to it as "voodoo economics", due to the discarding of Keynesian orthodoxy. On the Left, it was seen as threat to the welfare state with the (feared) loss of federal revenues in tax cuts that had funded the failed War on Poverty programs for more than a decade. However, Reagan did not significantly cut back on the welfare state (that happened in 1996).

References

External links

• The Myths of Reaganomics, by Murray N. Rothbard
• What Reaganomics Is All About
• http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/k/keynes/john_maynard/k44g/
• "My Time with Supply-Side Economics", by Paul Craig Roberts
• "What Really Happened in 1981", by Alan Reynolds and Paul Craig Roberts

Other (Musical instruments) [34 bytes]

Other (Musical instruments)

Marie Curie [35 bytes]

Marie Curie

Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist who lived most of her adult life in France. She was a pioneer in the field of radiation and radioactivity. Also, she was the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different fields, physics (1903) and chemistry (1911). Her French husband, Pierre Curie, also studied radioactivity. In addition to that he also was a pioneer in the fields of crystallography, magnetism and piezoelectricity.

Marie Curie discovered two elements, previously unknown, both radioactive. One of them she named Polonium in honor of her native Poland, the other, Radium.

The Curie, a unit of radioactivity, is named in her honour, as is the chemical element Curium.

Marie Curie was an Agnostic.

External links

• short biography

References

Should the Dies committee be reconvened to combat terrorism? [35 bytes]

Should the Dies committee be reconvened to combat terrorism?

Cashew [35 bytes]

Cashew

Hebrews [36 bytes]

The Epistle to the Hebrews discusses the book in the New Testament, which explains the logic for Jesus.

The Hebrews were God's chosen people. They were the ancestors of the Israelites, who would eventually fulfill the Promise of entering the promised land that God had given to them in covenant with Abraham and later with Jacob. The term was usually used to denote a group based on ethnicity, whereas more modern usage of Jews blurs ethnicity and religion. The Hebrews were expected to follow God as children of the Promise. The term is usually used in the Bible before there was a nation of Israel. It is a common usage in the Exodus in the Old Testament to describe the descendants of Jacob who were put under bondage in Egypt. The Hebrews, Israelites, also called and known as Jews, at least since the time of Esther.

Ballarat Hebrew Congregation, Australia.

See also

• Epistle to the Hebrews
• Synagogue
• Judaism

References

Teotohuacans [36 bytes]

Teotohuacans

Knave [36 bytes]

Knave (pronounced neyv) is a medieval term for a journeyman or male servant. The term has come to carry the connotation of a disreputable fellow but also refers to a playing card Jack.

Monkey Wrench [37 bytes]

Monkey Wrench

Commune [38 bytes]

A Commune is an intentionally planned community of individuals who often share resources and ideology.

Back-actor [38 bytes]

Back-actor

Vaccum Cleaner [38 bytes]

A vacuum cleaner is a machine designed to clean by the use of an electric fan to create a partial vacuum, which sucks dirt from a carpeted floor. Most vacuum cleaners are mobile, but occasionally vacuuming systems are built into buildings.

Sextant [41 bytes]

A Sextant is an instrument used for navigating at sea by sighting on either the sun or a star and determining its elevation above the horizon. It is excellent for determining latitude, but accurate longitude measurements require good timepieces as well, capable of working on ships which pitch and roll on the waves.

West Germany [41 bytes]

West Germany is the colloquial name given to the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) prior to German reunification in 1990. It was formed from the British, French and American zones of occupied Germany in 1949, and the 'provisional' capital of the state was Bonn. West Berlin was not officially part of the Federal Republic until 1991; its status remained that of a city under allied military government. Heavy US American investments in the country lead it to the "German economic miracle".

Encyclopedia [42 bytes]

Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia, ca. 1960s

Encyclopedia (Greek: ἐνκύκλιos παιδεία, enkyklios paideia; "circle of instruction") refers to a reference resource giving information on many subjects or on the many aspects of one subject. As such, an encyclopedia is generally a summary, a storehouse of knowledge collected in an alphabetical or thematic way with an objective and universal claim, and not specialized, monothematic or subjective as a treaty or an essay. Encyclopaedia Britannica is among the best known and widely read print encyclopedias, though Wikipedia and Conservapedia are both well-known encyclopedias based on MediaWiki software and hosted on the internet.

History

Antiquity to Middle Ages

The origins of what was to become the modern encyclopedia began in ancient times. In Sumeria, during the fourth millennium BC, a thematic glossary was written as a first attempt to order or catalog the knowledge of the world, and 600 years later a similar attempt is registered in Ebla following a conventional order of signs. These first attempts are called lexical lists, and were based on a listing of professions, vessels, trees, animals, etc, and written in cuneiform.

In ancient Egypt, there are also thematic lists that can be considered as protoencyclopedias. The Ramessum Onomasticon, written around 1750 BC is a list of words grouped by categories. Another work of the same genre, but much more developed, is the Onomastic of Amenophis, made around 1100 BC. It has 610 elements organized in a thematic way and would contain more than 2000 different information with the ambition to create «a systematic catalog of the universe. This distant ancestor of the encyclopedic dictionary would have the task to propose a program of instruction for humanity founded on the organization of the world.

The Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BC) made a summary of the knowledge of his time in one of his dialogues, the Timaeus, which can be considered a "methodical encyclopedia," covering such subjects as astronomy, cosmology, medicine, and physics. His disciple Aristotle (384-322 BC) produced a large number of treatises on a wide variety of subjects with a truly encyclopedic spirit and without equivalents in the ancient world (poetics, rhetoric, logic, politics, physics, psychology, biology, ethics, etc.). However, his efforts were not disseminated until some 275 years after his death, towards the year 50 BC. Other early encyclopedic writers were not so fortunate; Democritus and Posidonius are among those whose works are largely lost or in fragments.

Among the Romans, the first to attempt to summarize ancient knowledge was Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), whose Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et divinarum libri XLI have only endured as fragments and extracts in other later authors and encyclopedists. For Varro, the path to knowledge was the etymology, as it was for the much later Visigoth, St. Isidore of Seville, probably the last to use Varro's work for his own encyclopedia, the Etymologies. For Varro the term verbum ("word") came from veritas ("truth"), which legitimized that procedure. A work of 41 books, 25 were devoted to human affairs and the rest to the divinity of the pagan gods. The original work disappeared over the years, due to various medieval recasts.

Latin copy of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia; written in Rome ca. 1460 by Jacopo della Pergola

Towards the beginning of the first century of our era, Aulo Cornelio Celsus wrote De Artibus (ca. 30 BC), an encyclopedia in 26 books which covered subjects of agriculture, war, rhetoric, philosophy, law, and medicine, with this last subject - called De Medicina - having survived to modern times. A few years later would come one of the best-known works of antiquity, the Naturalis Historia (Natural History) by Pliny the Elder. He compiled a work of 37 chapters that cover the history of art and architecture, medicine, geography, geology and all aspects of the world around him, releasing it in 77 AD. He stated in his prologue that he had compiled twenty thousand facts from two thousand titles of two hundred different authors, and added that many others came from his own experience.

