Worried about MERS in South Korea? Visitors can (mostly) breathe easy.

South Korea to offer tourists free ‘MERS insurance’

South Korea is in the midst of a health-care crisis, with 16 people dead and thousands under quarantine because of an outbreak of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In recent days, the government has mounted an aggressive response, including undertaking tests on an experimental plasma treatment.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico However, the issue isn't purely a medical one — it's also a social and, in turn, an economic one. As The Post's Yoonjung Seo has pointed out, the panic about MERS may be just as damaging as the outbreak. People are staying out of public spaces, and that could mean a big loss for South Korea's tourism industry.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Thankfully, the government has a plan: MERS insurance. According to the Korea Times, South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism is offering all tourists who enter the country free insurance that will cover all their medical and travel expenses should they catch the MERS virus on their trip.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The country will also provide hand sanitizers at tourist attractions, as well as a 24-hour toll-free number that concerned tourists can call, the Korea Times reported. The government is also taking the campaign online: The English-language Web site for the official "Visit Korea" tourism campaign contains a large pop-up that seeks to reassure tourists.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Will this be enough? The Strait Times reported that tourist arrivals dropped by 24.6 percent in the first 11 days of June, and South Korea could eventually lose about $900 million in tourism revenue if things don't improve. The government also announced Monday that it is planning to offer $64 million in loans to a number of troubled tourism sectors to help offset potential financial difficulties.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Some foreigners living in South Korea had complained of a lack of information from the government. "The [South Korean] government hasn't done anything to help foreigners," American Christopher Cashel Cordo told the Strait Times last week. Reports in the South Korean news media suggest that about 20 to 30 expatriates have been quarantined.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “We hope the measures will make foreign tourists feel that Korea is still a safe country to visit,” Vice Minister Kim Jong said during a news conference on Monday.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **More on WorldViews**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Five great things to do in Seoul while people are staying home for fear of MERS    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Smog becomes a political issue in South Korean election

SEOUL — A rare springtime election will send South Koreans to the polls early next month, but here in smog-bound Seoul they may be gasping all the way. Spring is notorious for its poor air quality here. The combination of smog and the yellow dust that descends from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert every spring has produced pollution so thick that on the worst days — and there have been many of them — Seoul has looked like a city shrouded in a toxic gray blanket. This has made air pollution a topical issue in the snap presidential election, to be held May 9. “I will do everything in my power to make South Korea an environmentally clean country,” Moon Jae-in, the Democratic Party candidate and clear front-runner for the presidency, said this month. “People are angry over the government’s lack of action to tackle the almost-unbreathable air.” Moon and his closest rival, centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, have both pledged to work with China — blamed by the government for much of South Korea’s air problems, although environmental activists point out that most of the pollution is homegrown. They have also vowed to stop any new coal-fired power plants from being built. Hong Joon-pyo of the conservative Liberty Korea Party has also promised to work with China and increase the number of environmentally friendly cars on the roads. Seoul is joining Beijing and Delhi near the top of the list of Asian cities with certifiably unhealthy air. The South Korean capital now regularly records unhealthy levels of PM2.5 ultra-fine dust in the air — particles that are one-thirtieth the width of a human hair and can pick up lead and arsenic from the air and then embed themselves deep in a person’s lungs once inhaled. In the first months of this year, Seoul has been recording twice the number of ultrafine dust warnings as last year, with authorities advising people to limit outdoor activities and sensitive groups to stay inside altogether to avoid breathing in the dangerous particles. “It’s really frustrating because air pollution is not something I can fix as a citizen,” said Seoul resident Lee Eun-jung, the mother of two girls, ages 9 and 15. “My eldest daughter goes to a middle school where they still have outdoor P.E. classes on days when the pollution is considered dangerous. It breaks my heart to imagine her working out on a day like that,” Lee said. “My youngest daughter has asthma and has been hospitalized several times for pneumonia.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked PM2.5 to a variety of illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, and low birth weight. A recent South Korean study suggested an association with Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has predicted that 1,069 South Koreans per million will die prematurely in 2060 as a direct result of air pollution. South Korea is the only country in the “rich nations club” (a phrase often used to describe the OECD) to exceed 1,000 deaths per million in the projections. Local studies have put the economic damage caused by air pollution — largely because of lost production — at about $9 billion a year and have predicted this will double by 2060. The tendency here has been to blame the pollution on neighboring China, where coal-fired power plants and huge factories are spewing gunk into the environment to be carried on winds over to the Korean Peninsula. “China is the main culprit,” the environment ministry said in a report last month, saying that China causes 30 to 50 percent of the PM2.5 in South Korea on normal days, but 60 to 80 percent on the worst days. The central government has approached Beijing about working together to try to limit industrial pollution. But the practice of pointing the finger at China overlooks the fact that the majority of South Korea’s pollution is homegrown, analysts and activists say. Even if 30 to 50 percent of the ultrafine dust comes from China, that means 50 to 70 percent comes from South Korean sources, including exhaust from old diesel vehicles, “fugitive dust” from construction sites and tires hitting the road, and the illegal burning of waste. “The South Korean government looks like it’s trying to avoid dealing with the situation,” said Son Min-woo, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace Korea. “They aren’t doing enough to reduce the pollution here.” Greenpeace is lobbying the government to close down coal-fired power plants to reduce pollution. About 40 percent of South Korea’s electricity comes from more than 50 coal-fired power plants, and the country has plans to build 20 new plants by 2021 despite being a signatory to the Paris climate change deal. It will, however, shut down 10 aging plants by 2025. Other official efforts have had little effect. The Seoul metropolitan government has been ordering cars off the roads on alternate dates depending on their tags, but these restrictions apply only to government vehicles. Seoul also is doubling the number of street sweepers to pick up “fugitive dust” from the roads. Lee, the mother of two daughters, is doing as much as she can to protect her family, installing three air purifiers at home and spending about $50 a month on masks for her family. But she wants the South Korean government to do more. “I know China is responsible for a large part of the bad air, but I hear that coal-fired power plants and aging industrial sites violating regulations are serious factors, too,” she said. “The South Korean government says it is cooperating with China to tackle this issue, but I don’t know if any meaningful results will come out from that cooperation.” Bae Jeong-hwan, an economics professor at Chonnam National University, said a decade of effort by local and central governments had amounted to little. “The government is neglecting its duties by not taking more action while people’s lives are at stake,” he said, saying the central government had been tinkering around the edges rather than tackling the crux of the problem. For one, the government should bring the tax on diesel into line with that on gasoline, Bae said. “The diesel price has been kept down to help South Korean industry, but diesel trucks can produce more than 140 times more exhaust than diesel cars,” he said. “Regulations need to be strengthened to make some difference in the air quality.” Another, admittedly extreme option would be to impose a “smog tax” on products imported from China, Bae said. “When cooperation doesn’t work, stronger regulations or sanctions should be considered.” In the meantime, many people here are concerned that the government is minimizing the problem by having a looser definition of dirty air than the international standard. The World Health Organization classifies 25 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter in a day as unhealthy, but the South Korean government standard is double that. “I don’t understand this,” said Lee Mi-ok, a 38-year-old mother of a 4-year-old boy who was born prematurely with weak lungs. “Do Koreans have lungs that are twice as strong as other nationalities? Why do we have to put up with this bad air? What is the purpose of the government if it cannot protect lives and health of the people?” **Read more:**

The terrifying track of how one ‘super-spreader’ was responsible for nearly half of MERS cases in South Korea

The outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in the huge megalopolis of Seoul from May to July last year was among the most chilling examples of how fast infectious diseases can spread in our modern world. From a single businessman who acquired the virus abroad, the disease jumped rapidly from person to person until 36 were dead, 186 infected and thousands were quarantined -- leaving huge swaths of the South Korean capital region, where 25 million people live, paralyzed with fear. Schools closed, department store sales tanked, and tourist visas were canceled. The economic toll was so severe that the country's central bank had to cut interest rates.  First identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, MERS has since made its way around the world and infected people in 27 countries. The illness is severe, with patients developing fever, cough and respiratory distress. The death rate is believed to be more than 30 percent.  Both men first were seen at Pyeongtaek St. Mary's Hospital, a regional facility that had opened months earlier, for what appeared at the time to be pneumonia. They were treated on the same floor, according to health investigators. Both recovered enough to be released. When their conditions worsened, Patient 1 and Patient 14 separately sought help at one of Seoul's premier health centers -- the Samsung Medical Center, a massive university-affiliated hospital with 1,982 beds and a staff of 9,000. Patient 14's story at Samsung began when he arrived in the emergency department and was treated for breathing problems. He was given a mask, the authors note, but "frequently could not hold it because of severe respiratory symptoms." At the time, doctors did not suspect he had been exposed to MERS, so he was not isolated. But two days later, he was contacted by Korean health authorities about his potential contact with Patient 1.  The potential damage was estimated to be vast. A total of 1,576 people -- 675 patients, 683 visitors and 218 health-care workers -- were identified as contacts. And testing confirmed doctors' worst fears. The attack rate of the virus, calculated by dividing the number of people infected by the number exposed, was extremely high and caused an "epidemic curve" of cases. For the purposes of analysis, the researchers divided the patients into three risk groups. Those in Group A, considered close contacts, had been in the same zone of the emergency room as Patient 14. (Close contact with an infectious patient is traditionally defined as within six feet or within the same room or area for a prolonged period.) Group B consisted of people who were treated in different zones but had overlapped with Patient 14 in the registration area or radiology suite. Group C included patients who were treated in different zones and did not otherwise directly overlap with Patient 14 in space or time in any specific location. The overall attack rate for patients and visitors was only 2 percent in Group C (15 of 1,003) and 5 percent in Group B (six of 116). But for Group A it was incredibly high at 20 percent (47 of 239). The rate of infection for health-care workers was also just 2 percent (five of 218). A timeline of infections is shown below. Those in Group A are in shown as dark grey-blue squares.  In total, Patient 14 was linked to 82 MERS cases, or nearly 45 percent of the 186 cases seen in South Korea during the outbreak. By contrast, researchers found that Patient 1 had been in contact with 285 other patients and 193 health-care workers while at the medical center. No transmissions occurred on the day that he was in the general ward before being isolated. (Patient 1 infected 28 others at his previous hospital.) The researchers could not explain the difference but suggested it could have been due to "a number of factors such as time from onset of disease, symptoms, duration of contact, pattern of movement and the spread of the virus itself." They found that individuals who overlapped with Patient 14 in the radiology suite or registration area had higher attack rates (5 percent) than the other patients (1 percent), "suggesting that transmission might occur by even brief exposures to recently contaminated objects or encounters with individuals carrying a super-spreader." The role of super-spreaders was also critically important during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and the bordering Chinese province of Guangdong. In an accompanying commentary, David S. Hui, a professsor of emerging infectious diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote that the retrospective analysis highlights shortcomings in hospital systems worldwide. He noted the failure of St. Mary's to implement strict isolation of patients and quarantine of contacts as well as both facilities' poor communication and knowledge of patient movement between hospitals. More generally, he highlighted emergency department overcrowding, inadequate ventilation and limited availability of isolation rooms as issues needing to be addressed to prevent future outbreaks. "Failure in infection control and prevention in health-care facilities has resulted in large numbers of secondary cases of [MERS] infection involving health-care workers, existing patients and visitors in Saudi Arabia and several other countries in the past few years," Hui said.

Five great things to do in Seoul while people are staying home for fear of MERS

SEOUL — The outbreak of MERS panic around Seoul is certainly much more severe than the outbreak of MERS itself — even though almost all those who have caught the virus have done so in a hospital where “patient zero” was treated, and even though health officials have been warning against overreactions and have made it clear that normal life can go on.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A joint mission by the World Health Organization and the Health Ministry on Wednesday recommended that the 2,500 schools that have closed their doors over fear of contagion should reopen, saying schools have not been linked to transmission of the virus.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But with every day bringing more cases — a total of 108 people were infected by the end of Wednesday, and nine people had died — South Koreans are still nervous about going to public places. That means the capital, a teeming metropolis, is unnaturally quiet right now. There are usually only two times of year when the relentlessly fast-paced Seoul calms down: Korean Thanksgiving and Lunar New Year. The other 363 days, Seoul residents get pushed, shoved, jostled and stepped on as they make their way around the city. Seoulites generally don't seem to mind — personal space is a rare luxury when over 10 million people live in a city the size of Chicago. About 60 percent of South Koreans live in high-rise apartment complexes, so they are literally living on top of each other. But since MERS broke out, there has been a significant drop in the number of people in public places, especially in enclosed spaces. If you dare, this gives you a perfect opportunity to enjoy the city while it's quiet, with some facilities offering special prices to lure people in. Here are five things to do in Seoul right now. Don’t forget your hand sanitizer. **Go to the movies**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico From one disaster to another: The American movie "San Andreas," about a devastating earthquake, has been released in 3D and 4D IMAX formats and has swept the South Korean box office. Tickets would usually be hard to get, but right now you could waltz right in and choose the best seats in the house. The Korean Film Council said the number of movie-goers last weekend was down by almost a third, compared to two weeks earlier, while film companies are delaying opening dates and canceling promotional events during the slump. **Check out the Namsan cable car**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico There are usually long lines to take the cable car up the side of Namsan, a mountain in central Seoul with stunning views over the southern part of the city and beautifully landscaped walking paths and lines of tour buses depositing tourists — overwhelmingly Chinese ones — there. But with the Korea Tourism Organization saying that more than 45,000 Asian tourists have canceled planned visits, this is a good time to enjoy the view without the bustle. The ticket office says there's no line these days. Plus, Seoul’s skies have been clear and blue for the past few days, perhaps thanks to less traffic in the city.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Visit traditional Bukchon and Samcheong-dong**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This area of old Seoul is renowned for its traditional wooden houses and its winding back alleys lined with independent cafes and clothing boutiques. Usually the streets are full of tourists stopping to take photos on the quaint old streets — making it hard to get a selfie with a clear background — or eating overpriced pasta in the chichi restaurants in the neighborhood. But on a stroll through the area Wednesday, the streets were all but deserted.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  **Catch a ballgame**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Baseball is the most popular sporting event for South Koreans, who flock to the stadiums for some impressive cheering (both from the crowds and from the cheerleaders). People like to clap together long, inflatable balloon things, and, as with everywhere in Korea, there is a lot of food and beer to be had. It’s usually a popular outing for families and couples on dates. But with the arrival of MERS fears, attendance at ballgames has plummeted, according to the Korean Baseball Organization. Last Friday’s games had about half the audience compared to the previous Friday’s. Maybe this is the time to score tickets in the front row on the first base line. **Play**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico South Korean kids study notoriously hard, but with more than 2,500 schools closed and thousands more cram schools shutting their doors, Korean youngsters have had a chance to do something they don’t do enough: play outside. Anna Park, who lives in Gyeonggi Province, the area surrounding Seoul and the place where “patient zero” first sought medical treatment, wrote on the Korea Expose Web site that kids were getting some respite from the relentless hours of study.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Contrast that with normal life: Park writes that she has friends who send their 9-year-olds to math academies for 16 hours a week — that's in addition to regular school.

Fighting MERS, again

THE WORLD is relearning a painful lesson in combating infectious disease: an outbreak caused by a virus or by bacteria is not only a challenge for medicine but also demands a rapid response based on real information, good detective work and a certain alacrity. Ebola showed how a small outbreak can mushroom into a global concern. Now the same dynamics are playing out in South Korea, struggling with the sudden appearance of the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, a coronavirus for which there is no known vaccine or effective treatment. The outbreak, which has killed at least 13 people, sickened more than 100 and led to more than 2,000 schools being closed, is the largest outside of Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first spotted in 2012. The MERS virus is believed to have emerged from bats a long time ago and then moved to camels; humans may have become ill from drinking camel milk or other exposure to the animals. Up until the South Korea outbreak, more than 85 percent of the MERS cases were in Saudi Arabia. About 36 percent of those infected later died. It appears that transmission of the virus from human to human is limited to those in close contact with each other. The Saudi experience with MERS threw into sharp relief the limitations of a closed society in battling disease. The authorities were less than open about what was happening. In health-care facilities, infection control broke down and illness spread. The Saudis lagged in seeking help from abroad and in carrying out essential research. Now South Korea is coping with some of the same challenges. In recent weeks, the flow of basic information from South Korea has seemed more open than in Saudi Arabia, but nonetheless there have been stumbles. The first patient in South Korea, known as the index case, a 68-year-old man, arrived at a clinic with symptoms in mid-May. His doctors did not know he had visited Saudi Arabia earlier in the month. They dispatched him to a larger hospital, and then the patient, not improving, went to Seoul to seek better treatment. He coughed his way through four hospitals in nine days before being diagnosed and isolated on May 20, according to the New York Times. South Korea’s hospitals are often crowded and the index patient apparently left a trail of infected people behind as he moved from one to another. After the World Health Organization was slow to respond on Ebola, a debate is underway about how to strengthen global rapid response to disease outbreaks. In today’s world, a virus or bacterium for which there is no cure or treatment can be spread across continents by one patient on an airplane. There is no fail-safe way to prevent this, but it is clear that surveillance, diagnostics, transparency, infection control and determined efforts to understand how and why a disease spreads are absolutely essential. Unfortunately, in one way or another, these have been missing far too often, and the pathogens are on the march. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: The world should learn from the Ebola crisis to combat MERS The Post’s View: As the number of cases mounts, MERS is still a mystery virus The Post’s View: Saudi Arabia’s MERS virus outbreak demands transparency

What you should know about MERS, the mystery disease that has South Korea on edge

