US President mentions Korea twice as many as Japan
It seems that “Korea” is a large part of President Barack Obama’s vocabulary and frequently used as a synonym as a prime example for success.
Korea has appeared in more than one in 10 key speeches that he has delivered since taking office in January 2009, much more frequently than many of his country’s key allies.
Obama has talked about Korea in 36 of his 342 public speeches, whereas he has only mentioned Japan and France in 17 of them, according to The Korea Times’s analysis of his past speeches collected on the website of the Washington Post.
The flame of the 2010 Youth Olympic Games arrived in Seoul on Wednesday on its final stop on a 13-day tour of all five continents before heading to Singapore which will host the global event for young athletes from Aug. 14.
“The final stop in the journey of the youth Olympic flame marks the start of a new chapter in the Olympic movement,” said Ser Miang Ng, chairman of the Singapore Youth Olympic Games organizing committee.
Speaking at a press conference at the Westin Chosun Hotel, he stressed that the Youth Olympic Games are aimed at teaching athletes Olympic values from a young age.
“We seek to unite the youths of the world in celebration of the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect,” Ng said.
“Through the journey of the Youth Olympic flame, we hope to connect and inspire the youths of Korea to continue to embrace and live the Olympic values,” the chief of the Olympic committee added.
A leading U.K. private school broke ground on Wednesday in Jeju Global Education City, a Korean government-led project meant to turn the island into a leading English education hub in Asia.
The Jeju Free International City Development Center held the ground-breaking ceremony for NLCS-Jeju, the Korean branch of North London Collegiate School, a top private school in the United Kingdom.
The 160-year-old NLCS last year was ranked tops among British International Baccalaureate schools.
Minister of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Chung Jong-hwan, Jeju Governor Woo Keun-min and other official participated in the ceremony held in Daejeong-eup, Seoguipo-si.
NLCS chairperson Helen Stone and NLCS-Jeju principal Peter Daly, were also present.
The campus is to open next September along with the public Jeju International School to incorporate a total of 568 students.
Unlike its mother branch in London, which is a girls’ school, NLCS-Jeju will incorporate boys and girls from grade 4 - 12.
Senior students will be provided with a co-educational program based on the IB system, widely used in admission evaluations by universities worldwide.
The school, with a capacity for 1,388 students, has facilities including an indoor swimming pool, gymnasium, concert hall and a large dormitory.
NLCS-Jeju’s target tuition and living expenses would be similar to or a little bit higher than those required to study in Southeast Asia or half those in the U.K or in the U.S.
Following the two pioneer schools, a total of 12 international schools are to open doors in the education city by year 2015, according to officials.
The city is a grand educational plan by the Korean government to embrace the ever-rising number of students moving abroad to learn English and benefit from global education systems.
Korea spends about $16 billion annually on private English education and some 27,349 underage students were studying abroad in 2008, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute.
The full activation of the Jeju Global Education City is expected to save the nation annual costs of 324 million ($276,923) to 540 million won and also draw foreign currency, according to the Woori Bank consulting team.
Over 500 people gathered for the opening ceremony of the IKAA 2010 Gathering at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul this Wednesday.
The Korean adoptees, from late teens to those in their 50s, and their loved ones from 20 different countries came to participate in the gathering.
The International Korean Adoptee Associations is holding a range of events for both Korean adoptees and the public till Sunday.
This year’s gathering has an emphasis on promoting dialogue and a greater understanding between Korean adoptees and Korean society.
The IKAA said it wanted to change the stigma of adoptees.
“I don’t feel like we need or want to be charity cases,” said Tim Holm, president of both the IKAA and the Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington. “We want to do more meaningful activities for the adoptees other than just birth searches or living in Korea and teaching English. We really want to be able to promote business and professional exchanges not just between Korea and our countries.”
He also pointed out that there are many educated adoptees who would be able to do much for the Korean government and Korean people.
On the planning committee alone for this gathering, there is a long list of professionals. Holm himself is a CPA, Liselotte Hae-Jin Birkmose has a Master’s degree in art history and works for an international art investment company. From the Netherlands, Floor Eusterbrock works as a Marketing Communication Executive. Lisa Ellingson, from Minnesota, is an attorney in the area of business litigation. Tae Yang Jorgenson, from Denmark, holds a Master’s of Science in ITand works as an advisor in the administration of the Ministry of Climate and Energy.
For the first time ever, the IKAA gathering will be hosting a business seminar on Friday to further promote that theme. The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency has agreed to participate and help facilitate networking between Korean adoptees and Korean businesses.
One of the events already held was the second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies. The symposium consisted of 12 different studies and their findings on and for the Korean adoptee community.
Professor Kim Park Nelson, an adoptee herself, is the lead organizer and proceedings editor for this year’s symposium and also the one in 2007. Nelson is an assistant professor of American Multicultural Studies at the Minnesota State University at Moorhead.
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With just ten more days until the unveiling of the new name panel for Gwanghwamun, controvery is still raging over whether a Chinese version from 1867, the Hangeul version by the late President Park Chung-hee or a new Hangeul version using the font originally developed by King Sejong, the creator of the Korean writing system, should be used.
The Gwanghwamun gate, first built in 1395 as the main entrance to Gyeongbokgung Palace, has been repeatedly destroyed and then restored. The latest Gwanghwamun restoration project began in 2006, to restore the gate to its original form, correcting the renovation carried out using concrete during Park’s regime in 1963. That same year, Park wrote the gate’s name panel himself, in three Hangeul letters.
The new name panel that’s replacing what Park had written is currently being polished by Intangible Cultural Property Oh Ok-jin, a master engraver. It will be a restored version of the original signboard written by Lim Tae-young, head of the Gyeongbokgung reconstruction team and a general, in 1867. Lim had written the letters in Chinese characters.
Lee Dae-ro, president of Korea Hangeul Culture Society stressed that the new panel should be written in Hangeul, as the gate was named by King Sejong who created Hangeul, or the Korean writing system. “If you only think about the restoration of the architecture, then having the Chinese panel would be appropriate,” he said. “But we have to restore the meaning of our history, and what it really means is to preserve King Sejoing’s legacy. If we think in this perspective, the new panel must be written in Hangeul.”
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SAN FRANCISCO ― When it comes to online news consumption, there are two groups of audiences divided by their habit of accessing news; one usually searches for specific information of interest and the other wants something new that they cannot get through social media.
Yahoo, the most visited news site on the Internet, is decisively geared toward the latter, putting emphasis on human activities and editorial involvement.
“Our editorial news room consists of professional journalists. We’ve seen the importance to see seasoned journalists to decide what’s important and what’s not,” said Kryssa Guntrum, director of the global product communications at Yahoo.
The approach clearly differs from that of Google, the most powerful search engine, which relies much on algorithms, she said.
Washington puts 21 Iranian entities on sanctions blacklist
South Korea appeared to be stuck between a rock and a hard place over increasing pressure from the U.S. to join its efforts to sanction Iran for its nuclear ambitions.
Washington, which has been avidly enlisting international support for sanctioning Iran, on Wednesday put 21 more Iranian entities on its blacklist for helping advance Iran’s nuclear weapons programs.
Regarding the list, a State Department spokesman said that the U.S. believes the sanctions are “having an effect on the ground in Iran.”