In his Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights, II century, AD), Aulus Cornelius Gellius (125-180 AD) lectures on numerous subjects of literature, arts, philosophy, history, law, geometry, medicine, natural sciences, meteorology and geography, although with a more essayistic and scholarly spirit than systematic and encyclopedic. On the other hand, the Polyhistor, the work of the Roman writer Gaius Julius Solinus (d. 400 AD), presents the curiosities of the world by regions. Although the work has been lost, numerous elements of it, as in the case of Varro, were collected in medieval encyclopedias. At the beginning of the 4th century Nonio Marcello wrote De compendiosa doctrina, a compilation or epitome of treatises on language and various techniques, and arranged alphabetically. Marciano Capella, a lawyer who lived in Algeria, was the author of De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("Weddings of Philology and Mercury"), written between 410 and 420. This manual in the form of allegorical narration synthesizes in 9 books the knowledge of the time: philology, grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and harmony. It was very popular in Carolingian times, and served as a reference to organize studies in basic education (the Trivium) and higher (the Quadrivium). It was read even in the Renaissance and inspired Copernicus in particular.

Between 1403-1408, on the orders of the Chinese emperor Ghengzu, the Yongle dadian (永樂大典, "great canon of Yongle") was created, and until the advent of Wikipedia, it was the largest encyclopedia in the history of mankind. It included the contents of all books available in the imperial library, including canonical, historical, philosophical, and artistic works. Each section (juan) was a collection of excerpts, sometimes entire chapters or treatises on one general topic, indicated by the character-name of the section. The encyclopedia numbered 22,877 sections, divided into 11,095 volumes. The total volume of the code is about 510,000 pages and 300,000,000 characters. Currently, no more than 400 volumes of this work exist, which are scattered in several museums around the world.

Beginning of the modern era

Margarita Philosophica (Philosophical Pearl) by Gregor Reisch (1503) was a widely used general encyclopedia, the first such work directly printed from the new printing press, and as such was readily available for student use in universities. Like the later Annales Bojorum (Annals of Bavaria) of Johannes Aventinus (1517) and the Encyclopaedia Cursus Philosophici by Johann Heinrich Alsted (1630), the Margarita Philosophica followed a systematic order; like many textbooks of the time it followed the pattern of a dialogue between the student and his teacher. It was during this period that the word "encyclopedia" was coined, used to describe these and further works of these collected subjects.

The Grand Dictionaire Historique (1674) by Louis Moréri was the first large, national-language, alphabetical reference work for the topics of history, biography and geography. In his tradition stands the peculiar Dictionnaire historique et critique (1696/1697) by Pierre Bayle, which was originally intended to correct and supplement Moréris's work. For rather short articles, Bayle provided a very detailed and critical apparatus of annotations. Since Bayle primarily treated those objects that interested him personally, his work is to be regarded as an ego document, an intellectual autobiography which stood rather beside, and not in place of, a general encyclopedia.

By 1700 biographical and historiographic information, largely missing from earlier works, was added to a new generation of encyclopedias. As dictionaries they also arranged articles alphabetically, breaking with the earlier thematic arrangement. With Antoine Furetière's Dictionnaire universel des arts et sciences (1690), this new direction began in the history of the encyclopedia, and carried to a a further step, the bridging of the contrast of scientific-philosophical and biographical-historical subjects, such as in the Universal Lexicon (1732-1754) by Johann Heinrich Zedler, a major work published in 68 volumes which was the first encyclopedia containing biographies of living people.

Modern encyclopedias

Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia (1876)

Johann Heinrich Alsted's Encyclopedia was a work in Latin that enjoyed great authority throughout much of Europe during much of the 17th century, but was considered outdated and outmoded when that century ended. New discoveries were made in the sciences, and the thought was given as to how these discoveries should be presented, how they should be understood, and within the covers of reference books how they should be arranged to correlate with one another. Many works were published throughout Europe during the 18th century, but several stand out for the influence they had in not just solving the arrangement, but in making up the modern general encyclopedia.

Chambers Cyclopedia

Ephraim Chambers solved the arrangement problem with his two-volume Cyclopedia (1728) which, in addition to the alphabetical order, introduced another innovation: internal links from one article to another, prefaced by a scheme of knowledge divided into divisions and subdivisions. The first English-language general encyclopedia, three editions were printed during Chambers' lifetime, and after his death his work was continued: the seventh edition (1753) was accompanied by two supplemental volumes, while in 1778-85 and 1786 the most extensive edition appeared in five volumes.

Encyclopédie

Chambers' work was translated into French and inspired the authors of the most famous encyclopedia of the 18th century, which had such a significant impact on the cultural and political life of Europe on the eve of the French Revolution. The Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ("Encyclopedia, or Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts") was published from 1751 to 1772, and edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert. Though the intent was to translate Chambers' work, the project quickly expanded from an initial 8 volumes to 28, a work that became truly French. The historical significance of this particular encyclopedia is due to the fact that it contained a systematic review of the ideas of the French Enlightenment; indeed, many of the enlighteners themselves, from Jean Jacques Rousseau to Voltaire, had worked on it.

Diderot's views on what an encyclopedia should be were presented to him in an article of the same name. In his opinion, a perfect encyclopedia should be something more than the sum of its components. "An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge." Diderot believed that the encyclopedia should establish links between concepts. Realizing that the whole array of human knowledge could not be presented in one work, he still believed that it was possible to at least show the interdependence between them.

Though it introduced hardly any actual innovations, it was praised for its size, thematic width, systematic underpinning, and the many illustrations - some two thousand five hundred in all - while its competitors had at most a few hundred illustrations. Nevertheless, she was less successful and influential than often assumed; because of the sheer size of the work, it reached relatively few readers, compared for example with the widespread and repeatedly relaunched Cyclopaedia. Although French in origin, there is considerable evidence to suggest that its creation had been influenced by the British, in particular the philosophy of Chancellor Francis Bacon.

Above all, it applies with its critical and secular attitude as a jewel of the Enlightenment, the pan-European educational offensive. Attacks by the church and difficulties with censorship overshadowed their emergence as well as later disputes between the editors Diderot and d'Alembert. Diderot and many of his co-authors at various points in the Encyclopédie brought criticism against certain ideas in the ruling society. As such, the work was the product of many Encyclopedists' achievements, but it was ultimately completed only thanks to the intervention of Louis de Jaucourt, who even hired secretaries at his own expense. As such, there was also evidence to suggest the Encyclopédistes wrote it specifically as a means to subtly demean and ultimately destroy Christianity. In the last ten volumes, which he wrote mostly himself, there are fewer polemical sites than in the first seven, which could make them less interesting for today's readers.

Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition (1974-2012)

The Encyclopédie in turn inspired the Encyclopædia Britannica, which had modest beginnings in Edinburgh: two Scotsman, Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar conceived the idea of publishing their own version the first edition, distributed between 1768 and 1771, was composed of just three volumes hastily completed - A-B, C-L and M-Z - for a total of 2659 pages. In 1797, when the third edition was completed, it had been expanded to 18 volumes dealing with a wide range of subjects, with entries provided by a set of authorities in their field.

Encyclopædia Britannica went through eleven editions before its publishing headquarters was moved from London to Chicago; the 1911 work is regarded as among the finest encyclopedias ever printed. A 28-volume fifteenth edition was published in 1974 in which the format of the encyclopedia was divided into three major sections: the Micropædia: Ready Reference and Index, which presented the basic, general information normally found; the Macropædia: Knowledge in Depth, which presented many articles in great detail; and the Propædia: Outline of Knowledge, the guide to the encyclopedia as a whole with its thematic connections as well as an index to the contributers. By 2012 it had expanded to 32 volumes.

