US professor leads effort to save N. Koreans from starvation
Korea Times
At first sight, she seemed like a typical Korean mother who is kind and gentle. As the interview continued, however, she felt like a giant as she is in charge of feeding tens of thousands of North Koreans in the poor communist country.
Kim Pil-ju is the founder of the Agglobe Services International (ASI) and teaches as an adjunct full professor at University of Minnesota. Set up in 2001, the ASI is a non-profit outfit aimed at offering humanitarian aid to impoverished nations.
Under her stewardship, the ASI runs five large farms. The combined size of the farms reaches more than 3,000 hectares in North Korea, accommodating up to 17,000 citizens including some 7,000 farmers.
Restaurant Review: Prime & Beyond
New York Times
Is New York ready for a serious steakhouse without hash browns or shrimp cocktail? Kyu and Kevin Lee, Korean-American brothers who opened Prime & Beyond in the East Village this summer, believe so. Like the original Prime & Beyond in Fort Lee, N.J., the Manhattan restaurant serves wonderful beef, all of it prime, at below-market prices — alongside a few excellent Korean and Japanese side dishes.
The Lees are not interested in a copycat American steakhouse, or even a Korean one. In 2003, with no particular food experience (but a belief that there was money to be made in meat), Kyu Lee opened a butcher shop in Fort Lee. They didn’t realize that the competition for top-quality meat would be stiff. “They weren’t used to seeing Asians,” Kevin said of the wholesalers at Hunts Point in the Bronx.
The Lees persisted, built a clientele and opened a restaurant next door to the shop in 2007. Now, the brothers are allowed to choose their carcasses at Master Purveyors, alongside the buyers for Peter Luger and Keens.
A mountainous challenge: South Korean host of 2018 Winter Olympics has a long way to go
Chicago Tribune
Indeed, South Korea’s first Olympic party since the Seoul summer games of 1988 is still very much a work in progress. Many of the venues, such as the bobsled course, have yet to be carved out of the surrounding hillsides. The site of the future media village mostly remains a vacant weed-strewn field.
Still, one has to wonder if the Koreans can do it: Can they turn a newly built resort, set amid a middling winter wonderland terrain that wouldn’t look out of place in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, into a legitimate Olympic venue? At this point it seems nothing short of an Olympian task.
Hype builds around North Korea’s look-alike hotel
Yonhap
The butt of countless jokes, the North Korean capital Pyongyang’s Ryukyong Hotel was the monolithic structure dominating the city’s skyline that seemed to be a veritable “white elephant.”
Work started on the 105-story, pyramid-shaped building in 1987 with hopes of being opened just two years later. But four years on, and still very much a work in progress, construction ground to a halt under the pressure of a groaning economy at a time when North Korea was about to enter the worst ravages of the famine it faced during the 1990s.
Now, with work restarted after a 15-year hiatus thanks to a US$400 million investment by the Egyptian firm Orascom, London’s unfinished — and perhaps almost equally incongruous — building the Shard is drawing decidedly unfavorable comparisons to the Ryukyong.
Korean talent agency cuts IPO size after key star’s drug scandal
Reuters
South Korean talent agency YG Entertainment, which manages the popular boy band Big Bang, has cut the size of its planned initial public offering, citing a drug scandal involving a key star as a risk factor.
YG said a recent incident involving marijuana consumption by prominent Big Bang member Kwon Ji-yong, 23, or “G-Dragon,” could curtail the band’s activities and hurt the company’s operations.
North Korea safe enough to resume search for Americans killed during Korean War
The Telegraph (U.K.)
North Korea is safe enough to resume searches for the remains of thousands of Americans killed in the 1950-53 Korean War, according to the Pentagon.
Kim Jong-il’s Grandson Briefly Breaks Silence
Chosun Ilbo
Kim Han-sol, the grandson of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, broke his silence on Wednesday under relentless media pressure and spoke to the Chosun Ilbo at his school in Bosnia.
Apparently exasperated, Kim agreed to answer a few questions but declined to talk about North Korea or answer questions in Korean. Apart from revealing that he misses his friends in Hong Kong, the 16-year old was clearly uncomfortable talking to the press and was soon whisked away by staff at the school.
Teaching in the world’s most isolated classroom
Washington Post
The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a privately funded school in communist North Korea, is hiring.
The Korean-American leaders of the school are looking for promising scientists or English teachers willing to overlook official travel advisories and go to work in the world’s most isolated state.
