| | Words in the News |
INTRO | | A summit meeting was proposed between North and South Korea - the first since the Korean peninsula was divided in 1945. Charles Scanlon reported. |
IN FULL | |  | Listen to the report in full |
 |  | 13th April 2000
Korean summit meeting |
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NEWS 1 | | | Listen to the first part of the report |
| | | Ever since the death of its founding leader, Kim Il-Sung, six years ago, North Korea has kept the world guessing. Was it heading for confrontation and collapse, or would the new leadership try to engineer a cautious opening to the outside world? The agreement to a summit meeting with South Korea is the clearest sign yet that it has opted for reform. The country's supreme ruler, Kim's son, Kim Jong-Il, has used a combination of threats and compromise to improve ties with the United States. But the real obstacle has always been relations with the old enemy in South Korea. |
WORDS | | founding leader: the person who starts or helps to start a movement or institution and who then goes on to lead or command
cautious: if someone is cautious they are attentive to potential problems or dangers
summit meeting: a meeting between heads of government opted: if someone opts, they make a choice between more than one possibility
ties: ties are the connections you have with people or a place
obstacle: an obstacle is something which makes it difficult for you to go forward |
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| NEWS 2 | | | Listen to the second part of the report |
| | | The change of government in Seoul in 1997 and the South's adoption of a policy of reconciliation appears finally to be bearing fruit. The United States, Japan and China have welcomed developments, but even good news in north-east Asia carries with it apprehensions for the future. Japanese leaders have long worried that a more united Korea would be aggressively nationalistic and could eventually turn its hostility outwards across the sea of Japan. |
| WORDS | | reconciliation: if you reconcile two opposing beliefs, you find a way in which both of them can be held by the same person at the same time
bearing fruit: if an action bears fruit, it produces good and useful results; a formal expression apprehensions: a feeling of fear that something terrible may happen nationalistic: someone who is nationalistic is very proud of their country and believes that it is better than other countries |
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| | | Read about the background in BBC News Online |
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