Brockhaus Enzyklopädie

Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon, first edition (1796-1808)

The Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon was published in Leipzig, Germany from 1796 to 1808 in 6 volumes. Parallel to other 18th-century encyclopedias, the scope was expanded beyond that of previous publications, in an effort to be all-encompassing. But the work was not intended for scientific use, but to disseminate the results of research and discoveries in a simple and popular form without excessive detail. This format, in contrast to that of Encyclopædia Britannica, was widely imitated by successive nineteenth-century encyclopedias in Great Britain, the United States, France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Of the encyclopedias that had a certain influence between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie is perhaps the most similar in form to modern encyclopedias, and would literally be the basis for the following works:

Chambers' Encyclopedia

Unrelated to the author of the original Cyclopedia, William and Robert Chambers of Edinburgh used an English translation of Brockhaus as the basis for the well-regarded Chambers' Encyclopedia, and was released between 1860 and 1868 in ten volumes, for a total of 8,283 pages. A revised edition was published in 1874, with 8,320 pages. The articles were generally excellent, especially in Jewish literature, folklore and applied science but, as in Brockhaus, the scope of the work did not allow for a prolonged discussion. A completely new edition was published in ten volumes from 1888 to 1892, edited by David Patrick. Further new editions came out in 1895, 1901 and 1906. A modern Chambers' was published in 15 volumes in 1950 by George Newnes.

Encyclopedia Americana

German-American lawyer and political scientist Francis Lieber would take the seventh edition of the Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon and use it for the 13-volume Encyclopedia Americana (1820), which would eventually become the second-largest printed universal lexicon in the English language after the Encyclopædia Britannica. As the name implies, it is primarily focused on North America, with coverage of American and Canadian history and geography particularly extensive.

The 175th-anniversary edition of 2004 contains 45,000 articles with 25 million words and was written with the participation of 6500 authors. It contains 9,000 bibliographies, 150,000 cross-references, over 1,000 tables, 1,200 maps and nearly 4,500 black and white and color photographs. Since 1923, The Americana Annual has been published as a yearbook to update the set.

Funk & Wagnalls

New York-based publisher Funk & Wagnalls was originally founded in 1875, publishing exclusively religious books until the publication of The Literary Digest in 1890, marks the move to specializing in dictionaries and encyclopedias. In 1894 they published its most memorable publication, The Standard Dictionary of the English Language. In 1912 Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia was launched, based on an edition of Chambers' Encyclopedia. In 1965, the company was acquired by Reader's Digest Association and again by Dun & Bradstreet. In subsequent years, the company sold its publishing rights to other companies.

The claim to fame that Funk & Wagnalls had became a part of popular culture, as it was named repeatedly in skits on television's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson during the later part of the 20th century. It was also sold by the volume in grocery stores, with shoppers adding to their personal sets every week.

Collier's Encyclopedia

Peter F. Collier was a magazine publisher at the end of the 19th century, having made a fortune with his Collier's Weekly magazine; his publications were known for the excellence of their articles, illustrations, and in many cases the investigative journalism exposing corruption and fraud in high places. Collier's publishing empire had previously printed and sold Chamber's Encyclopedia in the 1890s, and in 1902 Collier released his own encyclopedia, which over the years would expand its base by being sold door-to-door, with the affordability of paying for and receiving one to two volumes per month. Meant for high school and college students, it had 20 volumes by 1950; by the time it finished its run in 1997 it had 24 volumes with over 23,000 entries. The quality of the writing - it had an extensive list of well-known, credentialed authors in its bibliography, and many of its articles were signed - placed Collier's Encyclopedia alongside Encyclopedia Americana and Encyclopædia Britannica as one of the great English language general encyclopedias of the 20th century.

Young people's encyclopedias

The New Book of Knowledge and World Book, at the Lincoln Park Public Library, Lincoln Park, Michigan

It was realized early on that young people from elementary to high school age benefited from encyclopedias, and the fact that they could be written to their levels of understanding did not escape the notice of the publishers. The Book of Knowledge was published by the Grolier Society in 1910, a 24-volume set arranged by topic rather than alphabetically; it would be replaced by the 20-volume The New Book of Knowledge in 1966, rearranged back to alphabetically.

Other publishers would have their versions printed within a very short time. Compton's Encyclopedia, a 26-volume work first printed in 1922, had the innovation of a "fact index" in each volume, giving bullet information on subjects not treated elsewhere in the set. Grolier also published the Merit Student's Encyclopedia (1967) and the Academic American Encyclopedia (1980), with all three meant for junior and senior high school students. Britannica got into the act as well, publishing Britannica Junior Encyclopedia in 1934, a work in 15 volumes written for elementary school students.

By far the most famous of these sets, as well as the best-selling American encyclopedia of any kind, is World Book Encyclopedia, first published in 1918 with 15 volumes, with an expansion to 22 volumes today. Unlike many other encyclopedias, World Book is published in volumes that are not uniform from the point of view of length, since each volume covers a specific letter of the alphabet. The exceptions are C and S which, due to their length are divided into two volumes, while single volumes represent the letters J-K, N-O, Q-R, U-V, and W to Z. World Book has a total of 14,300 pages, including about 27,500 photographs or illustrations, with many in color; over 3,800 editors helped write the articles. In the first volume the complete list of the main authors and consultants is given, with a synthetic profile and the topics they dealt with. At the end of most of the entries the name of the author is indicated.

Specialized encyclopedias

Unlike the general encyclopedia, the specialized encyclopedia covers a specific topic or subject, and often going into great detail not normally covered by a general encyclopedia. Appearing in the second half of the 20th century, these works were published in single or multi-volumes, and were usually sold in bookstores, though several, such as the various series by Time-Life, were sold via subscription. The subjects themselves were were enormously-varied, covering nations, history, wildlife, religion, photography, science, and so on, of which a few examples are mentioned below:

• The Encyclopedia of Photography (1970)
• Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (1972), by Shimon Gibson
• The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile (2000) by G. N. Georgano and Nick Georgano
• Popular Mechanics Do-it-yourself Encyclopedia (1955)
• Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia (English translation, 1972-75) by Bernhard Grzimek

Online encyclopedias

The majority of printed encyclopedias ceased publication by the second decade of the 21st century, with the most notable being Encyclopædia Britannica in 2012 after a run of more than 200 years; its entire content is now available online via subscription, or on DVDs for home computers. Brockhaus Enzyklopädie also ceased publishing in 2008 after a similar, two-century run, with a digital run lasting six more years. Collier's Encyclopedia stopped publishing in 1997, the contents of which were used for a time by Microsoft in its version of a digital encyclopedia named Encarta. Encyclopedia Americana stopped in 2006, leaving the only other major American encyclopedia, World Book, still being printed as of 2019.

The reason for the demise was the availability of the internet as a source of information, and the creation of freely-accessible online encyclopedias. On March 9, 2000, the Nupedia project was launched. From the very beginning, Nupedia adhered to the principles of a free encyclopedia, using the Nupedia Open Content License first, and then moving to the GNU FDL in early 2001 at the request of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. After changing the Nupedia license to GFDL, a text appeared on their website about the decision to combine the GNUpedia (the original, Linux-system based name) and Nupedia projects and urging visitors to GNU.org to contribute to the free encyclopedia. Instead of "open content encyclopaedia", Nupedia received the slogan "free encyclopedia", which was later inherited by Wikipedia. But despite the status of a free encyclopedia, Nupedia was not a wiki site, and writing texts was allowed only to certified specialists after the approval of the preliminary application.