It began with a single coughing man. A South Korean businessman had just returned from a trip to the Middle East when he started to feel ill. Feverish and wheezing, he made his way to one hospital, then another, then a third, then a fourth. By the time doctors figured out what was ailing him — a rare disease called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) — the man had left a trail of the virus across the country. On Friday a 72-year-old patient died from the illness, the 11th death reported in less than a month. But the spread of the disease, which has infected 126 people since the outbreak began last month, seems to have leveled off, and South Korean public health officials are urging calm.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[PHOTOS: South Korea battles MERS]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Still, across the country Koreans remain wary of this new and little-understood illness. MERS first appeared in humans in 2012, and three years later scientists and public health officials are still sorting out where it came from and how it’s spread. Here’s what we do know: **MERS affects the lower respiratory system.** A type of coronavirus (a common form of respiratory virus characterized by a crown-like shape), it’s most comparable to SARS, the disease that caused hundreds of deaths in China and a few other countries between 2002 and 2003 but has since disappeared. Like SARS, MERS seems to be spread between humans through close contact, probably via droplets of spit or other “respiratory secretions” containing the virus that are breathed or coughed out by the infected person. But because the virus is so new, it’s still not clear how this works.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico According to the Centers for Disease Control, MERS usually starts out looking like any old common cold, causing fever, coughs and shortness of breath. But in some patients it can lead to severe complications, ranging from nausea, vomiting and diarrhea to pneumonia and kidney failure. Just over a third of people reported with MERS have died, according to the World Health Organization. As of this March, the WHO reported 1082 cases of the disease and 439 deaths, the vast majority in Saudi Arabia. The outbreak in South Korea is the biggest to happen outside Saudi Arabia since MERS was first identified.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **The virus likely jumped from camels to humans.** **The first (known) case of MERS was reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. At the time, scientists didn’t know where it came from, but gene sequencing and subsequent research have pinned blame on camels. A study of a domestic camels near Dubai just published in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found that nearly every animal tested had MERS antibodies, indicating that they’d been infected with the disease, and that camels are most infectious before the age of four. The animals then pass the disease onto humans, though it’s not clear how.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **MERS has no cure.** There is no vaccine against MERS, and no available antiviral treatment. The advice on the CDC’s “prevention and treatment” page pretty much amounts to: “Don’t catch it.” With the ominous addendum that, if you should fall dangerously ill, care is available to support your vital functions. But MERS is typically life threatening only in people who have underlying medical conditions — the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, etc.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **The South Korean outbreak may have been caused by a “superspreader.”** MERS is notoriously bad at spreading, especially compared with other viral illnesses. Its reproduction number (the average number of people that one sick patient will infect) is thought to be at or below one, though research varies and some studies put it higher. By comparison, the reproduction number for Ebola is about two, for smallpox it’s five, and for measles it’s between 10 and 20.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But in South Korea, something strange happened. One infected man seems to have passed on the disease at least 20 others, according to NPR. The businessman who started it all may be what’s called a “superspreader,” someone who carries an exceptionally large amount of the virus in his lungs, German virologist Christian Drosten told NPR. It didn’t help that the businessman visited several hospitals before being diagnosed and quarantined — sick people are more vulnerable to contracting the disease.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[How one joke photo has become a symbol of South Korea’s fears about MERS]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If the businessman was a superspreader, it’s actually good news for this outbreak, because it means that the people who caught MERS from the businessmen are unlikely to spread it to others. If he wasn’t, then officials must consider a scarier alternative: The virus may have mutated to become more contagious. For now, that seems unlikely to have happened. Alison Clements- Hunt, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, told the New York Times that the virus pattern found in South Korea matched what had been studied elsewhere. It showed no mutations or changes that might affect how easily it spreads.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **In its current form, it is extremely unlikely to cause a pandemic.** So long as MERS has a reproduction number of less than one, it won’t infect enough people to replace itself. Instead, it’s likely to die out, just as SARS seems to have done. And data released Friday by the WHO makes it seem as though this outbreak has passed its peak — the number of new cases diagnosed each day has fallen continuously since June 4.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **People are frustrated with the South Korean government’s response.** Though this MERS outbreak is unlikely to become a public health disaster, it wasn’t a shining moment for the South Korean health system. Hospitals weren’t alerted to the possibility of MERS as soon as the first case was confirmed, and the government didn’t release the list of 24 facilities where cases had been identified until this Sunday — at which point dozens of people had already been infected while visiting various hospitals. Meanwhile, Peter Ben Embarek, the MERS point person for the WHO, told Science magazine that the “superspreading” nature of the outbreak is best explained by lapses in infection control measures at Korean hospitals.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[South Koreans blame government in spiraling MERS outbreak]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico President Park Geun-hye’s weekly approval rating dropped six percentage points in the aftermath of the outbreak, according a recent poll from Gallup-Korea. In the past couple of weeks Park has announced a wave of measures to control the outbreak — closing schools, tracking the cell phones of people under quarantine, releasing the names of hospitals where infections were identified — but the steps came too late for some critics. Choi Chang-woo, head of the civic group Citizens’ Solidarity for Safe Society, told the New York Times that the government should have been more transparent.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Now the government is belatedly trying to mend the fence after the cow had already been stolen,” he said.

South Korea quarantines more than 1,300 in race against MERS

TOKYO — More than 500 South Korean schools were set to close Thursday as the country scrambles to try to contain an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, a viral illness that has already claimed two lives there. More than 1,300 people have been quarantined. Amid criticism it has been too slow to respond to the viral illness, which has no vaccine or cure, President Park Geun-hye ordered the establishment of a task force to try to contain the infection and to be more transparent along the way. “There are a lot people worried about this situation,” Park told an emergency meeting of officials and health experts Wednesday. “We must make the utmost effort to stop MERS from spreading.” The outbreak brings back memories of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, that began in Asia in 2003, spreading to Europe and the Americas and leading to 774 deaths worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fearful that MERS has already spread, China is also taking measures to contain it. Two people have died from MERS in South Korea, while 28 others have been confirmed as having the viral illness, five of them on Wednesday alone. This makes the outbreak the largest outside Saudi Arabia, where MERS began in 2012, the World Health Organization said, warning that “further cases can be expected.” Suspected cases in South Korea total 398, and at least 1,364 people have been quarantined, the vast majority of them at home. Education authorities have left it to principals to decide whether to shut their schools, and 200 kindergartens and schools closed their doors on Wednesday while more than 500 planned to shut on Thursday. Almost all of them are in Gyeonggi province, the area around Seoul, where the first patient with the viral illness sought treatment, although six elementary schools and a middle school in Seoul will also close until Friday at parents’ request. Drugstores reported a run on surgical masks and hand sanitizer as fear about a wider outbreak spread. MERS arrived in South Korea in a 68-year-old “index patient” who had traveled to four countries in the Middle East and showed no symptoms when he returned home on May 4. But a week later, he sought treatment at two outpatient clinics and then two hospitals, potentially exposing a large number of health-care workers and other patients to the virus. “Given the number of clinics and hospitals that cared for the index case, further cases can be expected,” the World Health Organization said in a statement. The two patients who died, a 58-year-old woman and a 71-year-old man, had both been in contact with the index patient in the hospital, and both had other health problems that could have weakened their ability to fight the infection. The exposure times could have been as short as five minutes to a few hours, the WHO said. The South Korean government has been criticized for refusing to disclose the names of the clinics and hospitals where the index patient sought treatment. But three doctors at the emergency meeting Wednesday rejected demands for greater openness, Yonhap News Agency reported. Twenty-five out of the 30 people confirmed to have contracted the disease were infected at a single hospital, which has since closed to new patients. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities quarantined 88 people, including 14 South Koreans, after a 44-year-old South Korean man, the son of one of the people who has contracted the viral illness, defied medical advice and flew to Hong Kong on May 26 while he had symptoms of the illness. He then traveled to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong by bus. China informed the WHO on May 29 that the man had tested positive for the virus and had been isolated at a hospital in Huizhou, Guangdong, while Chinese authorities try to track down other people who might have been exposed. Yoonjung Seo contributed reporting from Seoul.

The 5 things you need to know about MERS (and global health)

Even before the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has ended, there’s a new infectious disease to fear: Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. MERS appeared three years ago in Saudi Arabia, probably after jumping from camels to their human handlers, and had mostly stayed there — until last month, when it struck in South Korea. Within that month, MERS has caused more than 100 illnesses and at least 9 deaths in that country.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Will it become an epidemic? Can it be contained? Those questions are on many minds for several reasons. Scientists know relatively little about MERS. We don’t yet know how to treat it. It’s related to other deadly respiratory ailments like SARS. Many wonder whether global institutions like the World Health Organization can keep people safe — especially after WHO’s failures in responding to Ebola.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the situation does not appear quite as dire with MERS. Thanks to the lessons learned from previous outbreaks of respiratory diseases and relatively pro-active responses, the global health governance system’s response has reassured a number of experts that a full-blown MERS epidemic is unlikely. At the same time, MERS shows that there are still important shortcomings in global health governance.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **1\. There’s a lot we don’t know about MERS yet, but it doesn’t act like a disease that will become a widespread epidemic.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico MERS appears unlikely to become widespread, in part because of its unique qualities. MERS is a relatively new disease. It was first identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, after a 60-year-old man entered a hospital in Jeddah complaining of shortness of breath, a week-long cough, and kidney failure. Between its discovery in 2012 and this past March, MERS had infected slightly more than 1,000 people and caused nearly 400 deaths.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Two facts about how MERS spreads make a widespread outbreak less likely. First, MERS doesn’t spread very easily. The average MERS patient causes only 0.7 additional illnesses. By contrast, the average SARS patient infected 5 other people. Many of the Saudi cases still occur in people who are in close contact with camels. Since the typical MERS patient does not infect another person, the disease can be contained.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Second, human-to-human MERS transmission is happening mainly within health- care facilities and among people with weakened immune systems. As a result, relatively simple changes in hospital procedures may stop MERS’ spread.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **2\. The South Korean government is trying to avoid China’s mistakes with SARS.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When SARS appeared in 2002, the Chinese government’s initial response was abysmal. It denied the reports of a new disease. It recommended ineffective prevention strategies, like using vinegar to disinfect the air. It imposed a news blackout to prevent reporting about “atypical pneumonia.” It prevented WHO officials from having access to hospitals and clinics.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico These responses exacerbated the problem, giving the disease time to infect more people and causing people to question the government’s trustworthiness. The secrecy and failure to share information with international partners impeded a timely response, and China was widely condemned.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico At first, the Korean government underestimated the disease’s extent and provided little information about how widely it had spread. This caused many to openly question the government’s ability to handle the crisis. By last Sunday, though, Seoul had thoroughly changed its tactics. The government is sharing the names of all the hospitals treating MERS patients, providing public information about how people can protect themselves, and actively countering rumors. President Park Geun-hye even postponed her planned trip to Washington this week so that she could help coordinate her government’s response.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Korean government’s strategic shift shows that it understands the importance of sharing information to combat a disease outbreak — and the importance of responding to public unrest. But we have not yet seen whether this newfound openness will restore the public’s faith in the government’s ability to deal with public health, or whether the initial delay in responding will have long-term consequences. **3\. Diseases like MERS move with people, but that does not mean that people should not move.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Travel spreads infectious diseases. In 1918 and 1919, a global influenza pandemic killed at least 30 million people worldwide, in no small part because World War I troop movements  spread influenza around the globe. Nearly a century later, a never-before seen disease called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in southern China.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Over nine months, SARS spread to 34 countries, caused nearly 8100 illnesses, and killed 774 people. After the outbreak ended, epidemiologists identified globalization and rapid travel as key to SARS’ rapid spread. Indeed, they traced roughly 4000 cases and 550 deaths to a single doctor who checked into a Hong Kong hotel in February 2003.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The current MERS outbreak in South Korea has been traced back to a 68-year-old man who had spent time in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When these sorts of outbreaks occur, there is often an impulse to close borders, restrict travel, and close down public gathering spots like schools and theaters. Indeed, nearly 2500 South Korean schools have been closed so far. Arrivals at South Korean airports, movie ticket sales, and amusement park admissions are down substantially.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But these reactions, while understandable, are ineffective and may cause bigger problems. WHO is not recommending any travel restrictions, and a WHO-Korean government task force is urging schools to reopen. Why? Since MERS does not spread easily from one person to another, travel restrictions and school closings will do little to stop its spread. Rather, they may generate panic, which can have larger social, economic, and political consequences. They may also discourage people from seeking treatment.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The better strategies are contact tracing and monitoring those who have recently been in affected regions, strategies far more focused on key individuals than immobilizing the whole population. **4\. MERS in South Korea should not distract us from what is happening in Saudi Arabia.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico While the MERS cases in South Korea have received much attention in recent weeks, the disease remains largely centered in Saudi Arabia. MERS first emerged there, and more than 85 percent of human cases of the disease have happened in the country. Because there is so much we still do not know about MERS and because Saudi Arabia figures so prominently in its origin and transmission, this is where global health institutions need to devote a great deal of time and attention.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Unfortunately, the Saudi government has not shown much inclination to share information or to cooperate with the international community. In 2013, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan lambasted the Saudi government for failing to share virus samples with WHO-affiliated labs, delaying the ability of scientists to research the virus and attempt to discover treatments. International officials have said that the Saudi government has repeatedly denied offers of help and assistance since 2012.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico More recently, the Saudi deputy minister of health deflected attention away from MERS and suggested that the only reason for the high number of cases in his country was that it was looking for them. “The more you look, the more you find,” he told science journalist Helen Branswell.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If we have learned anything from the history of successful interventions by global health institutions, it’s that cooperation between national governments and international public health institutions is vital. **5\. So far, WHO is doing its job.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Under the International Health Regulations, human cases of new diseases that have a high likelihood of spreading internationally should be reported to WHO. In response, WHO works to keep countries informed about risks, builds capacity to detect new cases, and coordinates an international response.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico With Ebola, WHO largely failed to perform these tasks. In the case of MERS, though, it appears to be fulfilling its obligations. WHO set up an emergency committee to work on MERS in 2013, and it publicly makes available both the minutes of its meetings and the names of its members. It has provided governments with guidance about proper procedures and policies for dealing with MERS, and it provides regular updates on the numbers of cases and epidemiological information.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What explains the difference? Part of it may be that WHO has experience working with this sort of virus. WHO’s response to SARS was widely praised, and MERS and SARS are in the same virological family. It may be that the organization has been monitoring MERS for a number of years, giving it time to develop its expertise and appropriate strategies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Part of the difference may also be that, unlike Ebola, MERS has not strained the organization’s resources. So far, WHO has not asked the international community for financial contributions for MERS, suggesting that its current resources are enough to handle the outbreak. If things become more serious, WHO may need a serious infusion of money and personnel. Furthermore, if MERS spreads to more countries, it could strain the ability of disease surveillance systems to monitor and trace new cases. The lack of funds to support and strengthen disease surveillance systems is a serious shortcoming in the international community’s efforts to stop the spread of infectious diseases. _Jeremy Youde is an associate professor of political science and department head at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His most recent books are_ _The Politics of Surveillance and Response to Disease Outbreaks_ _(co-edited with Sara E. Davies) and_ _The Routledge Handbook of Global Health Security_ _(co- edited with Simon Rushton). Follow him on Twitter@jeremyyoude. _    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

In Japan, Chinese tourists are a welcome boost — if a loud, messy one

SAPPORO, JAPAN — Chinese tourists come to Japan for the sushi and for the shopping. But increasingly, they’re also coming for one thing that money can’t buy: fresh air. “The blue sky and the clean air are great. They’re something we don't have at home,” said Xu Jun, an agent for a steel trading company from Guangzhou, a huge manufacturing city in southern China that is blighted by pollution. Xu was visiting the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido this month. Over the previous two weeks, the Xu family had been to outdoor hot springs, taken an ice-breaker ship along the frozen coast and spotted some of the island’s famous wild red-crowned cranes. They, like several million other Chinese, are beating a path to Japan. The number of tourists coming to Japan from China went up 83 percent last year, compared with the year before. That put China in third place, behind only Taiwan and South Korea, as a source of visitors. This is despite the political tensions between the two countries over disputed territories and an official Japanese attempt to play down its wartime aggression against neighboring countries, including China. Tokyo is perennially popular, with its glitzy shopping districts and Disneyland resort, but in winter, about half the Chinese tourists visiting Japan go to Hokkaido, a sparsely populated island renowned for its wide-open spaces and top-notch — and safe — seafood. Visitor numbers have skyrocketed since the 2008 release of the Chinese movie “If You Are the One,” which showcased Hokkaido’s natural beauty. “The first thing Chinese people do after they land is to breathe deeply,” said He Wenfan, of the Japan Tourism Board’s Chinese-language Web site. “People say, ‘I can finally breathe!’ ” Last week, they came in droves to Sapporo, Hokkaido’s capital, for the city’s snow festival, where Japan’s underemployed soldiers had built massive sculptures — think “Star Wars” and cartoon characters — out of blocks of ice. At seemingly every sculpture and at every food stall selling steaming bowls of ramen noodle soup, Chinese could be heard. Connie Tsoi and her husband came to Sapporo to see the snow festival. Asked if she’d ever been to China’s own well-known festival, in the northern city of Harbin, Tsoi scrunched up her face and waved around the cheese tart she was eating. “No! Never!” she said. “It’s so dirty. Japan is so much cleaner, and the people here are so nice.” Hokkaido’s ski resorts of Rusutsu and Niseko enjoyed another influx this week during the Chinese New Year holidays. One of the draws for Chinese tourists is the decline in value of the Japanese yen, which once made the country prohibitively expensive. “The taxis and the food are a little bit more expensive than China — maybe 20 percent more expensive — but everything else is about the same,” said Yuan Xiang of Shanghai, who was spending all of his first visit to Japan in Hokkaido, most of it skiing. Of all the visitors, the Japan Tourism Agency estimates that Chinese tourists are the biggest spenders. They shelled out about a quarter of the $17 billion that foreign tourists spent in Japan last year — or about $2,000 each. The 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami had an impact on tourism, but political issues are just as seismic. Flare-ups over a string of disputed islands, and politicians’ visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which China and Korea see as honoring Japan’s war criminals, take their toll on tourism. “We suffer a noticeable drop every time, so we are nervous every summer,” said He, of the tourism board, referring to the period in August marking the end of World War II, a traditional time for politicians to visit Yasukuni. (Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not visit the shrine last year, instead sending an offering with an aide.) Shopping at a multistory electronics store here, Xu certainly wasn’t letting the political tensions cramp his vacation style. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said while perusing $800 cameras in the store, which accepts Chinese debit cards, is staffed with Chinese-speaking clerks and was packed with Chinese tourists buying everything from rice cookers to beauty products. In a country still struggling to emerge from two decades of on-again, off-again recession, this foreign money is welcome. But it is often accepted through gritted teeth. Japan is a nation famous for its culture of exacting politeness and adherence to a multitude of rules encompassing elevator etiquette and buffet behavior. And Chinese tourists, well, seldom let such rules constrain them. A common complaint is that they are too loud and that they are not considerate of the people around them. “They take home as much free stuff as possible once they hear it’s free, like brochures,” Tokie Shimomura, a tourist desk volunteer in Sapporo, said of Chinese visitors. “They let their children climb up on a train seat with their shoes on. Japanese people would stop them or have them take off their shoes.” This bad reputation abroad isn’t escaping notice at home. China’s president, Xi Jinping, last year told his compatriots to improve their manners when traveling. In “Ramen Alley,” a narrow strip of tiny restaurants here, Chinese tourists come to slurp up bowls of Sapporo’s special noodle soup, which comes with a large square of butter sitting on top of a mound of corn. In one eight-seat joint, the owner rattled off a list of complaints about Chinese customers, like the ones who come in to drink beer and then pull out their own snacks, often leaving the wrappers strewn over the floor. But he, like other business owners, has to suck it up, like a bowl of ramen. “The tourism business wouldn’t survive without Chinese customers, so we don’t want to complain about them,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing those very customers. “It’s 50/50, give and take. We appreciate them coming, but we wish that they would come with a little more cultural awareness.” Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

