Koreas must hold talks before border reopens, Seoul says

South Korea responded positively, but cautiously, to a joint agreement announced Monday between North Korea and the South’s Hyundai Group to resume cross-border tourism, ease border controls and facilitate cross-border family reunions. “The government views Hyundai Group’s joint statement with North Korea in a positive way, but it is at the nongovernmental level,” Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said

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Report: Kim Jong Il meets Hyundai official

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il met with Hyundai’s chairwoman, who had come from South Korea seeking the release of an employee detained since March, South Korean media reported. Yonhap, South Korea’s official news agency, said Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun traveled to North Korea on August 10 for what was planned as a three-day mission. Yu Seong-jin — the employee detained since March — was freed and returned home Thursday, Yonhap added.

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Bill Clinton’s Visit to North Korea: A Long Time Coming

In the four-and-a-half months that two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, have been held captive in North Korea, there has been one constant amidst the rumors swirling around the case: the North Koreans wanted a high-powered emissary to come from the U.S. to try to win the release of the prisoners — and, no doubt, listen to whatever else it was that Pyongyang had to say about the current, dismal state of relations between the two countries. For awhile, speculation centered on former vice president Al Gore, who co founded Current TV, the network the two journalists work for, in 2004

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Source: Bill Clinton heads to N. Korea

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is headed to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists imprisoned there since March, a source with detailed knowledge of the former president’s movements said Monday. The women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, are reporters for California-based Current TV, a media venture of former U.S.

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N. Korea: Clinton ‘funny lady, by no means intelligent’

North Korea launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday after she likened the leadership in Pyongyang to "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention." At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a “spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in,” according to the state-run KCNA news agency. The spokesman called Clinton “by no means intelligent” and a “funny lady.” “Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping,” the statement said

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Asian Film Fireworks for the Fourth

For eight years now, the New York Asian Film Festival has earned “Wow”s and “Huh?”s from Manhattan audiences with its savory mix of action and art-house works from the continent that produces more movies than any other. In its scope and vigor, this is the New York film festival, and it’s run not by a heavily subsidized arts institution but by a few knowledgeable guys from Brooklyn who want to share their enthusiasms with the fanboys of the tristate area.

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