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I.Seoul.U: The case for

The people have spoken. After a public contest, Seoul finds itself the proud possessor of a new promotional slogan, a strapline that will be branded across the city’s marketing campaigns for years to come. It is - drum roll, please… “I.Seoul.U.”

2015-11-09 17:03

School of stupidity

Last week, having returned from an overseas trip, I picked up my 16-year-old daughter, Hannah, from her school in the evening. She is in her first year at a girls' high school noted for its academic rigor and its somewhat elitist outlook. As she got into the car, she passed me her shoulder bag to hold.

2015-10-26 17:18

Resilience of the Kims

Last weekend, global eyes were glued to TV screens as North Korea's Workers' Party celebrated its 70th anniversary in depressingly predictable style. Many, viewing this bizarre mutation - a communist-polity-turned-monarchy - doubtless wondered: “How can such a brutal, backward-looking regime resist all modern trends and continue in its third-generation?”

2015-10-12 17:07

Chairmen, cults and god kings

I recently attended a press event held by Amore Pacific, the leading Korean cosmetics company, to mark its 70th anniversary. Myself and colleagues were taken on a tour of the firm's "beauty campus," which features striking design elements, a wine cellar-style archive of cosmetics products and (naturally) a gift shop. We were then invited to a dinner, during which the company executives and the chairman delivered presentations and answered questions from international reporters.

2015-09-14 17:03

South Korea shows its teeth

It is not easy for a democracy to deal with a dictatorship. Treat it reasonably, and it takes advantage. Push it too hard, and it might detonate Armageddon. What is an appropriate strategy? Where is the middle ground? These questions have been repeatedly mulled over by both South Korea and the United States since the 1953 armistice, for the Kimdom has felt confident enough to execute provocation after provocation - from attempted presidential hits to bloody cabinet bombings; from hit-and-run patrol boat raids to intelligence ship seizures; from ax murders to torpedo attacks; from airliner bo...

2015-08-31 16:43

A war story remembered

Jan. 4, 1951, was perhaps the darkest hour in South Korean history. Seoul's frozen Han River was crowded with thousands of desperate people - children, women and old people. Bundled up with overcoats and blankets, belongings piled on their backs or pushed on sleds, bicycles or ox carts, they trudged south across the ice.

2015-08-03 16:59

Is Korea too emotional?

A Korean War veteran I interviewed told me a grim but compelling tale. In the darkest days of the struggle - that pitiless winter of 1950/51when U.N. forces were routed in the North, and vengeful communist troops were storming South - he was manning a checkpoint sited in the middle of a blasted warscape. Winter winds howled. Thousands of desperate refugees waited to pass through.

2015-07-06 16:50

Stop talking 'reunification'

I recently attended a conference at a specialist academic institution on the emergence of private finance in North Korea. Opening remarks were to be delivered by the unification minister.

2015-06-22 16:58

Help the economy: Have fun!

“So, Ms. Kim, what are your plans this weekend?” I asked. Ms Kim gave me a blank look. Then, rather sheepishly, she responded with one word. “Sleeping,” she said. It was an uninspired answer to an uninspiring question - but it was a question I had been told to ask.

2015-06-08 17:14

Changing North Korea: Give business a chance

The female peace activists who crossed from the placid dictatorship of North Korea into the raucous democracy of South Korea on Sunday walked into a storm of controversy, for opinion on their undertaking is deeply divided. Are these women harbingers of reconciliation? Or are they “useful fools” for the Kim regime?

2015-05-25 17:07

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