South Korea’s Park is criticized for postponing U.S. visit

TOKYO — Having decided to delay her planned trip to the United States so that she could deal with the MERS outbreak, South Korean President Park Geun-hye faced some criticism Wednesday that she might be increasing the sense of panic. But Park decided she had to stay home as new cases of the disease, Middle East respiratory syndrome, continue to emerge despite government predictions that the worst is over. The move is “designed to take care of public safety, including putting a quick end to MERS,” Kim Sung-woo, Park’s spokesman, told reporters, according to the Yonhap News Agency. Park has delayed the trip as “the people’s safety is the top priority,” and she will try to ease public concern at home, Kim said. Park was due to leave Sunday for the United States, where she was to hold meetings with President Obama on Tuesday and visit Houston. In Washington, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said that “President Obama looks forward to welcoming President Park to the White House at a mutually convenient time.” Two more people have died from the virus in South Korea, making a total of nine dead, health officials reported. They said 14 more cases were confirmed Thursday, pushing the number of infections to 122. Medical experts are cautioning that this outbreak is far from a pandemic, but South Koreans are alarmed. Park’s decision comes amid vociferous criticism of her government’s handling of the outbreak. The government also faced fire for its response to the Sewol ferry disaster. Park was further chastised for embarking on a trip to South America on the first anniversary of the disaster. But some critics questioned the message she was sending by staying home. She had previously told people not to “overreact” and said that everyone should “cooperate to ensure that economic activities will not be weakened.” A Realmeter poll published shortly before the announcement found that 53 percent thought Park should delay the trip, while 39 percent said she should continue with it. Fearful of contagion, South Koreans have been avoiding enclosed public places such as subway cars, shopping centers and movie theaters in droves, sparking concerns about the impact on the country's economy, which is already struggling. “If this atmosphere continues for more than a month, the domestic economy is expected to enter a slump as it did after the ferry disaster last year,” the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest newspaper, said in an editorial. Almost 2,500 schools have closed to try to minimize chances of infection. A World Health Organization team that arrived in Seoul on Monday released its first recommendations, together with South Korea’s Health Ministry, on Wednesday,  proposing that schools be reopened because they have not been linked to transmission of MERS in South Korea or in the Middle Eastern countries where it originated. All of the transmissions have happened at hospitals, leading Choi Kyung-hwan, acting prime minister, to ask people not to visit family or friends in hospitals. But he also warned people against unnecessary panic. “The government asks that people do not hold exaggerated fears or concerns over MERS, and that they do not act based on such groundless fears, such as reducing their spending or avoiding visits to areas that have reported confirmed cases of MERS,” he said. **Read more:** South Korean President Park Geun-hye answers questions South Korea, at behest of conservative Christians, bans LGBT march In South Korea, journalists fear a government clampdown on the press

Living in Beijing’s polluted air

I woke up in my dark bedroom the other day, head pounding and mouth dry. Before I even got out of bed, I knew that Beijing was having one of its hazardous-air-quality days. There was a tickle in my throat. My eyes stung and watered the minute I set foot outside. On a similar day a few days before, I’d walked only 10 minutes from my apartment to my friend’s place. By the time I got there, my coat, scarf and hair smelled the way they would have smelled after a night in a smoky bar followed by a couple of hours standing behind a car’s exhaust pipe. If that’s what the air pollution is doing to my new winter coat, I wonder what it’s doing to my lungs. The fine particulates in Beijing air, created by coal being burned to generate electricity and to heat homes, and by car exhaust and factories, are the most dangerous kind, doctors say, because they can lodge in the lungs, where they are absorbed into the heart, the blood and lung vessels, potentially causing heart disease and cancer. Adding to the problem are Los Angeles-like inversions that trap air within the city’s boundaries. This winter has been particularly bad. January alone had 19 days of hazardous air quality, which means that levels of the smallest particulate matter soared to over 301 micrograms per cubic meter. The U.S. Embassy, which monitors Beijing’s air quality, says that hazardous air can lead to “serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; serious risk of respiratory effects in general population.” Not long ago, the embassy posted recommendations about what to do in hazardous air situations. When the pollution rises above 500 (which the embassy calls “beyond index,” although the term “crazy bad” also has been used), it advises people to stay indoors with air purifiers, be familiar with the signs of heart attack and stroke, and remain sedentary. Don’t burn candles. There’s even a link for a California site on dealing with wildfire smoke, which creates the same level of fine particulates as really bad air days in China. Justin Higgins, an embassy spokesman, said, “I think it’s fair to say, given the recent conditions, that we wanted to push our recommendations out there.” It’s hard to compare Beijing’s bad air days to conditions in the United States. A friend of mine who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s recalls the California smog as “a constant, eye-stinging haze that ranged from yellowish to brownish.” But the Clean Air Act in 1970 had an impressive effect, so much so that Salt Lake City had a minor freakout in December when its pollution reached a level that would be considered only moderate by Chinese standards: a smallest-particulate reading of 130. Utah officials deemed it a “public health emergency,” and USA Today described it as “sickening fog.” By Chinese standards, it’s barely worth mentioning. In fact, 130 in Beijing is officially just “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” My husband and I consider 150 to be the rough cutoff for jogging outside. On Jan. 12, the measurement reached 886, which one article equated to living in a smokers’ lounge. And Beijing isn’t even the most polluted city in China, according to the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. That honor goes to Urumqi, in the far west of the country. We’re No. 3. Foreigners living here talk about how the bad air causes them a plethora of health problems, from days-long headaches to bad coughs to sinus issues that require surgery. One expat told me that after a friend of hers had lived in Beijing for about three years, her doctor said her lungs looked like those of a pack-a-day smoker, even though she had never picked up a cigarette. Many parents refuse to let their children play outside, and one mother said her 2-year-old was starting to look like a vampire because he was so pale. Chinese people living in the capital often wear flimsy cloth masks, more decorative than protective, and they’re starting to get worried that the air is affecting their health. The government ordered some factories shut down and limited the number of government-owned cars in the city, but no one seems confident that an immediate and sustainable solution is near. Years ago, longtime expats say, the cold winter winds often blew away Beijing’s air pollution, but now, with the city having grown and with so many households still burning coal for heat, the winter tends to have as many bad days as the summer. We live in an apartment with large, drafty windows. My bedroom is the draftiest room in the house, so I usually know when I wake up whether the air quality that day is bad. The windows are so leaky that a strong wind will blow them open, and you can hear the cars on the street as if they were right next to you. The windows in the dining room is smudged with grime that seeped in from the outside. When I venture outside, my eyes burn and my throat catches with the dryness and the cold and the stink. There’s a tickle in my throat and I’m developing what’s called the Beijing cough. People’s Daily described the cough as “the symptoms of dry cough and throat itching suffered by foreigners when they arrive in Beijing. It is a manifestation of their inability to adapt to the climate of Beijing” and will disappear when they leave the city, the paper writes. News reports say that thousands of people are jamming the hospitals with asthma and other respiratory ailments. So why don’t I wear a mask outside or use a machine inside? I suppose it’s because there are enough other health issues that seem more significant. Food safety is a big issue. Is it safe to eat Chinese-brand yogurt? What about strawberries from Yunnan or cauliflower from Beijing? Water is also a concern. One cannot drink the tap water, so that means buying bottled water. But what kind of water should be used to wash fruit and vegetables? I don’t buy the special vegetable-washing detergent that some folks use, and I wash my fruit and vegetables with water that I’ve taken from the tap — and then boiled. Transportation poses its own problems. In this sprawling city of more than 20 million, there’s no easy way to get around. Walking is dangerous, as cars often speed up if they see you scurrying across the street. Taxis can be hard to find. And the subway, which expands every day, is cheap but so crowded that I’ve had lipstick wiped from my mouth as I stood in a packed car. I’ve seen people unable to get off a train at their stop, prevented by the surge of crowds pushing into the car. I have many friends who bike everywhere in town, but the stories of accidents and injuries and near misses have been enough to put me off. As a result, air quality slips down my worry list. When the smallest-particulate reading hit 422 (the U.S. Embassy app warns: “Hazardous, protection recommended; health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects, please avoid physical exertion and outdoor activities”) the other day, one of my friends texted me: “That does it. I’m going to take a nap. When I wake up it better be down to ‘very unhealthy’ or lower.” I’m not sure who the veiled threat was aimed at, but I certainly appreciate the reaction. Sometimes in China, the only reaction is to stay inside, stay calm and figure out what to order for takeout. Bruno is a freelance writer in Beijing. She blogs about her life at notbyoccident.blogspot.com.

As N. Korean threats intensify, first signs of jitters in the South

SEOUL — This bustling South Korean capital has been defined for decades as a place of traffic jams and luxury shopping malls, long days of work and longer nights of drinking rice liquor. Residents rarely behaved as though their routines could be upended in minutes by the Kim regime to the north and its 10,000 artillery pieces. But after years of largely ignoring threats from North Korea, some residents say they are becoming a bit jittery, with the ascension of an unpredictable young leader in Pyongyang and levels of hostile rhetoric not seen since the early 1990s. Coffee shops here are still packed, and pop music pulses from storefronts, but South Koreans’ concerns are palpable in quieter moments. Their phones buzz with news updates on the North’s latest moves — its declaration of war; its announcement of plans to restart key nuclear facilities; its barricade of a joint industrial complex near the border. Children ask their parents what would happen if fighting broke out and where they would go for safety. On Thursday, the fear spread to South Korea’s stock market, which suffered its biggest daily fall of the year. The South’s defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin, said the North had moved an intermediate-range missile to its eastern coast, perhaps for testing or drills. “There could be war, or there could be peace,” said Joo Yang-yi, 26, a graduate student who studies North Korea. Rather than play down the possibility of an attack, South Korean officials in recent days have emphasized their ability to strike back promptly. They have also welcomed recent U.S. shows of force in the region, including a brief deployment to the peninsula of nuclear-capable stealth bombers. In the event of an attack, South Korea will “respond immediately without political consideration,” said a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share government thinking. “At the initial stage, South Korea is self-sufficient in terms of our ability to strike back. But [thereafter], we will need cooperation from the U.S. and neighbors.” South Koreans differ in their views of their increasingly belligerent northern neighbor. Some speak with confidence, saying the North’s near-daily threats are part of a coherent plan to force negotiations, not spark war. But others fear that the North’s new leader, Kim Jong Un, might push things too far, perhaps because he thinks he needs a major conflict to coalesce domestic support. That divergence is reflected in public opinion polls. Over the past two months, the percentage of South Koreans who say the North is their top concern has more than tripled. Still, that represents just 26 percent of respondents; more South Koreans care about job creation than about Pyongyang. Even the segment that is concerned about the North is far from panicking. During a crisis 20 years ago sparked by North Korea’s announced intent to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, some in South Korea rushed to stock up on canned goods and water. This time, grocery-store shelves remain full. “We have no alternative to remaining calm, because what we can do to personally prepare for emergency? Virtually nothing,” said Park Hyeong-jung, a North Korea researcher at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. “We live in a congested area of more than 10 million population. What a catastrophic chaos we will have if individuals begin to worry about tomorrow.” Over the past several decades, Park said, South Koreans have been “gradually immunized” against the North’s threats. And for all the North’s recent bluster, nothing it has done lately compares with the galling attacks of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, which included hacking to death two U.S. troops in the demilitarized zone, numerous assassination attempts against South Korean presidents and the midair sabotage of a South Korean passenger plane. After a fatal attack by the North in November 2010, South Koreans were at least as angry with their own government as they were with Pyongyang. When the North shelled a front-line island, killing two soldiers and two civilians, the South responded by lobbing 80 shells toward the North. Then-President Lee Myung-bak was criticized for not taking more serious action, leading to his pledge — reiterated by the current president, Park Geun-hye — to counter with greater force if provoked again. One lingering concern, voiced by a minority of South Koreans, is whether the United States can act as a sufficient deterrent to the North at a time of defense budget cuts in Washington and major crises in the Middle East. The United States has tried to assuage those worries, and deter the North, by flying the stealth bombers over the peninsula and speeding up the deployment of a missile-defense system to Guam. On Thursday, Pyongyang accused the United States of trying to bring down North Korea’s “dignified social system.” South Korean analysts say they are most concerned about how either side can step back from the possibility of a confrontation over the next few months. The Obama administration has shown little interest in talking directly with the North, and the North is seen as having little interest in toning down its rhetoric — unless it can win some kind of concession. “If the U.S. doesn’t want to engage, that pushes North Korea even further” to provoke, said Kim Dong-sik, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul. “I don’t know how that scenario ends.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

South Koreans blame government in spiraling MERS outbreak

SEOUL — South Korea on Monday recorded its worst day for Middle East respiratory syndrome since the outbreak began almost three weeks ago, as President Park Geun-hye’s government tried to allay panic and convince a skeptical public that it was on top of the situation. A sixth person died of the virus, and it was confirmed in 23 more people — including a 16-year-old boy — on Monday, marking the biggest single-day jump in infections. With 87 cases, South Korea has overtaken the United Arab Emirates to become the second-worst-affected country after Saudi Arabia, where the virus emerged three years ago. The spiraling health crisis — and the widespread perception that her administration has been slow and blundering in its response — has led to calls for Park to delay a trip to the United States, set to start Sunday. Her visit is scheduled to include talks at the White House with President Obama on June 16. But Park’s spokesman said Monday that there was “nothing to announce” regarding her planned trip. Park’s government — already struggling with public trust in the wake of the Sewol ferry disaster last year that killed more than 300 people — has been widely criticized for trying to keep key details from the public, especially by declining to name the hospitals where infected patients were treated. “I think the spread could have been ended much earlier if we reacted more thoroughly in the initial stage. I feel very sorry about that,” Moon Hyung-pyo, the nation’s health minister, said at a news conference Monday. As a World Health Organization team arrived in Seoul, he predicted that the outbreak had reached its peak. “It may hopefully go into a stable condition tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” he said, according to a Yonhap News Agency report. The respiratory virus, which appears to have jumped from camels to humans, arrived in South Korea last month in a 68-year-old man who had traveled to four Middle Eastern countries, and went to four hospitals upon his return to try to find out what was wrong with him. Almost all the transmissions have occurred in hospitals where infected people were treated. A member of the South Korean air force who is stationed at an American military base in Osan, near one of the hospitals visited by “Patient Zero,” was infected after visiting the hospital for an Achilles tendon injury. The sixth person to die from the virus was an 80-year-old man at a hospital in the central city of Daejeon. The government finally gave in to public demands Sunday for a list of the 24 hospitals and clinics that had treated MERS patients after saying it would not name them partly to avoid hurting the hospitals commercially. It turned out that 17 people were infected at the Samsung Medical Center, which is part of the Samsung business empire and is in the ritzy southern Seoul suburb of Gangnam. The lack of transparency has led fearful South Koreans to remain behind locked doors — even though health authorities have said the virus is difficult to catch through casual contact. Fears were fueled further when it emerged that a doctor who was infected with MERS attended a conference in late May with 1,565 other people. More than 2,300 people are now in quarantine, and the government is monitoring their cellphones to make sure they do not leave their homes. The incubation period ranges from two to 14 days. The outsize reaction to the outbreak is largely linked to the government’s handling of it, analysts said. “People panicked because of the uncertainty,” said Han Sung-hoon, a social scientist at Yonsei University. “Information access is a fundamental element in democracy. When this access was denied, people became more confused and concerned.” Some lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties called on Park to delay her trip to the United States while the crisis continued. Park’s job approval rating has dropped six points, to 34 percent, in a week, according to a Gallup Korea poll published last week. Even before the MERS outbreak, Park was flailing. She has been hit by a series of scandals involving her top personnel, with a steady procession of prime ministers or candidates for prime minister having to stand down over allegations of financial and other wrongdoing. She was widely criticized for her government’s handling of the Sewol ferry disaster in April 2014 and she was again criticized this year for traveling to South America on the anniversary of the crisis. Scott Snyder, an expert on Korea at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the latest crisis to befall Park, coming in the middle of her five-year tenure, could limit her ability to make progress. “The third year is the most important in terms of deliverables,” Snyder said. “If MERS cases continue to expand and rob her of her momentum once again, there is a possibility that she will be left with a meager set of accomplishments to claim during her presidency.” Meanwhile, almost 2,000 schools have canceled classes. The streets of Seoul and the city’s subway cars are as empty as they are during Korean Thanksgiving, the biggest holiday of the year. “I try not to leave the house unless I need to, and when I leave I always wear a mask,” said Cecilia Suh, whose face was covered with large sunglasses and a white mask as she made a rare trip out to have her cellphone fixed. “I don't use public bathrooms or take public transportation.” Movie theaters, department stores and supermarkets are reporting a sharp drop in business. Many sporting events have been canceled or postponed. Chun Sung-bae, who runs a cafe in the bustling Shinchon area of Seoul, said he was seeing 20 to 30 percent fewer customers. “Usually around this time of the day, we don’t have empty tables, but as you can see, there are many,” he said at 4 p.m. Monday. “I'm worried about how I’m going to pay this month’s rent if this condition continues.” The Korea Tourism Organization said that more than 45,000 tourists from Asia had canceled planned visits to South Korea in the first week of this month, local broadcaster News1 reported. **** South Korea quarantines more than 1,300 in race against MERS In South Korea, Samsung prepares to crown third-generation ‘emperor’ Gallery: Anniversary of Sewol sinking

