WASHINGTON - Hae Nam Ji seemed lost in thought. Perhaps it was the long flight from South Korea the day before. Perhaps it was this city's unfamiliar surroundings. Or possibly it was the deeply etched memories of a past too awful to forget.
As she described it, her first 40 years, by the standards of her native North Korea, were relatively normal. A college graduate, she was engaged in exhorting workers in several factories to toe the party line. "What the party decides, we follow!" she would tell them.
Then came The Mistake. Accompanied by four friends one evening in December 1992, she taught them a song titled "Don't Cry Hongo," a 1970s-era tune, a forbidden import from archenemy South Korea.
Retaliation came slowly but with a vengeance. Four months later she was detained in her native Hamkyungnam-do and taken to the Security Protection agency.
TOKYO - Japan barred a North Korean cargo ship from leaving port Tuesday because of safety violations, amid efforts by Tokyo and Washington to crack down on illicit commerce with the communist country and rein in its nuclear programs.
The beefed-up security comes days after a North Korean ferry canceled plans to dock in northern Japan in the face of Tokyo's pledge to scrutinize that ship for customs, immigration, health and safety problems.
At a summit two weeks ago, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and President Bush promised to combat suspected North Korean smuggling of drugs, illicit funds and weapons. Critics say such commerce underpins Pyongyang's ambition to build an arsenal of atomic bombs.
U.S. officials have said North Korea admitted it had a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement with Washington. North Korea sharpened its tone in the standoff with the United States on Monday, publicly threatening for the first time to develop a nuclear deterrent unless Washington abandons its "hostile" stance toward the communist nation.