Despite the great resonance and interest in the project, only 2 articles were written in six months and Nupedia never became a successful project. In order to speed up the process of replenishing Nupedia with articles, Wikipedia was opened on January 15, 2001, and was powered by the Mediawiki program. In the early months of Wikipedia, success was amazing; Wikipedia attracted new participants, as well as Nupedia participants who switched to the new project. Soon, Wikipedia began to function completely independent of Nupedia. Supporters of GNUPedia and the Free Software Foundation liked Wikipedia, who were opposed to article checking and were very worried about bureaucracy. Nupedia was closed on September 26, 2003, its articles were moved to Wikipedia. By the time of the closure, 2.5 years after the start of work, Nupedia had only 24 ready-made articles and more than 74 unfinished articles.

The disadvantages generated by Wikipedia, however, is not accessibility for destructive influences (trolling, vandalism, etc), but internal inconsistency; few articles are linked to others in what would normally be a thematic flow that made Britannica and others decisive in their works. Lack of competent, credible authorship is also a major factor; unlike printed encyclopedias, the vast majority of articles in Wikipedia are written by amateurs with little to no expertise in the fields that they are writing about, with some of these writers being in the news for the scandals they have created.

References

• Kister's Best Encyclopedias

Steppe [43 bytes]

Grassland steppe of eastern Mongolia near the border with Russia and China. (Photo credit: D. Prosser, USGS)

A steppe is a vast, semi-arid, flat, treeless, short grass plain, similar to a prairie. Its most prominent location on earth is the Great Steppe, covering roughly 5,000 square miles, covering most of central Asia, from Mongolia into Ukraine.

External links

• Glossary

Manor [44 bytes]

A manor was a self-sufficient feudal estate.

See also

• Middle Ages
• Carolingian Renaissance
• Feudalism

3000 BC [45 bytes]

Interiot/Reports/Shortpages has more than one meaning. As such, this article is merely a disambiguation page, listing articles associated with Interiot/Reports/Shortpages.

If you were linked to this page from another article, feel free to edit that article to make it point at the correct entry.

• Khufu
• Minoan Civilization
• Ur

Caravanserais [45 bytes]

Caravanserais are inns built to accommodate caravans. They are usually constructed outside the walls of cities. On the first floor, they offer plenty of open space where a camel caravan may reside for the night. On the second floor, they offer smaller rooms in which the people may stay. Unlike Khans, these do not offer any food or other paid comforts. They are simply spaces to reside safely for the night.

References

Prior [45 bytes]

A monastic title used during the middle ages.

Legitimacy [45 bytes]

Legitimacy is the authority of a ruler, as in the case of a monarchy or democratically elected ruler.

Sea [45 bytes]

Gulf of Mexico's sea

A sea is a body of water but not as large as an ocean. Could be used colloquially as synonymous of ocean. Also large lakes could be referred to as inland seas.

Some of the most important seas in the world are: The Gulf of Mexico, The Caribbean Sea, The Gulf of California, The North Sea, The Baltic Sea, The Mediterranean Sea, The Adriatic Sea, The Red Sea, The Arabian Sea, The Persian Gulf, The Dead Sea, The Black Sea, The Sea of Japan and The Philippine Sea.

“

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore” Vincent van Gogh.

”

Seas by ocean

Atlantic Ocean

Adriatic Sea Aegean Sea Alboran Sea Argentine Sea Bay of Biscay Bay of Bothnia Bay of Campeche Bay of Fundy Baltic Sea Black Sea Bothnian Sea Caribbean Sea Celtic Sea Central Baltic Sea

Chesapeake Bay Davis Strait Denmark Strait English Channel Gulf of Bothnia Gulf of Guinea Gulf of Finland Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Sidra Gulf of St. Lawrence Gulf of Venezuela Ionian Sea Labrador Sea Ligurian Sea

Irish Sea Marmara Sea Mediterranean Sea Mirtoon Sea North Sea Norwegian Sea Sea of Azov Sea of Crete Sea of the Hebrides Sargasso Sea Thracian Sea Tyrrhenian Sea Wadden Sea

Arctic Ocean

Amundsen Gulf Baffin Bay Barents Sea Beaufort Sea Bering Sea Chukchi Sea

East Siberian Sea Greenland Sea Hudson Bay James Bay Kara Sea Kara Strait

Laptev Sea Lincoln Sea Prince Gustav Adolf Sea Pechora Sea White Sea

Indian Ocean

Andaman Sea Arabian Sea Bay of Bengal

Gulf of Aden Gulf of Oman Mozambique Channel

Persian Gulf Red Sea Timor Sea

Pacific Ocean

Arafura Sea Banda Sea Bering Sea Bismarck Sea Bohai Sea Bohol Sea Camotes Sea Celebes Sea Ceram Sea Chilean Sea Coral Sea

East China Sea Flores Sea Gulf of Alaska Gulf of California Gulf of Carpentaria Gulf of Thailand Halmahera Sea Java Sea Koro Sea Molucca Sea Philippine Sea

Savu Sea Sea of Japan Sea of Okhotsk Seto Inland Sea Sibuyan Sea Solomon Sea South China Sea Sulu Sea Tasman Sea Visayan Sea Yellow Sea

Southern Ocean

Amundsen Sea Bass Strait Bellingshausen Sea Davis Sea

Great Australian Bight Gulf Saint Vincent Mawson Sea Ross Sea

Scotia Sea Spencer Gulf Weddell Sea

Landlocked seas

Aral Sea Caspian Sea

Dead Sea Sea of Galilee

Great Salt Lake Salton Sea

References

External links

• After the Sea-Ship Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
• Glossary

Uncle [45 bytes]

The brother of one of a child's parents.

During the Middle Ages and early renaissance, corrupt Popes would often euphemistically claim to be the uncles of people who were in fact their illegitimate children. This is the origin of the term nepotism.

Objectivity [46 bytes]

Objectivity is the basing of knowledge on empirical, observable data without applying personal preconceptions or experience. No human being is completely objective, although many come closer than others. Science is often assumed to be objective, yet this claim has been challenged by a range of groups, such as philosophers psychologists, historians, and sociologists of science.

See also

• Self-distancing

References

See also

• Credibility

Belief [47 bytes]

A Venn diagram picturing the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief (That is represented by the yellow circle).

Belief is a conviction based on cultural or personal faith, morality, or values/facts. A person's beliefs help determine his worldview.

Belief is weaker than faith. While both are based in part on logic or evidence, faith goes beyond belief in realizing the unseen and achieving good based on it. "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder." James 2:19.

Beliefs, knowledge and epistemology

See also: Epistemology

Epistemology is the analysis of the nature of knowledge, how we know, what we can and cannot know, and how we can know that there are things we know we cannot know. In other words, it is the academic term associated with study of how we conclude that certain things are true.

Traditional View of Knowledge

See also: Knowledge

Knowledge is the sum of what is known.

Philosophical tradition going back as far as Plato characterises a proposition as known where it is, at a minimum:

1) Believed

2) That belief is "justified" and

3) it is true.

Most modern epistemology concerns itself with two problems, the adequacy of that definition and analysis of what it means for a belief to be "justified".

Scientific knowledge and falsifiability

See also: falsifiable

A concept is falsifiable if it is possible to show that it is false if it were false. A concept that could not possibly be shown to be false, even if it were false, is not falsifiable.