MERS is serious but is not yet a global health emergency, WHO says

Despite a rapid increase in cases of a deadly viral infection that emerged in the Middle East two years ago, the World Health Organization said the MERS outbreak is not yet a global health emergency. In a news conference Wednesday in Geneva, the agency said a special emergency committee of health and infectious-disease experts agreed that the situation has become increasingly serious and urgent. But because “there is not convincing evidence” that the disease has become more transmissible from person to person, the experts said, it does not yet meet the criteria for being declared a public health emergency of international concern, according to WHO spokesman Keiji Fukuda. The emergency committee found that much of the recent surge in cases was from large outbreaks of MERS in hospitals in Saudi Arabia, where some emergency rooms are crowded and infection control and prevention are “sub-optimal.” The WHO group called for all hospitals to immediately strengthen infection prevention and control measures. Basic steps, such as washing hands and proper use of gloves and masks, would have an immediate impact on reducing the number of cases, he said. The virus, which causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, infections in people, has been confirmed in 571 cases reported to the WHO, including 171 deaths. There are two confirmed cases in the United States. One patient in Indiana has recovered. The second patient is hospitalized in Orlando. Two hospital employees who were exposed to the Florida patient have developed flulike symptoms, and one has been hospitalized. Hospital officials said Wednesday that the two symptomatic employees have tested negative for the virus. They are awaiting test results on 18 other health-care workers. Meanwhile, the patient with MERS remains in isolation but no longer has a fever. MERS, which was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, can cause severe acute respiratory illness with fever, cough and shortness of breath. More than 30 percent of known patients who have symptoms of MERS have died. The virus is from the same family of viruses as SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed almost 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002. In Saudi Arabia, where most of the cases have occurred and where millions of people from around the world will make pilgrimages during Ramadan in July and the hajj in October, there appears to be little sense of urgency about the disease. Just since Saturday, 19 patients have died, bringing the total number of MERS victims since September 2012 to 152. A few people have begun wearing masks in the streets and at airports to try to protect themselves against the disease, but with the method of transmission of MERS still uncertain, prevention efforts have focused on camels. The virus has been found in camels in Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and in a bat in Saudi Arabia. A kingdom-wide awareness campaign launched Tuesday warned people to avoid raw camel meat and liver and unpasteurized camel milk. People were advised to thoroughly cook the camel meat they do consume. In a separate initiative, schools were to be provided with toilet paper and soap in an effort to heighten awareness of the disease among students. A report in the Arab News newspaper this week suggested that the threat of MERS had been exaggerated by the media. “Media blamed for panic over deadly virus,” read the headline. Most of those who caught the disease “had recklessly come into contact with other people with the flu,” the story quoted a doctor as saying. A recovered MERS patient told the newspaper that it is untrue that all patients who catch MERS die and that she recovered after spending three weeks in a hospital and drinking honey and ginger syrup. During the news conference in Geneva on Wednesday, Fukuda responded to repeated questions about why the committee has not declared MERS a global health emergency. “Calling for a global emergency is a major act. . . . It means you will raise anxieties,” he said. “You have to have really solid information this is a global emergency.” Last week, the WHO declared the spread of polio to several countries to be a global health emergency. It was only the second time the WHO has made such an announcement since rules allowing such designations were adopted by the organization in 2007. Fukuda said the two diseases “present two different kinds of dilemmas for the world.” The recent spread of polio is an international public health emergency threatening to undermine the decades-long global effort to beat the disease, he said. “We are not in the middle of eradication of MERS,” Fukuda said. The appearance of the virus is more like that of some other viruses that have arisen over the past decade, he said. Some of those, such as the H7N9 bird-flu virus, have the potential to cause a global outbreak because influenza viruses constantly change and can spread easily. But others have “receded into the background,” he said. For MERS, he said, experts do not know yet “which direction [it is] going to go in.” Related: 9 things you need to know about MERS Second case of MERS surfaces in the U.S.

S. Korea expands ban on fish from northeastern Japan, citing radiation concerns

SEOUL — South Korea on Friday banned imports of fish from a long coastal strip by Japan’s still-leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in a sign of widening fears in the region about an environmental disaster that the Japanese are struggling to contain. A government spokesman in Seoul attributed the decision to “sharply increased” public concern about seafood in Japan — particularly as hundreds of tons of toxic water flow daily from the stricken facility into the ocean. South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries also criticized Japan for its failure to provide clear information about the condition of the plant, site of three March 2011 meltdowns and an increasingly complex clean-up job. Japan emphasized that its seafood is safe and subject to “stringent” international controls, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo. But the South Korean ban deals a blow to Japan’s image ahead of a Saturday vote by the International Olympic Committee on the host of the 2020 Summer Games. Tokyo — located 150 miles south of Fukushima Daiichi — is one of the three finalists, along with Madrid and Istanbul, and Japanese officials have spent recent days assuring committee members that their country is safe. The South Korean import ban marks a major expansion of existing restrictions, under which 49 species of fish from Fukushima are blocked from the Korean market. A handful of other species from the broader region, mostly bottom-feeders, have also been banned. Now, all fish from nearly 600 miles of coastline are banned, “regardless of whether they are contaminated or not,” the Oceans and Fisheries Ministry said. The ban includes areas as far south as Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo. Suga said Friday that contamination was limited to an area of only several hundred yards around the plant. Although Japan’s central government said in December 2011 that its reactors had been stabilized and their core temperatures cooled to far safer levels, the decommissioning of the cracked and leaky plant has caused a new set of environmental concerns. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which operates the plant, recently admitted after months of denials that water was still leaking into the ocean from trenches near the reactor buildings. Engineers have struggled to contain the toxic water, which is not only entering the sea but also flowing into critical buildings as it mixes with groundwater. So far, Tepco has tried to pump out that toxic water and store it in massive gray tanks on the outskirts of the facility. But one of those hastily built tanks has already sprung a leak. Others still might, regulators say. Japan’s government pledged Tuesday to spent nearly $500 million to contain the toxic water problem, in part by freezing soil around the reactors. Engineers would pump a coolant through pipes, creating a seal that prevents groundwater from entering the facility. But analysts say it’s unclear whether such technology, which is costly, can serve as a long-term solution.

South Korea’s Jeju Island, paradise with a dark side

I’m standing with a social worker beneath the palm trees outside a municipal building in the main city of Jeju Island. We’re talking about a nearby naval base, which the South Korean government is trying to build and a number of islanders are trying to prevent. She’s repeating a familiar refrain about Jeju — that it’s a paradise on Earth, but one with a dark side. The naval base is only the latest indignity inflicted on this semitropical island 60 miles south of the Korean mainland. “It’s just like the story of Genesis in the Bible,” I say. “Even the Garden of Eden had a snake.” She likes this line. Throwing her head back, she laughs very hard. Then she wallops me on the shoulder. It’s supposed to be an affectionate cuff. But the social worker is a solidly built woman in her 50s, and she nearly throws me off my feet. I laugh, too, while covertly feeling my shoulder for damage. The women of Jeju have a reputation for strength. The island is famous for its haenyeo, female divers who gather abalone and other seafood for up to five hours a day in the cold sea — without scuba gear. The diver figurines for sale in the haenyeo museum on Jeju look like Snow White with goggles. But the real haenyeo are squat, powerful women, many of them still working in this dying profession into their 60s and 70s. The contrast between the hokey figurines and the people they depict illustrates the contradictions of Jeju. The island features several UNESCO World Heritage natural sites and is a premier honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds. But the South Korean government is tearing up the island’s southern coastline to build a modern naval base that would host the country’s three top-of-the-line destroyers. Islanders have a reputation for being more laid back than mainland Koreans, but Jeju also has a long tradition of fiercely resisting outside pressure. This is my first time in Jeju. After dozens of visits to South Korea, I’m astonished by this island; it’s as if I’ve discovered that a relative’s dark, cramped house has a large, sunny room that I never knew about. South Korea is certainly a dynamic place, as the tourist bureaus endlessly repeat, but it doesn’t win a lot of points for prettiness. The capital, Seoul, is almost wholly without charm. The country’s reputation for rapid change — and the almost ceaseless destruction of war and invasion over the past 1,000 years — has eradicated much of what attracts visitors to other regional jewels such as Japan’s Kyoto and Suzhou in China. Korea possesses a good deal of natural beauty, such as the forests around Mount Sorak in the northeast and the seaside villages. But Jeju is the one place in Korea where the attractions — from magnificent beaches and splendid coastal hikes to excellent food and intriguing museums — are concentrated in a single easily accessible stretch of territory. In fact, Jeju Island is the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s only triple-crown winner, with designations as a natural preserve, a natural heritage and a geological park. Recently, the island was also listed as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world. Jeju has a spectacular volcanic cone that looks like a grass-covered butte, the longest lava tunnel in the world, and an immense extinct volcano, Mount Halla, at the very center of the island. Jeju is three times the size of Thailand’s Phuket but attracts one-sixth the number of foreign tourists. * * * Perhaps the most interesting thing about Jeju is its contribution to the relatively new field of “dark tourism.” Over a meal of the island’s famous black pig, Anne Hilty, a cultural health psychologist from New York now living on Jeju, tells me that tragic sites, such as Holocaust museums or the new Sept. 11 memorial in New York, are drawing tourists looking for something beyond escapism. For the people of Jeju, she says, a focus on these dark patches of history can either perpetuate a “victim mentality” or serve “as a reminder of the need to work for peace and human rights issues on the premise of ‘never again.’ ” My first brush with Jeju’s dark side comes on arrival, although I won’t find this out until later. The airport outside Jeju City is bright and new. But buried beneath the runways are hundreds of victims of execution who were thrown into mass graves. Excavations in 2007 turned up more than 200 bodies, a small fraction of the roughly 30,000 islanders killed in 1948 when Korean authorities and right-wing vigilantes, with the compliance of the U.S. military, suppressed a popular rebellion. This sordid history is captured with elegiac power at the 4.3 Museum. Located in the Peace Park on the outskirts of Jeju City, the museum is named after an uprising against Korean and U.S. military authorities on April 3, 1948. The crackdown on the uprising not only left 10 percent of the island’s population dead but also produced a huge wave of emigration. For decades, the Korean government suppressed the history of the 1948 tragedy. Only in the late 1990s did it acknowledge what had happened, and only in 2006 did it apologize. The museum memorializes the victims with photos, videos and oral histories. A visit to the other major museum in Jeju City, the Jeju National Museum, reveals that the 1948 rebellion was part of a longer tradition. The most famous example involves the 13th-century Koryo dynasty on the mainland, which, after initially combating the invading Mongols, ultimately switched sides and in essence collaborated with the enemy. The Jeju islanders, by contrast, continued to resist the combined Mongol-Koryo forces, just as they were later to put up a sustained fight against the Japanese, who occupied Korea during the first half of the 20th century. * * * The island and its beauty are well worth fighting for. I take a day trip from Jeju City due east to Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak, a kind of Mont St. Michel of compacted ash that’s connected to the island by a spit of land. Walking along the water, with the lava mountain rising up before me, I happen on a group of haenyeo preparing for the day’s work. They are dressed in black rubber suits and carry bright orange taewak, or floats, that look like fluorescent pumpkins and keep the divers buoyed as they recover their breath between dives. I chat with them about the weather conditions before they set off in their boat. Then I duck into a waterside restaurant for a breakfast of broiled chub mackerel, which comes out sizzling on a metal plate alongside a delightful assortment of panchan (side dishes) including cold acorn squash and warm strips of fish cake. Climbing up Seongsan, which is technically not a mountain but the result of an underwater volcanic eruption, is an ordeal. It’s not particularly steep, and the trail isn’t long. But it’s so crowded with tourists that you might as well be at the mall on Black Friday. The views down onto Seongsan port and the nearby islands, however, make enduring the ascending scrum worth it. For a more tranquil hike, I take a ferry to the largest of the islands — U-do — where the highest point affords similarly spectacular views. U-do is known for its peanuts, so I make sure to try the peanut noodles at a cafe at the base of the promontory and the peanut ice cream at a convenience store as a reward after making my way back down. Heading back from Seongsan, I tramp through the nearly mile-long Manjanggul, the largest lava tunnel in the world. It’s cold, dark and wet, which is perfect for a hot summer day in the semitropics. Another must-see site is the Cheonjiyeon waterfall in the southern part of the island, with a nearby temple and arboretum (and a Teddy bear museum if your kids aren’t nature types). Not far from the waterfall is Gangjeong village, the site of the naval base under construction. Protesters have tried to stop the bulldozers. The town’s mayor has gone to jail over the base, the country’s most prominent film critic has gone on hunger strike, and celebrities such as Gloria Steinem have raised their voices in protest. Now, since the police pushed them back from the construction site, the protesters occupy an empty lot not far from the large metal fence that shields the base construction from view. Every night they sing, dance, pass around tangerines and speak out against the Korean government’s actions. It’s protest Jeju-style. Not everyone in Gangjeong opposes the construction. Some believe that the base will bring jobs to the island. The protesters believe that the price is too high to pay. The island, after all, depends on tourists, drawing them with its natural attractions, the haenyeo and quirky museums such as Love Land, with its 140 outdoor sculptures of couples in myriad sex positions. There’s also the food. I try the Jeju versions of yukejang, which is more like comforting beef gravy than the traditionally spicy hot broth, and samgyetang, a soul-warming chicken soup featuring an entire chicken, ginseng, Chinese dates and abalone with so much rice in it that it’s practically gruel. I also have a couple of meals of Jeju’s famous black pig. The meat arrives in thick fatty slabs, pink and white, which you grill and eat with soy paste and cabbage kimchi and wash down with the rice wine known as makgeolli. But my most spectacular Jeju meal is in the Samyang neighborhood of Jeju City after my day of climbing lava formations and tunneling underground. I’m supposed to meet someone at Momaejon Garden restaurant to try its famous pumpkin duck. But my guest can’t make it, so I’m there by myself. I order the duck because it’s a dish served nowhere else. “That’s too much for one person,” says the proprietor, Lee Hae Seong. “But I’ve heard so much about this dish, that it’s unique, that I have to try it,” I respond. “It’s for three or four people,” she says. “I’m pretty hungry,” I say, embarrassed. She looks skeptical. “You’ll take the leftovers home?” “Absolutely!” I promise. The order arrives: a mound of smoked duck with wild mushrooms and garlic atop wedges of acorn squash, drizzled with barbecue sauce and surrounded by an astonishing assortment of side dishes: pickled persimmon, spicy sesame leaves, fried tofu. Next to it is a big bowl of greens that include lettuce, chicory, sesame and kohlrabi. There’s a special mustard sauce alongside the usual red spicy pepper paste. The owner sits down across from me and we talk. She asks where I’m from, about my family. She tells me that she used to have a restaurant in Seongsan. She opened this place seven years ago. I ask whether she runs the place with her family. “No,” she says. “Just me. And my staff.” I hear a sad story in her voice, but before I can probe, she takes a piece of lettuce and a piece of chicory, places a piece of duck and a piece of squash in the middle, adds some spicy bean sprouts and some of the mustard sauce. She wraps it up and holds it out for me. I start to take it in my hands. But no, she ignores my hands and pushes the little bundle directly into my mouth as if I were a baby. I could try to resist. But she’s a strong and persuasive woman. And the pumpkin duck is like nothing I’ve ever tasted, sweet and salty and smoky but with a touch of bitterness from the chicory. I feel as though I’ve taken a bite out of Jeju itself. The more I eat, the more I think I understand the island. But in the end, it’s too much for me, too much to eat in one sitting, too much to absorb in one short visit. Feffer is the author of a book and numerous articles about Korea.

How one joke photo has become a symbol of South Korea’s fears about MERS

The fear of MERS in South Korea is real but a photo that has become a symbol of that fear is not. It’s a joke but that didn’t stop it from going viral. Contracted through close contact, the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has negatively impacted attendance in public places in South Korea. Reuters reports that department stores, discount stores, movie theaters, amusement parks, and baseball stadiums have also seen declines in sales or visitors. Fearful shoppers are skipping brick-and-mortar shops and turning to Internet vendors instead as evidenced by an increase in online purchases in the country, according to Reuters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So far, 9 people have died, the total number of infections sits at 108 and more than 2,800 are quarantined.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico [ _Past coverage: 9 things you need to know about MERS_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So when a young couple’s wedding photo — which shows the couple along with their guests all wearing surgical masks — hit South Korean social media, it became a statement about how MERS is plaguing the county. _[South Korea’s Park delays trip to U.S. over MERS outbreak]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the couple and their guests had no intention of making a statement. Hwang Myung-Hwan, the couple’s wedding planner, told Agence France-Press the photo wasn’t suppose to be taken seriously.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “They had already taken normal group photos without masks when they decided to do something fun,” he told AFP. Hwang said his “firm had handed out 200 masks as a message for ‘the couple to live a healthy life’ together,” AFP also reported. “The photo was never meant to fan fears about MERS or scare anyone,” Hwang said. But the photo’s intended message was quickly lost as it was shared and reposted online. **More Morning Mix stories about photos:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The moment South Asian migrants, desperately in need of water, got some rain    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ‘Beautiful, engaging and impossible to forget’: Mary Ellen Mark and her most intimate subject    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Wildlife experts: Photo of bobcat catching shark is a first — but probably not a fake    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Chinese tourists, with Korean drama stars in mind, flock to Seoul for cosmetic surgery

