Word: korean
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...Syrian site bombed by Israeli warplanes in September of 2007 was part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. The Israelis kept mum about their reasons for attacking the site, but the U.S. let it be known that the target was a secret nuclear reactor being built with North Korean assistance - a claim that was widely viewed through the prism of false U.S. claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Bush Administration's animus toward Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime over its support for Hizballah and Palestinian radical groups, as well as its failure to curb jihadist insurgents...
SOUTH KOREA Drop in currency value since a year ago: 30% For South Koreans, the current economic meltdown has a sickening familiarity. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the South Korean won lost 52% of its value against the dollar. Things haven't gotten that bad yet in 2008, but there are still plenty of sudden bargains in the Land of Morning Calm, long an unjustly ignored travel destination. Bewildering Seoul boasts dramatic mountains, spicy street food and gorgeous royal palaces. Beyond the capital - where almost half the country lives - South Korea has arty port cities like Busan and cultural...
...York Philharmonic (NYP) concert last February at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre - a recording of which has just been released on DVD by Medici Arts - began with a welcome from a comely young North Korean woman in traditional dress. She expressed the hope that the performance would "herald the first step in rapprochement between the two countries," just before the esteemed orchestra entered the stately 2,500-seat auditorium...
...watch the NYP's Pyongyang adventure in slo-mo, you won't spot Kim Jong Il making nuclear concessions in a balcony suite while seduced by the universal language of music (he didn't attend). But at least you will see, at the concert's close, rows of North Koreans quietly moved by a poignant rendition of Arirang, the Korean folk tune beloved on both sides of the DMZ, and a touching song whose harps and violins are borderless. Perhaps rapprochement can start from there...
...interested in subjects outside himself: war, politics, history, death, things that impinge on the warm bubble of self and family. Whereas Portnoy tells his story from a psychiatrist's couch, Marcus narrates Indignation from beyond the grave (or possibly from a morphine coma). He has been drafted into the Korean War--a draft for which Portnoy was a year too young--and he has fallen on the battlefield. You could read this as Roth's quasi-Oedipal execution of his younger alter ego, but it plays more like a correction: Wake up, Portnoy, there's a harsh world out there...