To be considered scientific, a hypothesis must be "falsifiable", i.e., capable of being proven false. If no one, not even the supporters of the hypothesis, can think of a way the hypothesis might be proven false, then most scientists would agree that it is not part of science (see pseudoscience). However, the history of science is full of examples whereby supporters of various theories refused to consider the prospect that someone might prove them wrong.

Beliefs shaping people's actions and mindset

See also: Mindset

• Beliefs Drive Behaviors

• The 5 most powerful self-beliefs that ignite human behavior by Bobby Hoffman, PhD

• Need Your Team To Perform? Start With Belief, Forbes, 2020

• How Beliefs are Formed and How to Change Them

• Knowledge, Belief, and Action, Chapter 5 of the 2020 book Seeing, Knowing, and Doing: A Perceptualist Account by Robert Audi, Oxford Academic website

• How your beliefs shape your actions

• Beliefs and Emotions Lead to Actions and Results, Coaching For Influence website

• How Beliefs Affect Mindset, Henman Performance Group website

Videos on the power of belief and on beliefs driving behavior:

• Videos on the power of belief and on beliefs driving behavior - Video playlist

Beliefs and the ABC model in psychology

See also: ABC Theory of Emotion

VeryWellHealth.com indicates in their article How the ABC Model Works in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy indicates: "The ABC (adversity, behavior, consequences) model is one of the main parts of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The ABC model is based on the idea that emotions and behaviors are not determined by external events but by our beliefs about them."

The Decision Labs article The ABC Model indicates:

“

The ABC model is an mnemonic that represents the three stages that determine our behavior: Activating events: a negative situation occurs Beliefs: the explanation we create for why the situation happened Consequences: our feelings and behaviors in response to adversity, caused by our beliefs The ABC model is a technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of psychotherapy that helps individuals reshape their negative thoughts and feelings in a positive way. CBT trains individuals to be more aware of how their thoughts and feelings affect their behavior, and the ABC model is used in this restructuring to help patients develop healthier responses.

”

Beliefs and intellectual humility

See also: Intellectual humility

Intellectual humility can be understood as "involving the owning of one’s cognitive limitations, a healthy recognition of one’s intellectual debts to others, and low concern for intellectual domination and certain kinds of social status. It is closely allied with traits such as open-mindedness, a sense of one’s fallibility, and being responsive to reasons." Intellectual humility also involves having a recognition that there are gaps in one’s knowledge and that some of one’s current beliefs might be incorrect.

See also

• Knowledge
• Epistemology
• Worldview

External links

• The Importance of Beliefs in Human Life: Shaping Identity, Community, Well-Being, and Worldview

References

Propagandist [47 bytes]

Officially approved for distribution in English propaganda poster by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Thank You Ukrainian Army” with the Nazi Wolfsengel patch, a hate symbol, emblazoned on the sleeve.

Propaganda (Latin propaganda feminine ablative gerundive of propago I am spreading) is any idea, fact, rumor, or lie, or a wider body of same, which one circulates, publishes, or otherwise spreads by deliberate conscious effort in order to advance or hinder any given cause. This includes activity by a government to instill fear of that government's enemies, either in time of war or as a prelude to war, especially if the information that the government is promulgating is false. Edward Bernays is often considered the father of modern propaganda.

Propagandists such as demagogues, dictators, false prophets, and fanatical ideologists allegedly use, but primarily abuse logic. They all try to convince audiences that their reasoning is logical and sound, while in reality they twist, slant, and distort its process in whatever ways they believe they can without detection. Goebbels' maxim shows some of these speakers believe that the bigger the misrepresentation they can get away with, the greater the triumph. Since propagandists have already made up their minds, they are not really attempting to use logic in an honest search for truth. Their intention is only to deceive more effectively.

History of the term

The Ukrainian Joan of Arc, according to Elle magazine. Vita Zaverukha, was arrested in connection with the murder of two police officers in May 2015. Globalist media sources insisted Ukrainian Nazis either did not exist, or the few that did had no power or influence outside Ukraine.

The first recorded use of the term, according to Merriam-Webster, was as a shortened name of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, literally, "The congregation for spreading the faith." This group, part of the Vatican staff, is in essence the missions board of the Roman Catholic Church. The founder of this board was Pope Gregory XV.

Thus, originally, the term propaganda was a neutral term. It meant simply the act of propagating a viewpoint, the process for doing the same, or a group specifically charged with such activity.

Today, propaganda is anything under the above headings employed to advance any religious or political cause, or to damage an opposing cause. But the word propaganda now has a decidedly negative connotation. Whatever is spread must not merely be in support of one cause or in opposition to another, but must also be false, misleading, and/or out of its proper context. Or, if what is spread is true, then it is spread in a manner unbecoming a truthful witness. As such, it includes logical fallacies, unsubstantiated rumors, and other sayings that the teller/spreader knows, or ought to know, are lies. It also includes modes of presentation that, through negligence, recklessness, knowledge, or intent, give offense, especially to the holders of contrary views.

Propaganda was widely used in the First World War on all sides to affect public opinion and support for the war, while demonizing opponents with half-truths and untruths. After the war it remained a subject of discussion in print media. Adolf Hitler wrote an entire chapter on propaganda in Mein Kampf, and installed a Ministry of Propaganda in the Nazi government when taking power. In America, Edward Bernays published a book entitled Propaganda in which he said: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic societies. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country...It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda. In the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine. Judged by this definition we can see that in its true sense, propaganda is a perfectly legitimate form of human activity any society. Whether it is it be social, religious or political which is professed of certain beliefs and sets out to make them known, either by the spoken or written words, is practicing propaganda.

"Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensive only when its authors consciously and deliberately disseminate what they know to be lies, when they aim at effects with which they know to be prejudicial to the common good....

"It was, of course, the outstanding success of propaganda during the war [WWI] that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appeal to the individual by means of every approach, visual, graphic, and auditory to support the national endeavor, but they also secured the cooperation of key men in every group. Persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial, patriotic, social, and local groups whose members took their opinion from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of mental cliches and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror, and the tyranny of the enemy.

"It was only natural after the war ended that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace....

"Small groups of persons can and do make the rest of us think what they please about any given subject. But they are usually proponents or opponents of every propaganda, both of whom are equally eager to convince the majority."

Positive and negative propaganda

During NATO's war in Ukraine, NATO attempted to compare the Russian Federation to Death Star.

Positive propaganda inspires people with beliefs in an intelligible form, simplifies and "chews" them. Positive propaganda is aimed at social stability, harmony, education of people on the basis of generally accepted values. It is carried out in the interests of ordinary people, who are the addressees of propaganda.

Negative propaganda can incite hatred between social strata, develop and maintain conflicts between them, turn people of different views against each other, etc. An important basis for negative propaganda is "the end justifies the means", that is, whatever is committed, this is normal, since there was a need. Negative propaganda subjugates the people it influences, makes them treat other people badly and confront them. People exposed to such propaganda accept beliefs and stereotypes that are beneficial to certain people. Negative propaganda creates a parallel reality in the eyes of people, which has its own system of values, beliefs and views. Such propaganda easily affects people without critical thinking and with high suggestibility. This allows a narrow group of people to manage a huge mass of people and act in the interests of this very group. For example, during the NATO war in Ukraine, the official NATO Twitter account posted a message comparing the Ukraine conflict to famous fantasy films such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Braveheart, and more. The tweet read:

"We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.