All around the southern Seoul district of Gangnam — the area of conspicuous consumption made famous by the hit song “Gangnam Style” — Chinese women walk down the street with bandages over their faces and around their heads. Some, despite hoodies pulled up and parasols pulled down, are so badly bruised and swollen that they look as if they’ve just survived a car accident — if only barely. They’re riding the latest crest of the Korean Wave: plastic surgery. Korean cultural exports — especially the manufactured “K-Pop” music and schmaltzy soap operas — have become a phenomenon across Asia. There’s a huge following in China, in particular, and an increasing number of fans are coming to South Korea not just for shopping and sightseeing, but also for nips and tucks — and more. “Naturally, Korean dramas and K-Pop has a lot to do with it,” said Hong Sung- bum, a plastic surgeon and the director of the BK Hospital, a 15-story building in Gangnam devoted to various kinds of cosmetic additions or subtractions, which employs 30 Chinese-speaking staff. “There are lots of Chinese patients who come here asking to look like a certain Korean Wave star,” he said in his office, still wearing his blue scrubs and rubber clogs. On the desk sat a skull wearing a Burberry-pattern headband. Right now, the hottest look is Jun Ji-hyun, the star of “My Love From the Star,” a soap opera with an unlikely story line: An alien accidentally arrives on Earth 400 years ago, meets an arrogant female pop star and falls in love. Women covet not just Jun’s wardrobe and her lifestyle, but her face, too. But don’t think this is just a female thing. A considerable number of men want to look more like Kim Soo-hyun, who plays the alien character. As the Korean government promotes ever-closer economic relations with China, it is busily promoting a “Korean medical wave.” The Korean Tourism Organization regularly organizes plastic surgery expos in Beijing and Shanghai, where K-Pop singers and dancers perform and women learn how to do their makeup like Korean Wave stars. Groups of doctors offer advice to prospective patients. “We tell them that these people are not just doctors, they’re beauty designers,” said Kim Su-jin, an official at the KTO’s medical tourism division. The Korean surgery craze is part of a broader boom in tourism from China and comes as arrivals from Japan have fallen sharply amid worsening geopolitical tensions. According to KTO figures, 56,075 Chinese visitors had medical treatment in South Korea last year, rising 26.5 percent from the previous year and up from just 4,725 in 2009. (Not all of them had plastic surgery: The numbers for 2013 have not yet been released, but almost 10,000 Chinese had plastic surgery in Korea in 2012.) “The Korean dramas definitely had an effect on my decision to come here,” said Xu Xiao Hong, a 28-year-old office worker from Tsingtao, who was visiting the BK clinic during a shopping trip to Korea. “I think Korean actresses are very beautiful,” she said. Carefully made up and trendily dressed in short shorts and platform sandals, she cut a stylish figure. What’s more, she had a megawatt smile. But Xu said she had a complex about her cheekbones. They were too prominent, she said, and she wanted to find out about having them fixed. “Normally it doesn’t bother me, but when I see myself in photos, all I can see is my cheeks,” she said in one of the consultation rooms at BK. She is getting married next year and wants her wedding pictures to be perfect. Her fiance — who, she said, had no complaints about her appearance — knew she was in Korea but not that she was consulting a plastic surgeon. “If the consultation goes well, I will talk to my boyfriend and my parents about it,” she said. “It’s a pretty big operation.” Indeed, it is. While the most common procedures are operations to make Caucasian-style double-eyelids (with clinics charging $700 to $1,500) and nose jobs ($1,500 to $4,500), a sizable proportion of patients, like Xu, want “facial contouring” — invasive surgery that involves shaving or chopping away bones. One particularly common procedure — which Hong, the surgeon, calls “super smile surgery” — is for patients who think their chins are too prominent. It involves cutting whole sections out of their jawbones so that their entire mouth and chin can be pushed back. Although it takes only three hours, the recovery takes a good six months. There have been reports of women suffering from severe complications — such as jaws that no longer meet — and even deaths during some of the more invasive operations. But Hong says the most common risk is patient dissatisfaction. “This is not a clothing store where you can shop for the clothes that Jun wears,” Hong says. “When a patient comes in and says that they want to look like her, we go through a consultation process and try to find a halfway point.” The Korean plastic surgery craze creates big business in China, too. Chinese travel agencies offer tour packages that combine several days of sightseeing with longer periods of plastic surgery. Ocean International Travel Service offers a typical five-day tour for about $1,000, surgeries not included. The plastic surgery industry has become so dominant in Gangnam that some intersections feature clinics on all four corners. The underpasses to the subway station are wallpapered with ads for cosmetic enhancements. Sitting up in a hospital bed in a recovery room at BK, with a blue mask over her mouth and a drip in her arm, Chen Mao said she started aging more rapidly when she hit 35 three years ago and wanted to do something about it. She had fat from her midriff injected into her face to smooth out the lines, a procedure that she said appealed to her because it didn’t involve going under the knife. “I want to look more youthful, and with this procedure, I can have a better texture,” Chen said, patting her bandages. On this trip, she’s been seeing some tourist sites, doing a lot of shopping and eating in nice restaurants. “I’ve done a lot to help the Korean economy,” she laughed, estimating that she had spent a total of $8,000. As with Xu, it was the Korean Wave that washed her ashore here. “I know that Korean celebrities’ beauty is not natural, and I know that they all have their surgeries done in Gangnam,” she said. “So I wanted to be like them and invest my time and money here, too.”

Japan’s Fukuoka and South Korea’s Busan: Sister cities a hydrofoil ride apart

Almost 70 years after World War II ended, and with it Japan’s occupation of Korea, the two countries still eye each other suspiciously. In Tokyo, ultra-nationalists protest the very existence of Shin-Okubo, the city’s Koreatown. In Seoul, demonstrators assail Japan for 20th-century war crimes and its more recent claim of a few Korean-controlled oceanic rocks that both sides optimistically call “islands.” For all the ideological barriers, the two countries are culturally and geographically intimate. This is exemplified by the relationship between the sister cities of Fukuoka (in Japan) and Busan (in South Korea), which face each other across the Tsushima Strait. Visiting both on the same trip is easy — they’re linked by the Beetle, a two-decked hydrofoil — as well as enlightening. The abundant connections between Japan and Korea are particularly clear at ground, and sea, level. Fukuoka (“lucky hill”) is the largest city on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands; Busan (“kettle mountain”) is South Korea’s second-biggest city, nearer to Japan than to Seoul. Since 1990, the jet-engined ships have linked the two cities, making the trip in two hours 55 minutes. Although Busan has approximately three times the population of Fukuoka, the two have much in common. Both are port cities with bustling industrial harbors, and both have long been involved in the exchange of goods and ideas among Japan, Korea and China. Neither is considered a top tourist attraction, but each is dynamic and easily negotiated. Coincidentally, both cities have dual downtowns. Central Busan includes office towers and fancy shops but is mostly rough-edged and working-class. The city’s more glamorous precinct is Haeundae, which stretches along the coast to the east of downtown. It’s home to the upscale Centum City complex, with the Guinness-certified world’s largest department store, and the annual Busan International Film Festival, one of Asia’s most prestigious, which is held every October. Fukuoka’s upscale office and shopping area is Tenjin, but the city also incorporates Hakata, separate until 1876 and a continuing source of confusion. Hakata station was for decades the southern terminus of Japan’s high-speed Shinkansen trains, which now continue southeast to Kagoshima. Anyone who travels by train to Fukuoka needs to know that its station is called Hakata. (So is the port where the Beetle docks.) **Cautious borders** I arrived in Fukuoka by air from Hong Kong, using a Cathay Pacific promotional deal that bundled a free jaunt to Japan with a trip to the former British colony. The ease of getting around Fukuoka was immediately apparent: The airport’s domestic terminal is just two subway stops from central Hakata. Also obvious was the importance of tourists from certain countries. Transit and informational signs in Japan used to be in Japanese and English, but increasingly they’re also in Korean and Chinese. Every such sign I saw in Fukuoka offered all four languages; the same was true in Busan. Both Japan and Korea encourage tourism, of course, but with some lingering ambivalence. Japan was tightly closed to outsiders from around 1600 until 1854, and Korea was known as the “hermit kingdom” during the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty, which lasted to 1897. (Japan annexed the country soon after, in 1910.) Mistrust of foreigners can be seen at both countries’s entrance points. Busan’s port, for example, is the only place in the world I’ve ever had my hand luggage X-rayed on both arrival and departure. Exchanging currency is also more involved in Japan and Korea than in, say, Hong Kong, where foreigners and their money are always welcome. Acquiring yen at a Japanese bank is about as slow and complicated a ritual as a tea ceremony. Far simpler is Daikokuya, a chain that’s not designed for English speakers, but will swap anyone’s yen and dollars quickly, and at good rates. At one near Hakata station, I loaded up on yen. Then I put a few thousand of them on a Suica card — a Tokyo cousin of D.C.’s SmarTrip, which works in most Japanese transit systems — and headed underground. Although most small businesses in Japan don’t accept credit cards, chip-enabled transit cards such as Suica can be used at many newsstands, eateries and convenience stores (transliterated and abridged in “V”-less Japanese to “conbini.”) Deployed wisely, such a card can save visitors from accumulating a pocketful of small-value coins. **Peacefully frenzied Fukuoka** As an experiment, I decided to stay in a “cabin” hotel, a slightly roomier version of Japan’s hivelike capsule hotels. My room at First Cabin, in the Nakasu area, was essentially a bed inside a windowless storage container, with a light, a shelf, electrical outlets, a curtain at one end and a wall-mounted TV without a speaker. (Headphones were available.) Anyone who wanted to make noise was directed to a small lounge outside the sleeping area. This clearly was no place to linger, but naturally I had livelier destinations. It was mid-September, time for Hojoya, one of Fukuoka’s top three festivals. (Most of Japan’s attractions are ranked into top-threes.) Held at a Shinto shrine, Hakozaki, Hojoya combines Shinto and Buddhist traditions with an atmosphere reminiscent of an American county fair. The occasion serves to welcome autumn and as a sort of thanksgiving, but in gratitude simply for life itself. Hakozaki is a few blocks from the closest subway station, but as soon as I reached ground level I was swept into the mass inching toward the shrine, identifiable by its large romon, a wing-roofed tower gate. In some places, such a throng might be intimidating, but not here. One of the many civic arts the Japanese have mastered is moving safely and graciously in crowds. The path was lined with yatai (stalls) that offered games and souvenirs, but mostly food, both traditional and imported. The lines were daunting, but I managed to purchase a few snacks, including a roasted ear of corn, a staple of Japanese street food. Another subway ride returned me to the neighborhood of my hotel, where art and commerce jumbled in the usual Japanese manner. The complex layering of its culture — old and new, silly and profound, ugly and beautiful — is one of the things that draws me back to Japan. The other is that it _works_ ; what makes Japan feel futuristic is not robots or bullet trains, but the ease and efficiency of daily life. Across the street from First Cabin, on the top two floors of an eight-story retail complex, is the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, which bills itself as the world’s only museum of contemporary Asian art. No woodblock prints or delicate teacups here. Continuing through Nov. 30 is the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, featuring the work of 36 artists or teams from as far away as Pakistan, Nepal and Saudi Arabia. It’s interesting to see a survey of contemporary art that includes no Westerners, although the two Cambodian participants are both refugees who grew up in the United States before returning to their birthplace. One of them appears in a video, ranting in English. Much of the work is political, a category that often means — as in Western art today — the politics of personal identity. A Muslim woman had herself photographed in an outfit that combines a chador, a face-revealing covering, with the segments of a giant orange caterpillar; a Chinese woman turned her own anatomy inside out to invent a superhero, Uterus Man, who rides a sanitary-pad skateboard. A Thai video artist shows people who lie face-down on the ground when they’re supposed to stand for the twice-daily playing of the national anthem. A Sinhalese Sri Lankan superimposed images of himself on photos of a trip to the mostly Tamil north, a possible voyage of reconciliation after the Sinhalese majority defeated the Tamil Tiger insurgency. From a quieter region comes an exchange project between artists in Fukuoka and Busan, the Watagata Arts Network. The name is from the Korean for “come and go.” **Grit and grandeur in Busan** I went, and within a few hours was walking the streets of Busan. For anyone who’s been to Japan, Korea looks rather familiar. Both are packed with conbinis, department stores, English-language signage, names derived from Chinese and cat cafes, where by-the-hour guests can commune with the resident felines. The Koreans and the Japanese also share an enthusiasm for big-eyed cartoon characters, who not only entertain and advertise but also dispense safety advice. Busan looks a bit more ragged than Fukuoka, with a dodgy Chinatown that also includes a lot of Russian businesses. Sometimes, the scruffiness is intentional: The 40 Steps area, within walking distance of the ferry terminal, retains the look of war-weary 1960s Korea, which makes it a useful movie location. There’s even a your-head-here placard where visitors can pose with stills from films shot in the neighborhood. At the juncture of the subway’s north-south Line 1 and east-west Line 2 is the more fashionable Seomyeon. This area of pedestrianized streets offers the usual array of Body Shops and Pizza Huts, as well as homegrown businesses and the Angel Hotel, where I booked a traditional ondol room. It’s designed for a yo, the Korean equivalent of a futon, which is laid on a ceramic floor. The surface is heated during cold weather, a potentially nice touch, but the floor is appreciably harder than the tatami mats of traditional Japanese lodgings. A subway ride east took me to Centum City, where I explored the massive Shinsegae department store, which has 18 floors (including underground parking and three stories of head room for the rooftop golf range). Yet the store seems to offer less merchandise than its largest Japanese rivals. It’s filled out by an ice rink, a large spa and a theme park that includes Dinosaur Land. There’s also a cinema, but big deal: The hulking yet not-world’s-largest Lotte department store next door has one of those, too. Overwhelmingly, the goods in both stores are prestige American and European products, supplemented by a few Japanese lines. In Shinsegae’s basement food hall, I skipped Johnny Rockets in favor of a rotating-belt sushi place. There are some notable historical attractions in the hills around Busan, but I opted to go a little further, to Gyeong-ju, home of Korea’s only two UNESCO world heritage sites. Once the capital of the Silla Dynasty (57 BCE-935 CE), Gyeong-ju has serene temples, ancient ruins and mountain hiking trails. The excursion also offered a chance to ride KTX, Korea’s 10-year-old high-speed rail system. Like a lot of things in Korea, KTX is less slick than its Japanese counterpart, yet entirely serviceable. A 30-minute sprint, mostly through tunnels, took me from Busan to Singyeongju. (“Sin,” pronounced “shin,” means the same thing it does in Japanese: “new.”) A 15-minute bus ride to the center of the nondescript city was just the first of many buses. Gyeong-ju’s landmarks are mostly scattered around its outskirts and served by two loop lines, running in opposite directions. Fairly close to the center is the Gyeong-ju National Museum, an impressive complex of several separate buildings. One structure, Wolji Hall, contains only artifacts excavated from a pond at the former Silla Palace. Among them are items that were probably imported from Japan during the Nara period (710-794), long before hydrofoils. Within walking distance is what is probably the area’s oldest surviving structure, the stone pagoda at Bunhwangsa Temple, built in 634. The pagoda has a lost a few stories as it’s collapsed inward on itself, yet retains its traditional form. To the south, a large lake has become the focus of a highly Americanized resort. The loop bus swoops past this area and ends at Bulguksa Temple, which is impressive both for its architecture and its sylvan hillside setting. The UNESCO-certified complex was founded in 751, although most of its structures have been rebuilt much more recently. A 30-minute uphill hike, or another bus, leads to the other world heritage site, the Seokguram Grotto. Photography is forbidden in this carved-granite cave temple, where a large seated Buddha, disappointingly behind glass, is flanked by 12 sculpted guards. Bulguksa Station, on a conventional train line, offers slow rides south to the Haeundae side of Busan, whose recently relocated station is convenient to nothing. I took the train anyway, to get a different view of the territory between Busan and Gyeongju, and was rewarded with a mostly industrial landscape. The train ride, a bus to the subway and then the trip back to my hotel lasted longer than the hydrofoil voyage that conveyed me, the next day, back across the placid strait to Fukuoka. There are no direct or nonstop flights from Washington to either Fukuoka or Busan. American, United, Japan, China and Asian Airlines are among the carriers that offer two-stop trips, via National, BWI or Dulles, to either Tokyo and Seoul. Fares start around $1,300. The Beetle and its Korean equivalent, the Kobee, run four or five times a day. A weekday round trip costs about $170. Terminal and fuel surcharges add about $25 each way. JR Kyushu’s Web site offers basic information in English, but its reservation page is in Japanese. For English-language booking, try www.aferry.com/jr-kyushu-beetle-ferry.htm. From Busan Station to Singyeongju by KTX takes a little under 30 minutes. A standard ticket is about $17. **First Cabin Fukuoka** 3-chome 7-24 Nakasu, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka **** +81 92-260-1852 www.first-cabin.jp/locationlist/fukuoka.html A clean and efficient, if kennel-like, place to sleep. Singles $28-36. ******Angel Hotel** ****Busan 46-7, Jungang-daero 692beon-gil, Busanjin-gu **** +82 51-802-8223 An old-fashioned but technologically up-to-date hotel in the lively Seomyeon area. Both Korean- and Western-style rooms. Singles $45-60. Informal, relatively inexpensive restaurants are common, and abundant in train stations, department stores and shopping and entertainment districts. The food, if seldom sublime, is never bad. **Hakozaki Shrine** 1-22-1 Hakozaki, Higashi Ward, Fukuoka +81 92-641-7431 A five-minute walk from Hakozaki-Miya-Mae subway station. One of Japan’s top three Hachiman (god of war) shrines and the site of several major festivals. **Fukuoka Asian Art Museum** Riverrain Center Building 3-1 Shimokawabata-machi, Hakata Ward, Fukuoka +81 92-263-1100 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; closed on Wednesdays. Admission about $1.80. faam.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/eng/home.html Subway: Nakasu-Kawabata station This two-floor gallery bills itself as the world’s only museum of contemporary Asian art. **Busan** etour.busan.go.kr/index.busan **40 Steps** 4-3, Saem-gil 44beon-gil, Jung-gu **** Subway: Junggang In this dockland neighborhood, preserved buildings and statues that represent former inhabitants memorialize Korea in the 1960s. **Centum City** **35** Centum nam-daero, Haeundae-gu, Busan, South Korea +82 22-026-9000 Subway: Centum City A high-rise mini-city in eastern Busan, home to the Busan International Film Festival and the world’s largest department store **Gyeongju** guide.gyeongju.go.kr/deploy/eng/ Once the capital of the Silla Dynasty, this area has dozens of historic sites, including temples, tombs, ruins and outdoor statuary. **Gyeongju National Museum** 186, Iljeong-ro, Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea +82 54-740-7500 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on weekdays, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. on Saturdays from March to December. Free. gyeongju.museum.go.kr/html/en/index.html This complex of museums holds artifacts from the Silla Dynasty, which once ruled southeastern Korea. **Bulguksa Temple** 15-1 Jinhyeon-dong, Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do +82 54-746-9913 guide.gyeongju.go.kr/deploy/eng/ Admission about $1.50 **** This large hillside Buddhist temple complex is one of Korea’s two UNESCO World Heritage Sites. **Fukuoka** www.yokanavi.com/eg **Busan** english.busan.go.kr/HomeMain.do **— M.J.**

Saudi Arabia must be transparent to fight MERS virus

SLOWLY OVER the past year, a novel respiratory virus has claimed victims in the Middle East, primarily in Saudi Arabia. It comes from a species known as coronavirus, which, through an electronic microscope, looks like a spiky blob. The virus has been named Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 157 laboratory-confirmed cases since September 2012, 66 people have died. It is not uncommon for humans and animals to exchange dangerous pathogens. In the past decade, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, also a coronavirus, rose out of China, perhaps from bats; the swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico; and avian flu has remained an ever-present threat to humans. What’s most important about these diseases is whether they are transmissible from human to human. It turned out that SARS and swine flu spread quickly among people. Transfer from animals is also suspected in MERS; reports have pointed to bats and camels as possible sources. But there is a big puzzle: Many of the people who came down with MERS were not exposed to bats or camels. So far, close contact between humans seems to provide some means of transmission, although it is still not clear how readily. The fear is that if the virus did become easily transmissible, it could spread fast and be fatal to many. A study published this month in the Lancet Infectious Diseases carried some unsettling findings about MERS. The study, by an international team, suggested that many cases are being missed, perhaps because they are not severe. The researchers estimated that 62 percent of the cases with human symptoms may not have been diagnosed as MERS. “We conclude that a slowly growing epidemic is underway,” they said, adding that it is not yet clear whether transmission is self-sustaining from human to human. A second, separate study concluded that it is not. Still, the WHO found that when the virus pops up in communities, clusters of illness develop in families and then it spreads in health-care facilities when a sick person is admitted. The behavior of this virus is a matter of concern to the world. Much is unknown, and much will depend on Saudi Arabia, which has reported a steady stream of cases, including 53 of the deaths so far. There are rumblings of worry among public health experts about the lack of good research coming from Saudi Arabia, with its traditions of isolation and opacity. A decade ago, the SARS epidemic shocked Chinese leaders into realizing that transparency was essential for battling a public health crisis. China has been far more open with the outbreak of H7N9 avian flu this year. The MERS coronavirus could mutate and pose a threat far beyond the Middle East. Before that moment, Saudi Arabia ought to learn a lesson from China and do everything it can to make sure the world’s wisdom and experience are brought to bear on this spiky blob. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: A more transparent battle with bird flu The Post’s View: On superbugs, the CDC sounds an alarm David E. Hoffman: ‘Nightmare’ bacteria are real, and the U.S. needs to act fast Tevi Troy: Five myths about the flu