Salary? None. Benefits? World peace.
The school relies on donations from Christian evangelists in South Korea and the United States to stay afloat. Faculty have to find sponsors or pay their own way if they want to support the school’s mission of developing the North Korean economy to promote peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.
Here’s an account of what it’s like to work beyond one of the final frontiers of the Cold War from Karen Best, an English as a second language instructor at the University of Wisconsin who spent her summer teaching technical English skills to some of the country’s elite college students.
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South Korean woman awarded $4 for brother’s war death
Los Angeles Times
The elderly South Korean woman sees her older brother as a national hero, a young man killed in the line of duty over a half-century ago during the bloody Korean War.
For years, Kim Myung-bok has pursued the government for what she calls proper compensation for the sacrifice of Yong-gil, cut down in battle as an 18-year-old youth, barely out of high school.
Many South Koreans have expressed outrage over the government’s decision in the case: Officials offered Kim 5,000 won — or about $4.36 — as a gesture to the perished soldier, or as one newspaper editorial here wrote this week, “the value of a hamburger.”
Kim called the ruling an insult. “I fainted many times in a fit of uncontrollable anger when the notice was delivered,” Kim, 63, told a South Korean newspaper. “What is the government doing for the young soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice?”
Korean officials now admit that the payment was not adjusted for inflation. The Ministry of Veterans and Patriots Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense each have suggested that it was the other agency’s responsibility to make sure such payments were awarded in real-time dollars.
Manslaughter charge dropped
Winnipeg Free Press
Justice officials have dropped a manslaughter case against a Winnipeg shopkeeper who allegedly killed a customer he caught stealing a can of luncheon meat.
Kwang Soo Kim, 64, appeared in court Tuesday expecting to begin a preliminary hearing for the September 2009 case that made national headlines. Instead, he walked out a free man following the Crown’s surprise decision to pull the plug.
South Korean pilot grounded as possible Kim Jong-Il sympathizer
Los Angeles Times
Government officials have indefinitely grounded a commercial airline pilot while investigators determine whether the veteran captain is a North Korean sympathizer who might one day flee with a jumbo jet for the not-so friendly skies of Kim Jong-Il’s regime.
Call it a case of either good police work or just plain cross-border paranoia, but officials this week raided the home of a 45-year-old Korean Air pilot, seizing his computer hard drive and several documents they say laud the North Korean strongman.
Possessing or trafficking in North Korean paraphernalia or engaging in pro-North Korea activities is a violation of South Korea’s national security law.
South Korea: Japan to Return Looted Korean Royal Documents
AP via New York Times
Japan’s prime minister will return looted Korean royal documents during a summit meeting with his South Korean counterpart this week, officials said Tuesday. The move is apparently an effort to bolster relations between the Asian neighbors. Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and many older Koreans still harbor deep resentment over its rule.
Blogger stuck at Taiwan airport survives on soy sauce and wasabi
CNNGo
The Japanese traveler who has been stuck in a Taiwanese airport for more than a month — mimicking the hit movie “The Terminal,” which starred Tom Hanks — is finally going home.
Former reporter and restaurant worker Masaaki Tanaka became stranded at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on September 7 after running out of money. Things got so desperate for the 42-year-old that at one point he was forced to survive on water and packets of soy sauce and wasabi.
Now, thanks to generous donations, Tanaka is due to return home to Japan next week.
Tanaka, who identifies himself online as ZhongZheng, has been blogging about his life in the airport.
The woman who aged from 23 to 73 in ‘a few days’
Daily Mail (U.K.)
These pictures may look like an attractive woman in her 20s and her grandmother. But they are said to be the same person – apparently taken just days apart.
The young Vietnamese woman at the centre of the improbable medical case, Nguyen Thi Phuong, claims the transformation may have come about because of an extreme allergy to seafood.
Nguyen, 26, says she developed this puffy face and sagging skin in 2008 but was too poor to seek treatment. Earlier this month, doctors said they would examine her free of charge. Nguyen’s husband, carpenter Thanh Tuyen, insists the story is true and his love has not faded for his once-beautiful wife.
“Can’t Concentrate” by Paperdoll
channel APA
Rock band Paperdoll dropped their latest music video “Can’t Concentrate”. Fronted by vocalist Teresa Lee, the group delivers a catchy song. Lots of hula hoop action in this video along with a major guitar riff toward the end of the song. This group knows how to rock.