Uses of propaganda in society today

Full spectrum dominnce. US Government document from 2010 part of the Snowden leaks and sharing agreements with the UK. The Five Eyes program of the English speaking world (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) use social media for “propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” “pushing stories”, and "discrediting” the intelligence agencies' enemies with false information spread online.

See also: Snowden leaks

Former president Woodrow Wilson is known his use of deceitful political propaganda in the United States, techniques first used by organizations such as the Committee on Public Information, during the progressive-era in the early 1900s. Today, propaganda has become the favorite method of politics. Both politicians and the commentators that support them routinely engage in it. The most egregious example of modern propaganda can probably be found in the films of Michael Moore, which present a classic combination of factual fabrication, distorted interpretation, and emotional dishonesty. On television, Countdown with Keith Olbermann provides a nightly dose of mean-spirited, irrational invective. Journalists have also contributed, forming groups such as the JournoList. The vicious and frivolous tone of so much modern propaganda has contributed, especially in the United States, to a coarsening of civil discourse and, some say, a severe weakening of civility.

In addition to civility, the idea of truth suffers from the habitual use of propaganda. Current-events organs that willfully publish propagandistic content not only contribute to the problem, but also demean themselves. In one famous example (Rathergate), a television broadcast network circulated for weeks certain memoranda, the contents of which were damaging to the incumbent President of the United States (George W. Bush), though those who obtained those memoranda knew, or ought to have known, that they were forgeries.

Theater has been an instrument of propaganda since before such things as current-events organs existed. Significantly, however, whenever theater has lent itself to propaganda, it has tended to demean itself. Even William Shakespeare was not immune to this - certain of his Histories, especially Richard the Third acted as propaganda for the ruling Tudor dynasty whose founder, Henry VII, had defeated Richard III to become king.

Identifying propaganda

The specific sayings or modes of presentation that constitute propaganda are legion. The common element in them is an appeal to emotion rather than to logic. Truth or fact, logically presented, might stir the emotions—but a presentation manifestly intended to stir the emotions demeans the information being presented. Of course, if the information is false to begin with, then propagandistic methods might be the only methods that would serve.

More Nazi propaganda from NATO war in Ukraine.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Though all things foul would wear the look of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

Macbeth IV.iii.

Propaganda typically takes any of these forms, or a combination of them:

1. Name calling. This is the crudest and least savory form of argumentum ad hominem. It consists of labeling the other cause, or a generic or particular adherent of that cause, with a noun or adjective having a decidedly negative "buzz" or "charge." Name-calling is also a part of the genetic fallacy of endorsing, or casting doubt upon, a proposition merely by calling attention to its source, when the nature of the source does not bear on the truth value of the propositions that come from that source.
2. Half-truths, or lies of omission, in which facts which support the distributor are spread while deliberately neglecting facts which would pose difficulty.
3. Testimonials. This is a form of argumentum ab auctoritate. A "celebrity endorsement" is a prime example. So, too, is any speech or essay by one publicly celebrated as an athlete, actor in any form of theater, or other such person, on a subject in which the author has no legitimate expertise.
4. Loaded questions.
5. Distortions of fact.
6. Extreme pronouncements, which are a form of over-generalizations.
7. Intimidation. This may include arguing from the numbers or reminding an opponent of the power of the particular individual or group engaging in the intimidation—or of an individual or group for which one claims to speak.
8. Using abridged or out-of-context quotes to give a false impression, aka Quote mining.
9. Sayings that, however factual, fall outside the scope or even off the topic at hand. A lawyer would say that such facts are "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial"—because they do not serve to advance a logical argument, are not properly related to the case at hand, and do not matter.
10. Outright lies. Dr. Josef Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for Adolf Hitler, famously observed that if one tells a lie loudly enough and often enough, people will believe it rather than believe that anyone could lie so outrageously.
11. Personal attacks. This method of propaganda often involves spreading malicious rumors and misinformation about other people. The goal of such attacks is to undermine the character of the person in order to gain the upper hand. Name-calling and intimidation are often used in concurrence with this.

Sam Garrens uses 8 identifiers to analyze statements which can stand alone or be used in combination with each other. Garrens claims once these methods are mastered, propaganda is forever easy to spot:

1. Unrelated items
2. Opinion leader or expert
3. Missing context
4. Obfuscation and simulation
5. Gaslighting or assumed conclusions
6. Shaming language and insults, using words that end in 'ist', 'ite', or 'phobe' augmented by 'gush' (or emotion) and outrage
7. Lies and demonization
8. Propaganda payload, the moral of the story

Book: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

The Fauci film was not well received. Rotten Tomatoes refused to allow critical reviews.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The book advocates the position that the mass communication media of the United States "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", through propaganda and the censoring of dissenting viewpoints. The title refers to consent of the governed, and is derived from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by the American writer, reporter and political commentator Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922). The book was given the Orwell Award.

Subsequent to the books publication Chomsky does talk censorship in the corporate media (Firing or non-promotion of journalists taking opposing viewpoints, corporate advertisers having influence of news content, corporate publishers discriminating against various viewpoints, etc.).

The role of 'fact checkers' and information experts

Stavroula Pabst, a writer in Greece, published an article on the nefarious purpose of fact-checking and 'disinformation' debunking. The piece explains this by going back to the writings of the French philosopher Guy Debord and his musings about 'spectacles'.

"While anti-disinformation efforts proliferate, what’s missing from the conversation is a discussion about power. Of course, the powerful have reasons for wanting to combat what they consider to be “disinformation” — they want their version of the truth to become ours. Many commentators observe as such, noting that so-called disinformation researchers, fact-checkers, and experts are often partisan in nature, and themselves frequently disseminate things that are not true."

Reuters withdrew the initial attempt by the Zelensky regime to create another false narrative about alleged Russian massacres.

Glenn Greenwald commented, basically, anyone calling themselves a “misinformation expert” or “disinformation reporter” is a partisan fraud, trying to make their activism seem scientific.

"But a larger force is at work within the rise of fact-checking and other counter-disinformation efforts. That force is our society’s current arrangement of appearances, the totality of social relations mediated by images, or spectacle. Spectacle, as elucidated in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, is a concept that can help us to understand seemingly unconnected, yet deeply intertwined phenomena that have come to fruition as the economy has subjugated society to its needs (as opposed to the other way around), and thus recover our ability to experience life directly. "As its dominance over our everyday lives grows complete, the spectacle has become powerful enough to turn our understanding of what is true upside down. Because spectacle replaces real life with a mere mediated representation of life that cannot be experienced directly, it provides a framework where mass deceptions and lies can consistently and convincingly appear as true. Thus, spectacle is perhaps one of the most effective tools we have to explain how elite deceptions, including fabrications and lies about imperialist wars like those in Iraq and Syria, can consistently go unpunished and even unnoticed. As such, it follows that spectacle can help us understand how modern fact-checks and counter-disinformation initiatives can consistently do the opposite of what they claim, as many have observed."

Counter-propaganda

The best contrary testimony against propaganda is the truth. This typically means revealing the full, previously undisclosed context and exposing logical fallacies. Confusingly though, skillfully produced propaganda may itself be masked as counter-propaganda.

Beyond this, it includes discernment of news organs that allow themselves to be utilized for propaganda purposes, discernment of propagandistic theater projects and refusal to patronize the same, and discernment of the content of political commentary, and its judgment, not merely on matters of fact, but also on the presentation of that fact. As has been said above, presentation even of perfectly relevant fact in a manner intended to manipulate the emotions, demeans the facts thus presented and also demeans the presenter. Above all, therefore, those who decry propaganda ought not engage in it themselves, nor give even the appearance of the same.