Fire hits a North Korea landmark, the Koryo Hotel

TOKYO — The twin-towered Koryo Hotel in central Pyongyang, a regular haunt for delegations visiting North Korea, was reported to be on fire Thursday night. Flames could be seen high up in the 43-story hotel, possibly near the bridge at the 30th floor that connects the two towers, two foreign visitors in Pyongyang said, adding that they were not able to tell how serious the blaze was. Shortly after midnight Friday, a receptionist at the hotel told The Washington Post by phone that the fire was over, but declined to go into details about damage caused. The visitors said that several floors in one of the towers were burning and that there was a lot of smoke. Pyongyang had been experiencing heavy rainfall Thursday and that might have helped put out or minimize the fire. The Koryo, built in 1985, is a well-known landmark in Pyongyang and is favored by visitors, who often include visiting diplomats and nongovernmental organization workers, business people and academics. It is popular both because of its location and because it is fancy by North Korean standards. North Korea rates it as five star, although this is considered a three-star rating in the west. The hotel is within easy walking distance of the capital’s main train station, which is often crowded even though trains seldom come, and not far from Kim Il Sung Square, the city’s focal point. Journalists and other visitors often try — sometimes successfully — to escape their government-appointed minders and walk around the area. Its height also means that the rooms offer great views of the city, allowing guests to peer down on parts of the capital they would not be able to visit in person. Other hotels are typically nowhere near as well located, especially the Yanggakdo, nicknamed “Alcatraz,” which is on an island in the Taedong River and impossible to wander away from. The best-known hotel is one that’s not even open: The 105-story, pyramid-shaped Ryugyong hotel has been under construction for decades and has never been completed, although some progress has been made in recent years thanks to some investment by the Egyptian telecom company, Orascom. The Koryo, which features an impressive marble lobby with huge paintings of North Korean mountains, is also renowned for having a lively social scene — for North Korea — with its popular microbrewery, multiple restaurants and pool tables. It even has an operational swimming pool in the basement and a sometimes-operational revolving restaurant at the top of one of the towers. But the rooms, like so much else in North Korea, are dated. They feature loud brown carpet and faux wood paneling, and presumably a multitude of listening devices. Pyongyang urban legend has it that when a diplomat checked in to the Koryo for an extended period while his residence was being renovated, he had his room swept for bugs. Several dozen, of various generations, were found, so the story goes. Still, the Lonely Planet travel guide recommends the hotel as one its preferred hotels in Pyongyang — not that tourists get a say on where they stay. The hotel is so well known to visitors that it was even the setting for a murder mystery novel, “The Corpse in the Koryo,” written by a former intelligence agent who used the nom de plume James Church. In the book, a detective called Inspector O is assigned to investigate a murder after a body is found at the hotel. **Read more:** Gallery: Inside North Korea North Korea’s capital, with its water parks and new buildings, coddles the elite What’s it like to report from North Korea? Frustrating, mainly. Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

MERS fears in South Korea: Nearly 700 isolated as health officials seek to block spread

South Korean health officials isolated nearly 700 people on Monday in an effort to stop the spread of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome within its borders after 18 people became infected over the past 10 days -- a rate of transmission that appears more aggressive than in other countries. South Korea has been on high alert since May 20 when a 68-year-old man who had been traveling in Bahrain tested positive for the virus. Since then, the virus has been detected in a number of patients and visitors to the hospital where he was treated -- triggering global concern about whether the virus had mutated or genetic or environmental factors may have been at play. MERS, a coronavirus, is related to the one that infected thousands during the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and has no cure or vaccine. "We must find the reason for the high rate of transmission unlike in the cases of other countries," President Park Geun-hye told a meeting on Monday, according to Reuters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Associated Press reported that 682 family members, medical staff and others who had had close contact with the man who tested positive for the virus had been isolated in their homes or in state-run facilities. The country is considering imposing a travel ban on those individuals as well.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Since being first reported in 2012, MERS has been mostly contained to Saudi Arabia, the United Emirates and Jordan. The World Health Organization says that 1,150 case have been reported and 427 of the patients have died. The WHO detailed the status of the two most recent cases:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

In South Korea, hiking has become almost a national identity

South Koreans are weekend warriors. The sport of choice? Hiking. Mountains are everywhere, and most can be climbed in a day. You need only the following prerequisites: a love of nature, multi-course meals packed into Tupperware, several bottles of rice wine and high-end gear. Hiking has long been a South Korean pastime, but it has become more like a national identity. In a typical month, about 1 in 3 Koreans goes hiking _more_ than once. The mountainous national park north of Seoul attracts more visitors annually than the Grand Canyon. Part of this passion can be explained by geography. The country is a topographical eggshell mattress, covered with hundreds of steep, climbable peaks. But it’s the rituals surrounding Korean hiking that define mountain culture here. The pace is brisk, and at the top, big groups spread out on blankets and devour elaborate spreads. They also drink rice wine — sometimes lots of it. Amazingly, the hike down is also brisk. Although South Korea is famous for its pressure-cooker schools and 60-hour workweeks, hiking represents a far more attractive kind of endurance test. Koreans hold mountains in almost mythical regard, similar to the American veneration for the open spaces of the West. But only recently has hiking taken off as an activity for the masses, a product of national prosperity and increasing leisure time. (Not until 2004 did the government shorten the workweek from six to five days.) It helps that many of the country’s most picturesque mountains ring the outskirts of Seoul, a capital region that is home to about 25 million people. “It’s almost like an addiction,” said Shin Soon-no, 65, who hikes several times a week with her husband, Kim Hong-seong. “Your body starts to crave it.” Even farther afield, though, South Korean mountains tend to be clogged with a breathtaking flow of humanity — particularly on weekends. Traffic backs up on roads that lead to trailheads. In parking lots, groups pour out of buses, form circles and stretch. Women put on visors the size of umbrellas. In other countries, it might be acceptable to set out on a hike in sneakers and shorts. But in South Korea, mountaineer wear is the norm for even the tamest climbs. Those who show up in shabbier gear — typically younger folks — might get a friendly lecture about the importance of multiple layers and sweat-wicking technology. And anyone shamed into upgrading their clothing can do so right away. At the foot of Cheongye Mountain, a modest peak in southern Seoul, more than 20 outdoor companies — North Face, Marmot, Lafuma, Montbell — have stores. Jackets can cost $800, walking sticks $250. Apparel retailers say South Koreans wear, on average, $1,000 worth of garb for a summer hike. “And probably twice that in winter,” said Kim Sang-beom, owner of a Black Yak store, which sells the upscale Korean domestic outdoor brand. “Of course, you can wear jeans on a hike, but a lot of Koreans believe they need the perfect clothes,” Kim said. “There are a lot of hiking clubs in Korea, and let’s say you join a club and everybody is carrying hiking sticks and wearing the best gear. If you show up in jeans, you might feel very out of place.” Between 2006 and 2012, South Korea’s outdoor apparel market grew almost 500 percent, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a major daily newspaper. High-end gear is so commonplace that Koreans, particularly baby boomers, wear it even when going nowhere near a mountain. It’s suitable for traveling and shopping, restaurants and coffee shops. “Anything but weddings and funerals,” declared Kim Hye-yeong, 64, decked out in a light-green North Face jacket as she climbed a mountain with friends. Theories abound on why Koreans approach hiking as they do. Some say that South Korea has applied its hyper-competitiveness to the mountains — that hikers are in a race to look good and prove that they have money to spend. Others say the mountains are a place to experience a sense of community. It isn’t uncommon to see strangers share food at the summit, anything from dried persimmon to marinated beef. “The main purpose for hiking for most people is to be healthy,” said Kim Yong-won, a guide who leads weekend groups. “But for Koreans, it’s to eat on the mountains.” One recent Sunday, Kim’s group left Seoul at 6 a.m. bound for Odaesan, about three hours to the east. With the temperature in the low 80s, the hikers started on the crowded trail walking single-file. After about 30 minutes, the bottleneck loosened, and hikers moved up in twos or threes. The total distance was 13 kilometers — about eight miles — but several in Kim’s group said they were up for something more challenging. One took a detour that added several miles. Two women in their 50s joked that they wouldn’t even be sore afterward. Another hiker, Lee Tae-guk, said he has spent years seeking the toughest climbs, and not just in Korea. He’s walked Japan’s Mount Fuji, Malaysia’s Mount Kinabalu and Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. And after this hike, he was headed on another adventure. “Tibet,” he said. “I’m taking four days off this week. I’ll be sleeping in a tent.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

In suburban N.J., let off steam the traditional Korean way

A spa official handed us each a burlap bag, saying it was to protect us from burns when sitting on the floor. With a gulp I grabbed the bag and entered the kiln-shaped Bulhanzungmok, a Korean super sauna — an oak-fueled oven reaching 200 degrees. I was enveloped in heat, sweat forming immediately, the hot air sucking at my lungs and the floor hot on my feet. My wife, Carol, who loves heat, looked delighted. I found a space, dropped my bag to the floor, sat on it and looked around at the pink- and white-clad people sitting around me. When I emerged from the oven, my face was bright pink. Carol and I were at the King Spa in Palisades Park, N.J., the first municipality with a majority Korean population in the United States. The spa, hot tubs and saunas are a Korean tradition reaching back at least 500 years, and we were getting a taste of the modern version, known as jjimjilbang. Carol and I are not strangers to Korea, having served there in the Peace Corps many years ago. (And, as a disclaimer, despite my name, I am not Korean. ) But I was determined to get a Korean experience on this trip, eating only Korean food for a 24-hour period. And it really did feel like being in Korea. Hangul (the Korean alphabet) lettering appeared on almost every building on Broad Avenue, the main commercial drag in town. Korean was heard in the streets far more often than English. For lunch soon after our arrival, we chose a restaurant called Muk Eun Ji — for seafood noodles and bean paste stew. The portions were large and came with eight panchan items (side dishes); they included kimchi, spinach, tofu, bean sprouts, and a bubbling hot steamed egg served in a clay pot. As I paid the bill, the man at the counter politely accepted it with a slight bow as he extended his right hand while holding his left hand towards his body in the Korean fashion. I handed him the credit card in the same manner. After lunch we walked down Broad Avenue towards the public library on Second Street past shoe repair shops, clothing stores, hair salons and coffee shops, all with signs in Hangul and English. Outside the library stands a memorial to the thousands of women from Korea and other Asian countries who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army during World War II. Jason Kim, deputy mayor and first-generation Korean American, and Mayor James Rotundo were instrumental in setting up the memorial to the “Comfort Women,” as they were known. “I had never heard about it before,” Rotundo said. “When I heard the stories, I knew this was the thing to do.” Kim pointed out that this is not merely a Korean-vs.-Japanese issue — the victims were from multiple nations. “And it still goes on whenever there is a war. It’s women and children who are the victims,” he said. The granite memorial bears a plaque showing a Japanese soldier and a woman with the inscription, “Let us never forget the horrors of crimes against humanity.” We continued our Korean culture quest to one of the more enjoyable traditions: the hot tub and sauna. When I lived in Korea, a weekly trip to the sauna helped get me through the cold winter months. The King Spa on Commercial Avenue, though, is unlike any spa I’ve ever been to. There are about a dozen saunas to choose from, each with a distinct benefit: amethyst stones for the better circulation, yellow mud for muscle aches and rock salt for the skin, to name a few examples. After checking in, men are issued a white shirt and shorts, and women the same in pink, to be worn in all public areas of the facility. In the separate spa sections for men and women, where the hot tubs and lockers and some massage areas are, it is strictly clothes-free. Every day in the Bulhanzungmok sauna, the King Spa bakes dozens of eggs right in the carton and sells them at the juice bar. They come out a brownish color. Young Cho, the vice president of King Spa, claims that they bake from the inside out, and that this particular sauna is therapeutic for the same reason: because it warms up the vital organs inside first. My day nearly done at the spa, it was time for a full-body massage. The Korean masseuse kneaded, poked and slapped me. She slathered warm oils on my skin as she worked out the tension and sore muscles. After an hour, I emerged from the session feeling relaxed. One of the hardest decisions in Palisades Park is where to eat a Korean dinner. There are more than 20 restaurants on Broad Avenue alone. We opted for So Moon Nan Jip, which is known for its barbecue, or bulgogi. The meat is heated over a charcoal grill in the center of the table. Our waitress managed barbecues at three separate tables with calm efficiency. We were served excellent panchan: kimchi, tofu, spinach, steamed egg, chopped radish, dried salted fish, apples and potatoes, and bean sprouts. It was a boisterous crowd on a Saturday night. Many of these patrons would move on later to coffee shops, pool halls, and still later to the karaoke bars that draw lots of people to Palisades Park at night. On Sunday morning, we stopped at a Korean bakery for a breakfast of bean-paste-filled pastries. Kim had told us the day before that first-generation Koreans at Palisades Park frequent the Grand Shilla Bakery, while second-generation patrons are more likely to go to Caffé Bene, and that Paris Baguette appeals to both. We chose Caffé Bene, where we got a bubble tea and a bean-paste bun. Then we bought some hodo kwaja — bite-size cakes with bean paste and walnut inside — at Red Mango. The cakes were for later. We were taking a taste of Korea home. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide ******Hampton Inn, Ridgefield Park** 100 Route 46 E., Ridgefield Park 201-641-2900 hamptoninn3.hilton.com/en/index.html Minutes from Palisades Park. Free breakfast and free on-site parking. (Entrance to the motel can be easily missed.) Rooms from $124. ******Hilton Garden Inn, Ridgefield Park** 70 Challenger Rd., Ridgefield Park 201-641-2024 hiltongardeninn3.hilton.com/en/index.html Just outside Palisades Park. Free on-site parking. No pets. Rooms from $149. ******Teaneck Marriott at Glenpointe** 100 Frank W. Burr Blvd., Teaneck 201-836-0600 www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/ewrgp-teaneck-marriott-at-glenpointe Three-star newly renovated hotel two minutes north of Palisades Park. Three restaurants on-site. Free self-parking. Rooms from $149. ******So Moon Nan Jip** 238 Broad Ave., Palisades Park 201-944-3998 www.somoonnanjip.net High-end Korean barbecue with traditional decor and extensive menu. Parking in the rear. Barbecue from $26. Other entrees from $12. **Muk Eun Ji** 217 Broad Ave., Palisades Park 201-363-0600 www.mukeunjikimchi.com Prides itself on kimchi aged over a year. Many menu items feature kimchi. Entrees from $12. **King Spa** 321 Commercial Ave., Palisades Park 201-947-9955 www.kingsaunanj.com Three floors of saunas, steam baths, hot tubs, game tables, lounges and massage rooms. Plan on staying at least several hours. Free shuttle service from Midtown Manhattan. Check Web site for times. Admission: $45; massages $35 to $85. Tips are expected when checking out. Check Web site for coupons. Open 24/7. Valet parking. No children under 10. co.bergen.nj.us/tourism **— J.L.**

Don’t think South Korea has a race problem? Check out these cigarette ads.

South Korea's biggest tobacco company, KT&G;, is pulling its national advertising campaign for its new brand of cigarettes, This Africa.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University You can probably imagine where the story is going from here: The ads shows monkeys and apes on the African savanna rolling cigarettes and, in some ads, dressed as reporters espousing the tobacco's great flavor. There was an international outcry, and the company responded by promising to pull the ads. There are two ways to see the ads. The critical view says that they equate Africans with monkeys and apes, which would indeed seem to be awfully racist. A more sympathetic view might suggest that the ads merely played on consumers' association of Africa with wildlife. It's vague enough that pulling the ads was probably the right call. But KT&G;'s official statement seemed to almost suggest that the company actually _meant_ to portray "traditional" African cigarette-makers as akin to monkeys and apes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "We absolutely had no intention to offend anyone and only chose monkeys because they are delightful animals that remind people of Africa," a spokeswoman told the BBC. "Since this product contains leaves produced by the traditional African style, we only tried to adopt images that symbolize the nature of Africa."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's also hard to understand why KT&G would pull the ads but not change the art on the cigarette packs, which show baboons rolling tobacco leaves. That seems to much more explicitly compare Africans to monkeys than do the chimpanzee ads, which at least leave open the possibility of merely suggesting that African chimps are excited about the product. The whole incident is a reminder of how complicated racial issues can be in South Korea. Korean society has long defined itself by its race; scholars such as B.R. Myers have written about Korea's view of its own national-racial identity as unique, something that shows up in both the North and South. Metrics of racial tolerance tend to rate the country poorly. As in much of East Asia, those attitudes seem particularly likely to manifest with regard to sub-Saharan Africans.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Immigration to the country can be difficult and is rare, relative to other countries of comparable wealth. Last year, in a story on how rising immigration from Southeast Asia was challenging racial attitudes in South Korea, the New York Times noted, "Only a decade ago, school textbooks still urged South Koreans to take pride in being of 'one blood' and ethnically homogeneous." In some ways, then, this controversy – and the company's response – are a reminder of South Korea's sometimes difficult racial politics.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

South Korea shuts down primary schools as spread of MERS alarms public

South Korea shut down 200 primary schools, canceled some public events and put more than 1,300 people in various levels of quarantine, acknowledging on Wednesday that the continuing spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome within its borders had become a crisis. Health officials announced Wednesday that five more people had been diagnosed, bringing the total infected with the virus to 30. Two patients have died. That makes the outbreak the largest outside the Arabian Peninsula, where the disease emerged in 2012. The virus, which primarily causes flu-like symptoms such as fever and cough, kills an estimated three to four out of every 10 patients infected. The situation in South Korea has alarmed the global health community because the virus has spread so fast and wide from a single individual. Other countries have imported cases in the same manner but the virus infected only a few others. How did MERS get to South Korea and why is it spreading so fast? The first known case, called an “index” case, was reported on May 20. It involved a 68-year-old man who was returning from a 16-day business trip to four Middle Eastern countries. The man was asymptomatic during his return flight but was subsequently treated at two different out-patient clinics and two hospitals which created a lot of opportunities for the virus to spread. Health care workers did not suspect the man of having MERS so he was not put in isolation. Others who have been infected include health care workers, other patients, family members and visitors. The World Health Organization reported that some of the cases were patients in the same room or ward as the man, and that their exposure may have been from 5 minutes to a few hours.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Two recent cases represent an alarming development —a third generation of transmission. That is, a patient who did not have contact with the index patient but came into contact with an intermediary who had been exposed to the virus. "That raised fears that infections could now spread exponentially from all people who test positive," Korea's JoongAng Daily reported.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Most of the primary schools that were shut down are in Gyeonggi province which surrounds the capital of Seoul and where many of the cases have been. Peter Ben Embarek, a World Health Organization working on MERS, told Science magazine that the simplest explanation for the "superspreading" event of the virus in South Korea may be a lapse in infection control measures at the hospital. It's also possible the strain that was imported may be different from others or that Koreans are more susceptible to the disease.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The South Korean government has come under criticism for their handling of the situation, including its refusal to disclose the names of the health care facilities where the first patient was treated.

