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South East Asia
Annual Paung-Daw-Oo Pagoda Festival Celebrated In Inlay Lake, Southern Myanmar
Ethnic Innthar people row a long boat by legs as they celebrate the annual Paung-Daw-Oo pagoda festival in Inlay Lake, Southern Shan State, Myanmar, on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012. Buddhist devotees transport Buddha statues on a barge, back, as they celebrate the annual Paung-Daw-Oo pagoda festival in Inlay Lake, Southern…
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East Asia
Tension Heightens In Okinawa After Rape Of Japanese Woman By Two U.S. Soldiers
In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012 photo, Okinawa citizens stage a demonstration denouncing a rape of a Japanese woman by two U.S. sailors and the U.S. military’s decision to deploy the Marines’ MV-22 Osprey hybrid aircrafts to a base in front of U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Foster in Kitanakagusuku in…
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East Asia
Kungfu Skills Demostrated In Opening Of International Shaolin Wushu Festival
Kungfu players perform during a welcoming ceremony of the 9th Zhengzhou International Shaolin Wushu Festival in Dengfeng City, central China’s Henan Province, Oct. 22, 2012. Students of kungfu school perform during a welcoming ceremony of the 9th Zhengzhou International Shaolin Wushu Festival in Dengfeng City, central China’s Henan Province, Oct.…
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East Asia
Kim Yu-na reunites with former coaches
Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na has rehired two former coaches. Shin Hea-sook and Ryu Jong-hyun will take charge of helping the 22-year-old to return to the competitive skating starting with the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships in March. Ryu worked with Kim when she started skating at the age…
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East Asia
SNS to play big role in election
Pop sensation Psy may not be the only Korean to massively benefit from social networking services (SNS) this year. The three presidential candidates are also betting that sites such as YouTube and Facebook will catapult them into Cheong Wa Dae come December. So says Lee Hag-man, a social media expert…
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East Asia
Anish Kapoor, beyond material concerns
Anish Kapoor, the sculptor of the 2012 London Olympics’ “Orbit,” came to Korea with his signature works and pigment series, “Auto-generation” and recent steel sculptures. This exhibition currently under way at Leeum museum is designed to review what Kapoor has done for some 30 years of his artistic career. “We…
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East Asia
‘Gangnam Style’ means business
Seoul conference to discuss potential of Korea’s pop culture exports Korea’s meteoric rise as an economic power has been driven by exports of televisions, mobile phones, cars and ships. It bears further watching as to whether soap operas, movies and music will prove to be the next big thing in…
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East Asia
What is the context of S. Korea’s Africa policy?
In keeping with its tradition over the last six years, the just-ended Korea Africa Economic Cooperation Forum was yet another opportunity for Seoul to extend a compelling historical narrative that reconciles empathy with brotherhood as the context for establishing an agenda for dialogue with the powerful African delegation that convened…
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East Asia
Benefits of Chaebol-bashing
If there is one thing that Korea’s three presidential candidates can agree on, it’s the need for “economic democratization.” That’s the trendy term for the reform of the country’s family-owned conglomerates, or chaebol. Chaebol-bashing has been around as a popular political issue since at least the early 1990s, but it…
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East Asia
The emperor of Japan
The boy who sat one row behind my desk in our elementary school was called Shimizu. He was born on Dec. 23, Showa 8 (1933), the same day the then Crown Prince Akihito, now the emperor, was born. It was his birthday, a cold December morning. The class teacher, dressed…
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