Soft power

See also: Soft power

Soft power is a nation's capacity to cause others to do things through persuasive/non-coercive means. The American political scientist Joseph Nye introduced the concept of "soft power" in the late 1980s. Brand Finance, the world's leading brand valuation consultancy, annually list the countries with the strongest soft power.

Brand Finance's 2022 ranking of the countries with the most soft power

Brand Finance's 2022 ranking of the 10 countries with the most soft power:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. China
5. Japan
6. France
7. Canada
8. Switzerland
9. Russia
10. Italy

War propaganda

The Guardian report on the defeat of Nazis in Azovstal.

War propaganda is used as a means of influencing both sides of the military conflict. An example from the Russia-Ukraine war is the recruitment of foreign mercenaries by the government of Ukraine. Mercenaries do not enjoy the status and protection of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, can be executed on the spot as paid killers for profit under international law, and most governments have laws in place prohibiting their citizens from engaging in mercenary activity. Three UK citizens were captured by the Russians, and two faced criminal charges and the death penalty. The third, Aiden Aslin, was somewhat of social media star with a large number of subscribers on Twitter and Instagram following his tales of adventure. In captivity, Aslin was allowed to create a YouTube channel to interact with the global public, and dissuade people from responding to Ukrainian and Western media solicitations to join Ukraine's mercenary force.

Propaganda in times of war or other kinds of military operations. It can be divided into the following types:

Propaganda of captivity. One of the most popular and effective types of military propaganda in the framework of psychological warfare. It includes providing information about prisoners of war, their normal existence, lack of bullying and serious difficulties. Implementing the idea that surrender is a completely normal solution that will help you return home alive.

Propaganda of military successes. Significantly increases the morale of his army and demoralization of the enemy army. A kind of "placebo effect" – the introduction of certain thoughts and moods can really lead to the result that is stated.

Propaganda by instilling fear of defeat. Such propaganda can set up the army for the most decisive actions, since "there is nowhere to retreat." It can acquire a different character - instilling fear due to the consequences of the offensive. Such an approach can cause confusion in the army and society of the attacking side. Other ways of exposure.

Ukraine Human Rights Ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova was actually fired in an unprecedented move for manufacturing fake news reports about alleged Russian rapes and bringing disrepute on the Ukrainian regime.

NATO war in Ukraine

See also: Ukraine propaganda war

From the earliest days of the conflict, the Kyiv regime focused on winning a global information and propaganda war rather than a military conflict. Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia published a landmark paper on August 20, 2022 on the activities of bot accounts on Twitter related to the conflict. The Australian findings were staggering – of 5.2 million tweets on the social media network from February 23 to March 8, 2022 at the outbreak of the conflict, between 60 to 80% were shared by fake accounts.

Reverse psychology was employed for the first year of the conflict, reporting Ukraine's staggering losses, in excess of 100,000 killed, as Russian losses. This conditioned Western media consumers to believe support for the war was accomplishing its goals, lessening the shock impact of being lied to and the horrors of war when it became apparent that the numbers were real, only the belligerent parties to whom the atrocities and casualty rates were attributed had been reversed.

Virtually all mainstream media reporting was reversed: Ukrainian war crimes, atrocities, killing of civilians, casualty rates, and troops killed in action were reported, however universally attributed by the controlled media of the West as being Russian war crimes and casualty rates, and not Ukrainian. This avoided the need to invent stories out of whole cloth to gin up anti-Russian propaganda cause no one could deny these events happened or deaths occurred. All Western reporting was sanitized in Kyiv through the CIA, which shared office space in SBU headquarters. Nothing made it out of Kyiv for global MSM distribution without passing through regime and NATO information experts first.

Psychological warfare and the U.S. Army

See also: Psychological warfare

According to the U.S. Army:

“

Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Soldiers benefit the Army’s missions by using unconventional techniques. Their intelligence, interpersonal skills, cultural sensitivity, and foreign language proficiency help sway opinions and actions of foreign governments, groups, and individuals. Psychological warfare requires adaptability, resilience, and problem solving to be successful. To become a PSYOP Soldier, you’ll be thoroughly tested and trained on your critical thinking skills, and your mental and physical toughness, in order to prepare you for work in the field.

”

U.S. Army field manual: Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

• U.S. Army field manual: Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

Lines of persuasion - 2003 U.S. Army Field Manual: Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

• 2003 U.S. Army Field Manual: Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures - Lines of persuasion

See also

• Psychological warfare
• Media intelligence complex
• Echo chamber (media)
• Michael Moore
• Keith Olbermann
• Bill Maher
• List of Communist publications
• Logical fallacy
• Cult of personality
• List of military strategies and concepts
• Operation Infektion
• Copium
• DARVO
• Persuasion
• Putin propaganda

References

External links

• Propaganda in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
• Propaganda Tactics at "The Baloney Detector" at Creation-Evolution Headlines
• A Westerner Living Under Putin's Regime.

Politics Discussions [48 bytes]

Politics Discussions

Central nervous system [48 bytes]

A diagram showing the CNS:
1. Frontal lobe
2. Parietal lobe
3. Temporal lobe
4. Occipital lobe
5. Cerebellum
6. Spinal cord

The central nervous system (CNS) in its most simple divisions consists of all nervous tissue in the spinal cord and the brain. It is the largest division of the nervous system and has primary control over all organism behavior. Much of our understanding of the central nervous system stems from the computational theory of mind. In modern cognitive psychology and neuroscience the CNS is viewed as an information processing system similar to a modern computer. It is theorized that all thought, conscious and unconsciousness, as well as all behavior is controlled by the same underlying hardware of neurons. The CNS is also viewed as being inherently modular with specific functions being localized to specific areas.

Structure

The central nervous system is divided into seven major divisions. The first is the spinal cord which integrates with the brain stem and runs down the center of the vertebrate column. The brain itself is composed of six regions the medulla, pons, cerebellum, midbrain, diencephalon, and the cerebral hemispheres (sometimes referred to as telencephalon). Each of these regions can be further subdivided into many anatomically and functionally distinct areas.

The central nervous system is covered by three tissue layers called the meninges. The three meninges tissues are the dura mater, arachnoid mater, and pia mater. The dura mater is the thickest and toughest tissue and the outermost layer. It is primarily thought to serve as a protection layer for the underlying nervous tissue. The arachnoid mater is connected loosely to the dura mater. There is a space between the dura mater and the arachnoid mater called the subdural space. The pia mater is a very thin and delicate layer of tissue that adheres to the surface of the nervous tissue. The space between the archnoid mater and the pia mater is called the subarachnoid space. Arachnoid mater filaments pass through this space giving a web like appearance to the area (hence the term arachnoid).

Beyond protection the meninges tissue is also important for the circulatory health of the central nervous system. The veins and arteries that serve the CNS are located in the subarachnoid space. There are also large, low-pressure blood vessels that serve as the return path for cerebral venous blood located in the dura mater.

The CNS contains several cavities called the ventrical system. Tissue surrounding the ventrical system is the primary producer of cerebrospinal fluid which surrounds the CNS providing a medium for communication between neurons and as a cushion in case of trauma.