Relax, North Korea has given us something new to speculate about

Conspiracy theorists disappointed with the reappearance of Kim Jong Un earlier this month can breathe a sigh of relief. North Korea has provided new fodder for unchecked speculation, wild rumors and frenzied tea-leaf reading. Citing fears about the spread of Ebola, the world’s most closed state abruptly told Western travel agencies Thursday that it would not allow foreign tourists to enter, starting on Friday. Never mind that it’s 8,261 miles from Monrovia to Pyongyang. Never mind that North Korea is hardly a major tourist destination. And never mind that no other country in the world has sealed its borders in response to the outbreak of the virus. Some things in North Korea simply defy logic. (Well, most things, in fact.) “We have just been informed by our partners in North Korea that tomorrow North Korea will stop accepting international tourists due to the threat of the Ebola virus, effectively closing its borders,” Koryo Tours, a British-run, Beijing-based tourism agency, posted on its Facebook page Thursday night. Young Pioneer Tours, another tourism agency, said on its Web site that the suspension was “a strict measure of protection against the recent Ebola outbreak in the world.” The real question: Is this really about Ebola? Or is it really about something else? Such drastic action is not without precedent. In 2003, North Korea closed its borders in response to the SARS virus. But at least SARS was in Beijing, the source of the vast majority of flights into North Korea. This time, the outbreak is on the other side of the world, making Pyongyang’s declaration seem a little bit like, well, overkill. Details remained sketchy on Thursday night. It was not clear whether Chinese tourists -- who make up the biggest proportion of foreign visitors to North Korea, by far -- would be banned from entering the country. Nor was it clear whether this extended beyond tourists. “As far as we know, this only applies to tourists, and not to those involved with trade or other wider activities, such as diplomacy, who will be able to travel in and out of the DPRK as per usual,” said Nick Bonner, one of the founders of Koryo Tours, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as the country is officially called. The agency is now trying to show the North Korean authorities that its tourists have not been traveling in Ebola-affected areas, he said. Adding to the confusion, Andrea Lee of Uri Tours, another agency that takes Westerners to North Korea, said it had been advised simply that travelers who have traveled in Africa -- the whole continent, apparently -- must present an Ebola clearance certificate, while those who haven’t been to the continent would have to submit a written statement to that effect. Uri Tours has people traveling in North Korea right now, while the next batch of Koryo tourists was due to take off on Saturday. This sudden news is sure to set off a firestorm of conjecture about North Korea’s true motivations. Several people working with North Korea’s tourism industry said they believed the decision to be genuinely motivated by fears about the virus that has rampaged through Liberia. But, coming so soon after Kim Jong Un’s extended disappearance -- attributed during his absence to everything from overconsumption of cheese to a military coup -- it’s bound to spark talk of internal troubles. So sit back and wait for the theories to roll in.

New enmity between Japan and Korea plays out in Tokyo’s Koreatown

TOKYO — The main streets of Shin-Okubo — Tokyo’s Koreatown — are lined with smoky barbecue restaurants and overlit cosmetics emporiums. Staircases lead down to basement music venues and up to hidden drinking holes. Japanese once thronged the neighborhood, which is home to many ethnic Koreans and known for its fiery food and late nights. But in recent months, the crowds have thinned, replaced by anti-Korean protesters who have turned Shin-Okubo into a rough barometer of deteriorating Japan-Korea relations. On occasional weekends this year, megaphone-wielding demonstrators have taken to the streets, telling the Koreans to “go home or die.” They’ve threatened to “flatten this neighborhood” and build a gas chamber in its place. The Koreans say that they — and the police — have little recourse against the threats, because Japan is one of the few democracies that don’t restrict hate speech. The protesters are a small but noisy lot, and their strident anti-Korean stance is viewed with contempt by most Japanese. But the demonstrations have caused damage nonetheless, not only disrupting a neighborhood, but also providing kindling for the South Korean media, which portray the behavior as a frightening norm, not an extreme. In that way, the demonstrations have helped widen the divide between the United States’ two closest Asian allies, countries that have squabbled for decades but now increasingly see themselves as arch rivals. As if to highlight the point, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said recently that she would be open to a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — but not with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unless Japan changed its behavior. The animosities between Korea and Japan are vexing for Washington, because the two share some security concerns, including over China’s recent announcement of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea. The mutual tensions are rooted in Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula before and during World War II, but they are kept alive by mutual distrust. Koreans say they are owed a more-sincere apology for past ills, including the wartime use of Korean women as sex slaves for soldiers. Japanese say Koreans are just holding a grudge and ignoring 70 years of model behavior under a pacifist constitution. In each country, opinions of the other have deteriorated drastically, and to noxious effect: Last month, Park was criticized at home for wearing Asics shoes, a Japanese brand, to a baseball game. Only a year ago, a Shin-Okubo cosmetics store called Popberry sold products labeled in Hangul, the Korean alphabet. But no longer. “It still says ‘Made in Korea’ on the back,” owner Ryu Eun-sook, a Korean immigrant, said, pointing to a product. “But now there are no Hangul letters.” Some of her wholesale clients were worried Hangul products would no longer sell, she said. The most recent protests in Shin-Okubo took place in early September — they were more frequent in the first half of the year — and residents here say they hope they’ve weathered the worst. But when the weekend protests do happen, they are ugly affairs — and residents say they should be forcibly stopped. They are organized by a small number of civic groups, most notably Zaitokukai, which claims nearly 14,000 members nationwide. Protests have also been held in other cities, including Osaka. Zaitokukai’s members aren’t just a collection of the down and out, according to experts and Japanese media reports. Membership skews young and male but also includes well-coiffed housewives. They organize their meet-ups on the Web, and they campaign against the permanent residency status given to Japan’s half-million ethnic Koreans, many of them descendants of laborers brought here during the colonial occupation. Zaitokukai's head office declined to let members be interviewed, citing a schedule conflict. It also declined to answer questions by e-mail. The group’s demonstrations in Shin-Okubo began about a year ago, about the time Abe was elected, according to residents’ accounts. But some experts and politicians say their emergence coincides with broader factors: Japan’s slackened economic might and a growing sense among right-wingers that the country must find new ways to show its strength. “Japan is right now at a crisis point,” said Yoshifu Arita, a lawmaker who is campaigning for new laws to regulate hate speech. “A situation like this — people getting so publicly hostile — never happened in the seven decades after the war until now.” In practice, groups such as Zaitokukai campaign with the purpose to intimidate. They march through streets holding Rising Sun battle flags of the imperial era and placards that tell Koreans to go “hang themselves.” Police try to keep the protesters to one side of the street, allowing a passageway for cars. In 1995, Japan did accede to the United Nations’ convention to eliminate racial discrimination, including hate speech, but its parliament has not passed legislation to enforce that treaty commitment. Its reluctance, experts and politicians say, stems from a separate war-era legacy — the wholesale suppression of anti-government dissent. Japan created free-speech laws to prevent a repetition of that censorship, and many still oppose the idea of regulating speech, said Kenta Yamada, a media law professor at Senshu University. The Japanese government’s hope, Yamada said, is to reduce hate speech with education and enlightenment, not with new laws. Abe himself has called the protests “extremely unfortunate” and said that true Japanese people “must be polite, generous and humble.” In Shin-Okubo, the downturn in Korea-Japan relations — and the rise of demonstrators — is viewed above all with sadness. Some restaurateurs say business hasn’t suffered, but shopkeepers such as Ryu say it’s down sharply. The first time Ryu heard the anti-Korean protesters marching on a main street below her office, she was angry enough to think about heaving wooden furniture through her fourth-floor window. But lately, she’s stayed calmer and has tried to think about the 25 Japanese staff members she employs. “I know they are kind-hearted,” said Ryu, who moved to Japan 18 years ago and obtained legal residency. Some ethnic Koreans get calls from friends back home after protests. “They say, ‘Are you okay?’ ” said Lee See-hyun, an employee at a record store selling Korean pop music. “I tell them I’m fine. I don’t believe most Japanese want us to go home.” Since early this year, a new movement has emerged to reinforce this view. When the ultranationalists gather in Shin-Okubo, another group — a loosely organized mix of Japanese citizens and activists — gathers on the other side of the street. They jeer at the ultranationalists and use air horns to drown out their chants. “You’re a Japanese shame!” one woman shouted to them during a recent gathering. “Stop the racism!” another said. The clashes have sometimes turned violent. In July, several members from both groups were arrested after they began spitting at one another and trading punches, according to Japanese media. The counter-protesters have barely been mentioned in the South Korean media, but for many ethnic Koreans living in Shin-Okubo, they more accurately reflect Japanese sentiment. In some cases, the hundred or so anti-Korean protesters have been well outnumbered, according to videos of the protests, and police work to keep the groups separate. Ryu has seen this, too, from her window. The clashes do make her uneasy, she said, but added, “Somebody is standing up for us when we can’t. So yes, they make me appreciative.”

Why MERS spread so far, so fast in South Korea

The MERS scare in South Korea has alarmed health officials around the world for the speed with which the virus is moving from patient to patient. Some scientists in the infectious-disease field fear that certain populations might be genetically susceptible to the virus or, worse, that it had somehow mutated to a more virulent form. This week, the World Health Organization took its first crack at explaining what it thinks happened in South Korea, and the findings are somewhat comforting.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The WHO says that each of the 15 deaths and 150 cases of infections in the country were linked to a man who had been traveling in the Middle East and was diagnosed and isolated on May 20. Most of the others who were infected got MERS from being in the health-care facilities where he was treated, and there is "no known spillover into the general population," the WHO said. The reason for the "superspreading event," as scientists are calling it, may have had more to do with conditions and cultural traditions specific to South Korea than any other reason. The WHO says that the "accessibility and affordability of health care in Korea encourage 'doctor shopping'; patients frequently consult specialists in several facilities before deciding on a first-choice facility." The report added in South Korea, family members and friends tend to be expected to visit their loved ones when they are sick. "It is also customary for family members to provide almost constant bedside care often staying in the hospital room overnight, increasing the risk of close exposures in the health care setting," the report stated. **READ MORE:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Experimental MERS plasma trial begins with two patients in South Korea    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Good news chocolate lovers: The more you eat, the lower your risk of heart disease    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Common heartburn medications linked to greater risk of heart attack    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 5 things about trans fats and the FDA’s proposed phase out    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Japanese holiday ‘celebrating’ disputed islands sparks backlash in South Korea

Web users in both Japan and South Korea are up in arms over Japanese celebrations on Friday of Takeshima Day — a quasi-official holiday designed, appropriately, to mark an old territorial spat between Japan and South Korea.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Takeshima, or Dokdo in Korean, are a string of uninhabited volcanic outcroppings in the Sea of Japan. Both Japan and South Korea claim them, a dispute going back at least 60 years. The holiday, for its part, only goes back six years, when a local Japanese council signed it into law "as hundreds of nationalists sporting paramilitary gear" urged it on. This year, as in years past, the holiday remains divisive. Japan's central government sent a representative to celebrate in Shimane prefecture for the first time, reports the Wall Street Journal. Some 50 South Korean protesters gathered outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, and South Korea's foreign ministry promised to make a formal complaint.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Online commenters were less than sympathetic. The blog JapanCrush translated Japanese reactions from Twitter and other sites, most of which it calls "dismissive of Korean anger at ‘Takeshima Day.' "    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "If you’re going to kick up a fuss, you’re welcome do it in your own country," one wrote, jokingly. If nothing else, Takeshima Day remains a reminder that Japan and South Korea haven't always been friendly. Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and has had, shall we say, "a poor image" there ever since, The Post's Anthony Faiola reported when the holiday was signed into law in 2005.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Much of the social media fury reflects that ongoing prejudice. "They’re Koreans, aren’t they? It’s not so surprising," one user wrote. "They are Koreans, after all."

9 things you need to know about MERS

Health officials around the world are paying more attention to a recent increase in cases of a deadly respiratory virus known as MERS. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome first emerged in the Middle East about two years ago. Since then, more than 500 cases have been confirmed and reported to the World Health Organization, including at least 145 deaths. Most of the cases have been in Saudi Arabia. Two cases have been confirmed in the United States. Both were in healthcare workers, living and working at hospitals in Saudi Arabia. One man in Indiana has recovered and been released. Another patient is in a Florida hospital. Here are some questions and answers about MERS. **Now that there are confirmed cases in the United States, should I be worried?** Health officials say people aren’t likely to get infected by casual contact. The people who have gotten sick so far are healthcare workers or family members who were in close contact with the infected person. The people most at-risk people are healthcare workers. About one-fifth of reported cases worldwide have been in that group. **Are these two cases in the United States linked?** No. But both are healthcare personnel living in Saudi Arabia and working in hospitals that were treating MERS cases. **What are the symptoms of MERS?** MERS was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Most people infected with the virus developed severe respiratory illness with symptoms of fever, cough, and shortness of breath. **How deadly is it?** More than 30 percent of people with MERS have died. Most of the people who died had an underlying medical condition. Some infected people had mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. The median age of confirmed cases is 51. **Has anyone who came into contact with the two U.S. patients also gotten sick?** No one else has gotten sick so far from the Indiana case. U.S. officials contacted people who traveled on the same flights from Riyadh through London to Chicago, and attempted to contact people who shared the same bus to Highland, Ind. The hospital also sent home about 50 employees and kept them isolated until the hospital was sure they did not have MERS. In Florida, up to 100 people may have come into contact with the 44-year-old patient, including 20 hospital personnel at two hospitals. Two employees of Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando where the patient was admitted May 8 have flu-like symptoms and are awaiting tests to see if they have the virus. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are trying to contact more than 500 people in 20 states who may have been exposed to the patient and international authorities are doing the same overseas. The man left Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 1, and flew to London, then on to Boston, Atlanta and Orlando, where he is visiting family. **Is it safe to go to the theme parks in Orlando?** Yes. The patient didn’t feel well after he arrived in Orlando and mostly stayed home with his family. Doctors said he did “not do the usual tourist activities.” **What is the incubation time for the virus? What’s the treatment?** The incubation period of the virus — the time between exposure and development of symptoms — is about five days. Most patients who have had clear-cut exposure to an infected person have become sick within five days. Health officials are using 14 days as the window, to be on the safe side. There is no vaccine or specific treatment. **What is the source of the virus? What about camels?** Experts don’t know for sure where the virus came from. They think an animal source is most likely. In addition to humans, the virus has been found in camels in Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and a bat in Saudi Arabia. Camels in a few other countries have also tested positive for antibodies to the virus, which indicates they were previously infected with MERS or a closely related virus. Saudi Arabia on Sunday said people handling camels should wear masks and gloves to prevent the spread of the virus, issuing such a warning for the first time since the virus appeared in the kingdom. The virus comes from the same family as the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, coronavirus, which killed almost 800 people worldwide in 2003. **Can I still travel to countries in the Arabian Peninsula or neighboring countries where MERS cases have occurred?** Yes. CDC does not recommend that anyone change their travel plans because of MERS. But it does recommend that you pay attention to your health during and after your trip. Call a doctor right away if you develop fever and cough or shortness of breath within 14 days after traveling from countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula. To protect themselves, people should wash hands often with soap and water for 20 seconds, and help young children do the same. Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands. Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze then throw the tissue in the trash. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces, such as toys and doorknobs.  **Related:** MERS is not yet a global health emergency, WHO says Fla. hospital staffers have flu-like symptoms after MERS case How an Indiana hospital got it right when MERS showed up Second case of MERS surfaces in the U.S.

