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West Asia
“Kharabeesh,” a maker of sarcastic cartoons, becomes conspicuous with Arab Spring
After the internet became the source for any scoop and websites like Facebook and Twitter became more into journalism than into socializing. It was only ordinary when cartoons turn into one of the ways to express your opinion, maybe it’s the strongest way. “Kharabeesh” or more accurately “Kharabeesh Toon” became…
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East Asia
Korea vs. aging
Last year, I and several colleagues from the foreign correspondents’ community interviewed President Lee Myung-bak. A color photograph of the tableau ― the serious-looking president surrounded by several busily scribbling overseas reporters ― duly appeared in a vernacular daily. A friend pointed out something curious about this picture. Although he…
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East Asia
Korea is not Korean enough
Dear Madam President-elect, Like any other President, you hope to make the people of Korea happier. There are too many lonely, unhappy people in Korea today, not all of them old or handicapped although many are. When you were born, in February 1952, Korea was in the midst of terrible…
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East Asia
‘Black consumers’ to be shown no mercy
Law enforcement authorities and courts are increasingly getting tough on the so-called “black consumers” or charlatans who make international inappropriate complaints of products in order to coerce compensation from manufacturers. On Monday, the Seoul Southern District Court slapped a 15 million won fine on a 28-year-old man, surnamed Kim, for…
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East Asia
Park needs sophisticated ‘envoy diplomacy’ for China ties
BEIJING – The incoming Park Geun-hye administration should adopt a pretty sophisticated “envoy diplomacy” to patch up strained ties with China, while continuing to carefully steer Seoul’s alliance with the United States, said Shin Gi-wook, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. “The first…
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East Asia
Chinese woman who loves Korea so much
Without any notice in advance, anybody would think that she is a Korean ― Cui Penghua, an ethnic Han Chinese, not merely speaks perfect Korean but also looks like an ordinary Korean. She majored in Japanese in Beijing International Studies University but opted to head toward Korea in 2002, affected…
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East Asia
Actress Bae Doona proud of her roles in ‘Cloud Atlas’
South Korean actress Bae Doona’s filmography is full of names of celebrated directors — Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Hirokazu Koreeda, the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer. Unlike other fashion model-turned actresses, she wasn’t bothered by playing an insensitive apartment management worker in a yellow-hooded T-shirt with almost no…
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East Asia
Yang Hae-gue unravels Diaspora at Haus der Kunst in Munich
The year 2012 was a splendorous year for Seoul- and Berlin-based Yang Hae-gue. She participated in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany and Urdaibai Art Biennale in Spain and presented “Dress Vehicles” at the newly opened Tanks at Tate Modern in London. In November, Yang unveiled a new piece “Accommodating the…
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East Asia
Hong Myung-bo, Mark of Respect
Pernod Ricard Korea CEO Jean-Manuel Spriet, left, awards the Mark of Respect trophy to former Olympic national football team coach Hong Myung-bo at Grand Hyatt Hotel in Hannam-dong, central Seoul, Monday. Hong is the eighth recipient of the award given to outstanding figures in the fields of sports, culture and…
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South East Asia
Bilge Of Palm Oil Ship Cleaned By Workers At Tanjung Priok Port In Jakarta
A Crude Palm Oil (CPO) cleaner looks on as he climbs out of the bilge of a palm oil ship docked at the Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 7, 2013. The CPO’s cleaners are paid 200,000 rupiah (around 20.83 U.S. dollars) per person on every palm oil ship.…
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