Word: korean
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DIED. Bong Soo Han, 73, Korean martial-arts grand master who introduced hapkido to the West; of complications from cancer; in Santa Monica, Calif. He moved to the U.S. after training in Korea in the art, which combines fluid, circular movement with fierce, sharp kicks. He taught thousands about "perfection of character" through his International Hapkido Federation, but was best known for his work in such films as The Kentucky Fried Movie and 1971's Billy Jack...
...well, first of all, they came back. And even though there is no outcome in those talks, there were actually some fairly beneficial discussions. And I think we've managed this pretty well. Chris Hill has been able in the context of six-party talks to engage his North Korean interlocutor without allowing it to become a U.S.-North Korean negotiation. But that engagement has clearly helped. It's helped moved things along. And so - and China's activism has been really good...
...camera he is given has a dead battery-and fraught with politics. Returning to the capital, O is unexpectedly grilled by two senior intelligence officials with a keen interest in the car he didn't photograph. Becoming embroiled with the secret services is a dangerous proposition for any North Korean, even a policeman, so O is sent away from the capital by his long-suffering boss, Chief Inspector Pak, until the heat is off. As in all good mysteries, what looks like a reprieve turns out to be even more trouble. While supposedly lying low, O stumbles across a bloody...
...narrates, before being knocked cold by a security goon. "We'd been trained never to make that mistake; I made it anyway." As a detective, O is as hard-boiled as they come, a barely subordinate loner with a disdain for the pins of the Leaders that every North Korean is expected to wear and a woodworking hobby that threatens to earn him an "antisocial" note in his file. ("Why the hell can't you just smoke, like everyone else?" the Chief Inspector complains.) But O gets results, and when the body of a Western diplomat is discovered...
...series of vivid flashbacks, related to an Irish intelligence officer during a cat-and-mouse encounter in Prague. Their vignettes make a compelling side narrative to the main tale, but the best feature of the book is how it builds, brick by dirty gray brick, a portrait of North Korean society that feels far more real than any debriefing. Church's Pyongyang is caught in the familiar time warp of the North's long-soured revolution: it's a place of deserted roads, decaying buildings and rusting trains that creak off to the provinces at walking pace. But what...