Neurons and axons are distributed non-uniformly through the CNS. The cell body and dendrites of the neurons cluster in cortical regions which are essentially flattened sheets of cells called laminae. These areas are located primarily on the cerebral hemispheres or in areas beneath the surface of all the sub-divisions of the CNS called nuclei. Axons are then distributed through out the system in regions called tracts. In live tissue the regions populated by cell bodies and dendrites appear gray while the tract's of axons appear white due to myelin sheaths. These areas are called gray matter and white matter respectively.

Spinal cord

The spinal cord is the primary tract for sensory information coming in from the periphery to the brain and voluntary muscle control signals moving from the brain to the periphery. Information traveling to the brain moves through a series of axons called the afferent nerves and information traveling to the periphery move through axons called the efferent nerves. The spinal cord can also help processes and integrate sensory information before passing it on. In a few cases it can receive input and coordinate behavioral responses without ever recruiting the brain, these behaviors are commonly called reflexes.

The spinal cord is segmental with the overall organization being modular, all the segments are the same basic structure repeated in tandem. Each segment has a pair of nerves, the dorsal root and the ventral root. The dorsal root contains only the sensory, afferent axons. The ventral root contains the motor, or efferent axons.

The brain stem and cerebellum

The medulla, pons and midbrain comprise what is commonly called the brain stem. The primary functions assigned to the brain stem include receiving sensory information from cranial structures and controlling the muscles of the head. The brain stem also is the major conduit for information coming into and out of the brain. Finally, the brain stem is the primary integrator and controller of many arousal and basic functions. The main function of the cerebellum appears to be to regulate eye and limb movements. Also it maintains posture and balance.

The diencephalon

The diencephalon is divided into the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus serves to integrate sensory information and pass it on to the cerebral cortex. The hypothalamus receives and integrates information from the autonomic system and controls the endocrine system as well.

The cerebral hemisphere

The cerebral hemisphere is a highly developed and complex structure. Its divided into four major sections: cerebral cortex, hippocampal formation, amygdala, and the basal ganglia. Most behavior that is viewed as uniquely human is controlled by these four structures.

The hippocampal formation is primarily used in memory and learning, the amygdala controls emotion and the organisms response to stress. Together with some parts of the brain stem these structures make up the limbic system which plays a very large role in mood and psychological dysfunctions. The basal ganglia is important in movement and muscle control, it is the area of the brain that is damaged with Parkinson's Disease. It is also important in cognition and emotion and seems to be a key area involved in addiction.

The cerebral cortex is located on the surface of the brain and has a highly complex three dimensional structure of convoluted nervous tissue. It is essentially a long sheet that has been folded up again and again. These folds are thought to be an adaptation to squeezing in large amounts of nervous tissue in the limited space of the cranial skull. These folds create a wave pattern with the elevated portion of the tissue being called gyri and the separations between called sulci. Some sulci are particularly deep and called fissures. The two hemispheres of the brain are separated by a large fissure called the sagittal fissure. The hemispheres are connected by a structure called the corpus callosum.

The cerebral cortex is divided into four lobes, the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the parietal lobe, and the occipital lobe. The names for these lobes correspond to the cranial bones that overlie them. The frontal lobe is primarily involved in planning, speech, cognition and emotions. The parietal lobe is involved in perceptions of touch, pain and limb position. The occipital lobe has almost the singular function of decoding visual information and is the site of the primary visual cortex. The temporal lobe controls memory, emotion and various sensory functions.

Development

Vertebrate embryos form three primary layers of tissue. The ectoderm (outermost layer), mesoderm (middle layer) and endoderm (inner most layer). The nervous tissue is formed from a region of the ectoderm called the neural plate. The formation of the nervous system is triggered by signaling molecules that come from the mesoderm. This process is called neural induction.

The neural plate runs along the midline of the embryo. Cell division is disproportionately prolific along the midline which forms a grove called the neural grove. This grove deepens and eventually closes forming a hollow tube called the neural tube. Early in development portions at the top of the neural tube swell up forming three hollow vesicles referred to as the prosencephalon, the mesencephalon and the rhombencephalon. Below these swellings the neural tube does not change much and will become the spinal cord.

The prosencephalon swelling later develops two secondary vesicles which form the cerebral hemisphere and the diencephalon. The mesencephalon does not divide further and forms the midbrain. The rhombencephalon forms two more swellings the metencephalon which forms the pons and cerebellum and the myelencephalon which forms the medulla.

These five vesicles and the spinal cord are present by the fifth week of development in humans and make up all seven subdivisions of the central nervous system.

References

• Pylyshyn, Z; Demopoulos, W (2007). Meaning and Cognitive Structure: Issues in the Computational Theory of Mind (Theoretical Issues in Cognitive Science).

• Kandel, ER; Schwartz JH, Jessell TM (2000). Principles of Neural Science, 4th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-8385-7701-6.

• Martin, JH (2003). Neuroanatomy text and atlas 3rd ed., New York: McGraw-Hill.

• Sanes, Reh, Harris (2005). Development of the Nervous System, 2nd edition. Academic Press; ISBN 0-12-618621-9

• Hendelman, WJ. (2000). Atlas of functional neuroanatomy. Florida:CRC Press.

Has [49 bytes]

Has

Science Discussion [49 bytes]

Science Discussion

Dayton [49 bytes]

Dayton is a city in southwest Ohio. It is home to Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the Air Force Museum. In 2014, the population was 141,003.

See also

• Cincinnati
• Dayton nightclub shooting

References

External links

• [6] The Official Website of Dayton, Ohio

Homicide [49 bytes]

Homicide is the killing of one human being by another human being.

Although the term homicide is sometimes used synonymously with murder, homicide is broader in scope than murder. Murder is a form of criminal homicide; other forms of homicide might not constitute criminal acts. These homicides are regarded as justified or excusable. For example, individuals may, in a necessary act of Self-Defense, kill a person who threatens them with death or serious injury, or they may be commanded or authorized by law to kill a person who is a member of an enemy force or who has committed a serious crime. Typically, the circumstances surrounding a killing determine whether it is criminal. The intent of the killer usually determines whether a criminal homicide is classified as murder or Manslaughter and at what degree.

Domestic violence homicide accounts for about 15% of all homicides, with about 14% being stranger-on-stranger. About one-third of the victims were acquaintances of the assailant, with the remainder of cases the relationship between victim and offender undetermined.

Men are far more likely to kill other men than they are to kill women, though women are over twice as likely to kill men as they are to kill other women. Because men do the lion’s share (89.6%) of the murdering, this works out to 32.6% of homicides involving an offender and victim of opposite sex and 67.4% involving people of the same sex.

Murder, like most violent crime in general, is intraracial. Interracial murder represents 15.7% of all homicide. Some 84.3% of all murderers and murder victims are of the same race, broadly defined. The FBI breaks offenders and victims down into three racial categories—White, Black, and Other. Most Hispanics are consequently included in the White figures while Asians, American Indians, and people of mixed race are amalgamated into the Other category.

While whites (including many Hispanics) constitute 76% of the United States population, they perpetrate just 31% of the interracial homicide that takes place within its borders.

See also

References

Blizzard [50 bytes]

A blizzard is a snowstorm of great intensity, similar to a whiteout.

Pajamas [50 bytes]

Pajamas (also spelt pyjamas) are loose clothing worn for sleeping comfortably.

Pajamas, or PJs for short, are the clothes you wear to bed. They are often flannel. In Christian media pajamas are often used in place of lingerie and other obscene clothing shown by the secular media.