Climate change is as dangerous as ISIS, says Kerry, and part of the problem is your airconditioning

When Secretary of State John F. Kerry was in Austria's capital Vienna recently to join discussions on climate change, chances were low that he encountered too many air conditioned rooms. To Americans used to cooler rooms in summer, this may just have been a simple cultural difference. For the climate negotiators, however, it most likely reflects a bigger divide between the U.S., Europe, and developing economies. Both Europe and North America are worried about some of the gases that are emitted from fridges and air conditioners. But apart from those concerns, European nations in particular are also looking with growing anger and skepticism at the United States' heavily reliance on air conditioning.  Rapidly growing use of air conditioning and fridges has already led to more energy consumption. Perhaps even more worrisome, it has also increased emissions of so-called HCFC gases that are known to fuel climate change. Kerry was in Vienna last Friday to help find an agreement to limit their international use — and he made clear that it was not a laughing matter.   "The concern is that if the world doesn’t transition away from HCFCs, that will cause problems because the developing world, including China and India, are poised — as they develop and as the climate warms — to become enormous markets for air conditioners and other uses of these chemicals," said Anthony Leiserowitz, the Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. While the U.S. and Europe agree that HCFCs should be phased out and replaced by less damaging gases, Europeans believe Americans should also do more to lower their reliance on air conditioning. While American demand for air-conditioning has continuously increased over the past decades, Europeans have started to think about alternatives. To be fair, summers in Vienna and northern Europe in general can hardly be compared to the hot, humid mess of a summer in Washington D.C. and many other American cities. Advocates of air conditioning cannot only be found in the U.S.: Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister of Singapore, called air conditioners the greatest invention of the last century. Studies suggest that in hotter countries, air conditioning can increase workers' productivity and make the countries richer. But in the long term, they are a danger and for European critics, its not so much the presence of air conditioning in the United States, but its over-use. Visitors to the U.S. often complain that Americans set their room temperatures way too low — making life more difficult for themselves, and for the world. "When friends from abroad or family from India have come to visit, they've been shocked by how cold we keep our homes, offices, classrooms, and shops," said Nikita Perumal, an American Fulbright grantee who researches human rights-based approaches to climate change. Anyone who has ever toured the U.S. during summer with European tourists might have had the same experience. Those observations are based on actual science: Most Americans prefer an average temperature of 70 degrees, according to earlier studies. But Europeans would consider such temperatures too cold. That's because Europeans are simply used to warmer indoors temperatures.  Many experts say that this makes hardly any sense, and Americans should adapt. "The temperature range that people find comfortable depends on the temperatures they have experienced in preceding days or weeks," said Cox. "If local high temperatures have been, say, around 70, then we feel most comfortable in the 70s indoors. If we've experienced highs of, say, 90, we may feel more comfortable in the mid-70s to the mid or upper 80s. But today we have whole populations that can go for weeks without experiencing any warm or hot temperatures, other than dashing across hot asphalt from the car to the office and back. How to start the adaptation process? That's a hard one." Europe has tried to come up with answers that might be worth copying. Work spaces now need to be built energy-efficiently, according to E.U. legislation. Brick walls, for instance, can prevent rooms from getting too hot naturally. "People are looking at a variety of solutions, including better building designs that don’t require as much air conditioning, as well as reducing waste energy overall," said Leiserowitz. Right now, the trend in architecture to facilitate the kind of air conditioning that foreign visitors often associate with a meat locker is to build hermetically sealed, low ceiling offices without external balconies that some have criticized for being claustrophobic. A more energy efficient approach would involve larger spaces, higher ceilings and natural flows of air that could both cool the office and make for a more enjoyable work environment. So, next time you feel stressed because your work place is too loud and fresh air is just too far away — perhaps blame air conditioning.

Tourism to North Korea isn’t about engagement. It’s torture porn.

So what happened to Warmbier? North Korean authorities said that he had contracted botulism shortly after his trial in March 2016 and been given a sleeping pill from which he never woke up. Many disbelieve the official report and think that he might have been tortured and murdered. In reality, we will never know the particulars. What I do know is that there is a dire lack of medical resources in North Korea, even for elites and foreigners. In 2011, I lived undercover for six months in Pyongyang, at a university teaching 20-year-old sons of North Korea’s elite. While I was there, an American teacher fell while hiking on a minder-led tour and was rushed to a foreigners-only hospital; doctors stitched his head with no anesthetics and gave him no antibiotics. The teacher returned to the United States, developed an infection and had to undergo emergency surgery.   Tourism into North Korea is a troubling concept. While proponents argue that it could open doors for the isolated citizens of North Korea, it is doubtful how many average North Koreans do indeed get exposed to such initiatives, since the visitors in Pyongyang only get shown a few designated propaganda sites and are allowed to interact only with their minders. Although the tours are mostly safe, due to the fact that it is a virtual police state where everything is controlled by the regime, the real danger there is hidden and unpredictable. At any given moment, depending on the political climate, a foreigner could be intercepted by authorities and essentially used for ransom, which could cause a diplomatic nightmare in a complex geopolitical relationship involving China, Russia, the United States, Japan and South Korea.  If such is not the very definition of “torture porn,” then what is?  What Warmbier’s death reminds us of is the utter failure of diplomacy with North Korea, and that detaining an American citizen, for North Korea, works to its benefit. Warmbier was a young college student unaware of the depth of the danger he had unwittingly stepped into. Isn’t it then the job of his country to prevent future Warmbiers?

Japan and South Korea can’t even cooperate over peacekeeping in South Sudan

Before we get to the story of how Japan and South Korea came to be feuding over a bit of ammo-sharing between their peacekeeping forces in South Sudan, a bit of background to help you understand why this is all so absurd. South Korea and Japan are arguably two of the most successful countries of the past half-century. They came out of their respective wars deeply impoverished and politically broken, but have since become wealthy and highly entrepreneurial democracies, renowned for their cultural exports and leadership in technological development. It would make a lot of sense for South Korea and Japan to work closely together. They have similar economies, lots of cultural overlap, defense treaties with the United States, shared concerns about North Korea and a mutual desire to resist China's growing power and influence. The two countries stand to gain significantly from working together. But they are terrible at cooperating with one another -- just terrible. Part of that has to do with rising nationalism in both countries, which can make cooperation with any foreign country difficult. But it has to do mainly with their shared history: Japan brutally colonized Korea in the first half of the 20th century, and then spent the second half becoming decreasingly apologetic, with senior Japanese politicians now treating that dark history as a source of national pride. South Korean politicians are not blameless themselves, playing up disputes and taking the bait at every provocation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University That brings us to the latest Korean-Japanese spat, which is both unsurprisingly petty and perhaps a new low. Both countries have about 300 troops deployed as peacekeepers in South Sudan, where internal conflict looks increasingly like the makings of a possible civil war. The South Korean troops needed more ammunition, which on Monday was supplied by the nearby Japanese force.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But what should have been a rare opportunity for cooperation has quickly become the opposite. South Korea said it asked the United Nations for ammo, and the United Nations just happened to pass along Japanese-owned bullets. Japan put out the story that the Koreans had asked them directly for the ammo. South Korea took this as an insult, apparently believing that Tokyo was attempting to spin the story to make Japan look strong and South Korea look weak. It has devolved rapidly from there, with national media in both countries playing up the grievances and offense-taking. Seoul-based journalist Robert Koehler has the full, sordid story, complete with hyperventilating Korean media coverage. Here's where the dispute stands now:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The fact that this is all going down in the middle of South Sudan, a country with real problems, drives home how petty these spats are. Yes, South Korea and Japan have some very serious and real historical disputes that still matter today; some of the Korean "comfort women" used as sex slaves by the occupying Japanese forces in the 1940s are still alive and still occasionally insulted by Japanese politicians.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But neither country has much to gain, and both have a lot to lose, by holding on to those disputes rather than finding a way to cooperate. The fact that even a bit of conflict-zone ammo-sharing becomes a point of diplomatic dispute is a sign of just how tough it is for Korea and Japan to put their differences aside -- and a reminder of why China and the United States will continue to be East Asia's major players for a long time to come.

Anti-American countries can become pro-American. Here’s how South Korea did it.

When it comes to global public opinion, the United States can be polarizing: Often, you either love us or you hate us. But although we in the U.S. might perceive certain countries as intrinsically pro-American or anti-American, the truth is more complicated and attitudes can be more fluid.  As South Korean President Park Geun-hye visits Obama today, it's worth reflecting on the lessons of South Korea's turn back to the United States.   So what happened? The U.S. and its policies certainly played a role, particularly by keeping tens of thousands of American troops based on South Korean soil. But those troops are still there and South Korean opinion has changed dramatically. That appears to have happened in large part due to social forces within South Korea itself.  The concert, like anti-American protests around the same time, was on the surface a response to an incident that June when one of the many U.S. military vehicles in South Korea struck and killed two 14-year-old girls walking along the side of a road outside Seoul. Because of the terms of the U.S.-South Korean treaty that allows for America’s military presence there, the incident was considered a “military operation” and thus outside of Korea’s jurisdiction. A U.S. court martial acquitted the driver and his commander.  It's easy to sympathize with South Koreans unhappy with a foreign military presence and enraged that the accidental killers of two young girls might go free. Still, as I've written previously, there was something more at work.   These attitudes peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s – just as Psy dropped a model tank before cheering crowds in Seoul – and, Moon writes, focused on the ever-visible American military presence. South Koreans were newly organizing themselves around a national pride and consciousness. But their nationalist energies, which they had developed as they formed a civil society and rejected the military dictatorship, suddenly lacked an outlet. Probably no one decided to refocus those energies on opposing the U.S. military presence, but it’s not hard to see how that might have happened organically, as Moon suggests. Though the U.S. force serves South Korean interests, it also can be seen as an insult to Korean nationalism, a reminder that it still relies on outside powers, and an intimation, however true or false, that the country might not be fully in Korean control.

U.S. embassies are going to measure other countries’ air quality. Surprise: Some don’t like it much

In 2008, American diplomats in Beijing quietly installed an electronic monitor outside the U.S. Embassy to test pollution levels in the Chinese capital’s famously sooty air. The results, posted daily on the Internet, were mainly intended for U.S citizens and visitors, but soon ordinary Chinese were logging in for reliable information about health threats in the air they breathed. Chinese officials complained, but the daily reports from the embassy’s monitor added to the pressure that eventually led China to take dramatic steps to reduce smog. It worked so well, in fact, that the Obama administration has now decided on a major expansion — to U.S. diplomatic missions all around the world.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a joint announcement on Wednesday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy unveiled plans to place air-quality monitors outside embassies in numerous foreign cities, starting with diplomatic posts in India and then moving to Vietnam, Mongolia and other countries.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Again, the goal ostensibly is to keep American ex-pats and travelers informed about health threats. But Kerry acknowledged other benefits to providing local populations with reliable information about air quality. “We’re not the only country in which this kind of awareness has led to action,” Kerry told reporters at a State Department news conference. The plan to install air monitors at embassies is an expansion of an EPA program called AirNow, which provides real-time data on smog and soot for U.S. cities through a Web site and a smartphone app. The new international program will focus on a single measurement of air quality — fine particulates, or microscopic particles that contribute to haze and trigger asthmatic attacks and other respiratory ailments. Bejing and other Asian cities frequently show unhealthy and even hazardous levels of particulates from diesel exhaust and smoke from coal-burning.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Chinese officials, who previously dismissed concerns over what they called excessive “fog” in the country’s largest cities, have been compelled by improved monitoring to taking dramatic steps to combat air pollution, which Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun recently described as a “life-or-death” situation. U.S. and Chinese officials announced a landmark agreement in November to lower air pollution in both countries to improve health and fight a major cause of climate change.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico McCarthy said she was “not the most popular person” when she visited Beijing several years ago after the embassy’s air monitor was first installed. But eventually official attitudes began to change as local residents were able to call up air-quality data from the embassy on their cellphones, she said. The embassy’s air monitor, located in the heart of the capital, typically showed unhealthier air quality compared to official Chinese data. “What happened was that they took action,” she said of the Chinese government. “They realized there were things they could do.”  She added that  U.S. officials intend to offer practical help as well as raw data as they expand access to information about air quality to cities around the world. U.S. environmental groups hailed the administration’s step, though some said the White House could be doing more to improve air quality at home. The EPA is considering tighter rules on smog-causing ozone in U.S. cities.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Putting the spotlight on this can only lead to improvements,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based environmental group. “It will be even better after EPA updates the smog standard and the related warning system.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Unbelievable photos of how bad Beijing’s air has gotten

Chinese children are being forced to stay inside and there's been a spike in hospital visits as Beijing has clouded over with some of the worst smog in history. And now, we have an aerial representation of Beijing's respiratory problems, courtesy of NASA. Here's what the air above China looked like on Jan. 3: And here it is on Jan. 14: It doesn't sound pretty: At the time that the Jan. 14 image was taken, ground-based sensors at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reportedly found levels of the smallest, most dangerous types of particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, at 291 micrograms per cubic meter of air. According to World Health Organization guidelines, any air with more than 25 micrograms of PM 2.5 per cubic meter is considered unsafe. The PM 2.5 particles, which come from burning fossil fuels and biomass, are especially deadly because they can enter the passages of the lungs. Over time, they can worsen medical conditions such as asthma or heart disease. The putrid air has caused an outcry on Weibo, China's Twitter, and even on state media. There also are reports that sales of air-monitoring smartphone apps have skyrocketed. But immediate relief is unlikely, and air pollution issues of this scale take decades to alleviate. "If there is any consolation to what Beijing had to endure," wrote the Economist's China blog, "It is that it should lend urgency to the public outcry, and help speed things in the right direction." _More from WorldViews:_ Why some Malians are happy about the arrival of the French, in charts   Russia is recovering from a giant hangover

South Korea came up with a plan to cut down smoking. The opposite happened.

When it comes to men in wealthy nations, few smoke more than South Korean men. In 2014, according to the latest available Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, 37 percent said they smoked every day. At a time when people in developed nations are cutting back on smoking, that might comes as a surprise — particularly because Koreans have more healthy habits than Americans do, particularly as they relate to obesity and drug abuse. The East Asian country has the world’s 11th highest life expectancy.  Moon predicted that South Koreans would buy 34 percent fewer cigarettes. They didn’t.  The smoking rate has generally decreased since the late '90s, but this tax didn’t provide the hit Moon had hoped for. That’s significant as it's common sense to attribute South Korea’s high tobacco use to its ultra-low cost. At $2.22, the cost of a pack is significantly cheaper than it is in the United States, where it costs $7.26, on average, and can cost as much as $12.85 in New York. It’s also less expensive than in other highly developed East Asian countries, where a pack costs $5.30 in Japan, $6.40 in Hong Kong and $2.90 in Taiwan. Prices are similar to those found in Myanmar or Iran — countries much poorer than South Korea, which is home to high-tech companies, such as Samsung, LG and Kia.   Cigarettes have become a way of life — particularly for men. (Only 4 percent of women smoke because of myriad stigmas, but more are starting to light up.)     But maybe there’s hope for improvement. In 2012, a left-leaning presidential candidate ran on the slogan: “A life with evenings.”

In China, a tug of war over coal gas: Cleaner air but worse for the climate

HEXIGTEN, CHINA — Amid the rolling grasslands of northern China, a gleaming new industrial complex offers a beguiling vision for the nation’s leaders. Here, on a sandy plain among scattered flocks of sheep, a flagship plant promises to use China’s surplus coal while simultaneously delivering cleaner skies over its crowded eastern cities. Modeled on a similar and much older plant in North Dakota, the Hexigten complex in China’s Inner Mongolia transforms coal into methane by treating it with heat, steam and oxygen. It then pipes the supposedly cleaner gas to Beijing to heat and power the capital’s homes. In the past two years, with anger over the country’s smoggy skies rising and demand for coal declining, China has enthusiastically embraced coal gasification. It has proposed to build more than 50 plants like this in its sparsely populated north and west and to create by far the largest synthetic natural gas (SNG) industry in the world. Although the enthusiasm has since waned somewhat — mainly over questions about the industry’s economic viability — coal gasification still has powerful backers. But a visit to the semi-arid grasslands of the Asian steppe soon clouds the rosy vision they espouse. Here, even before the factory’s twin smokestacks come into view, the stench of sulfur poisons the air, leaving humans and animals gasping for breath for miles around. Likewise, underground water supplies are receding, while wastewater pools threaten to leach dangerous heavy metals into the soil, according to Greenpeace research. Protests by local herders have reportedly been suppressed, and a Washington Post reporting team was harassed by police and security officials on a recent trip. Not only is this industry exporting pollution from the politically powerful capital city to the politically marginalized grasslands and deserts of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, but it also has a potentially powerful impact on the global climate. The entire process of turning coal into gas, and then burning that gas somewhere else, produces significantly more greenhouse gases than just burning the coal in the first place. The industry is also extremely water-intensive, putting pressure on water supplies in some of China’s most arid regions. “If they keep going with coal-to-gas, they are going to produce so much greenhouse gas that they won’t reach their targets,” said Chi-Jen Yang, a research scientist at Duke University’s Center on Global Change, adding that this could lock China into a high-carbon path of development for decades to come. In effect, he said, China has been trying to address short-term, local problems — smog and a recession in the coal industry — by exacerbating the long-term global problem of climate change. Last November, in an agreement with President Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that his country’s emissions of carbon dioxide would peak around 2030, or sooner if possible. But with China already producing twice the emissions of the United States, the prospect of the country adding more through a coal-to-gas industry has alarmed environmentalists. Fortunately, Yang and others say, there has been a rethink, and the headlong rush into SNG has given way to a more sober assessment over the past year. This reassessment has not come out of respect for local herders, and not even because of Xi’s climate-change commitments. It has come simply because the economic rationale for the industry appears to be evaporating. The removal of subsidies has seen natural gas prices rise, depressing domestic demand, while Beijing has also been busy securing gas supplies from abroad. In addition, a slowing economy has cut energy demand more generally; there simply isn’t the need for synthetic natural gas that policymakers projected a few years ago. “The coal-to-gas industry has shown signs of developing too fast,” state media reported in July, citing China’s National Energy Administration and promising stricter controls. “The coal-to-gas and coal-to-oil industry should not stop, but it should not be developed too fast.” The plant at Hexigten, run by a state-owned company, Datang, was supposed to demonstrate the industry’s feasibility when it began operations in December 2013. But it has struggled financially and technologically: Two people died and four were injured by a hydrogen-sulfide leak in January 2014. Later that year, Datang restructured the project’s finances and tried to sell the plant, Yang said. “Nobody wanted to buy,” he said. “I guess they scared all the other investment away.” Datang declined to comment. Chinese policymakers often point to a pioneering gasification plant in the coal fields of North Dakota as evidence of the industry’s viability. But they don’t mention that the project, the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, went bankrupt and was bailed out by the U.S. government in 1986. The Great Plains plant also uses carbon-capture technology to limit its emissions, something no Chinese plant does at this stage. As China ponders its next step, there is a huge amount at stake. In early 2014, China’s National Energy Administration said it wanted to see the country produce 50 billion cubic meters of synthetic natural gas a year by 2020, but it had approved projects that could see output climb more than four times higher. Greenpeace calculates that if China goes ahead with projects already in preparation or under construction, the coal-to-gas industry would cancel out all the emissions cuts the United States hopes to make by 2020. But in signs of a further retreat last December, China Energy News, a state- run newspaper, quoted an unnamed policymaker as saying China would “probably” suspend projects that had not already begun construction and limit the production of synthetic gas to just 15 billion cubic meters by 2020. Li Shuo, a senior climate and energy policy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, says project construction has slowed and there is greater understanding of the economic, technological and environmental limitations of coal gasification. “But I would be a bit cautious to reach the conclusion that China is not going ahead with coal-to-gas, he said. “My impression is we are at a critical juncture now.” There are powerful forces that still favor the industry, which some policymakers see as strategically important in securing China’s energy independence, a key national security goal. Coal-rich provinces also appear to be keen on the industry. In the end, the decision on whether and how quickly to proceed will be a sign of whether the Chinese government really wants to push for a more environmentally friendly, economically sustainable growth model, or whether it will persist with old habits, through reliance on state-owned heavy industries that have already poisoned the nation’s air, water and soil. China’s new energy minister, Nuer Baikeli, toured coal-to-chemicals plants in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in March, and pushed for one plant, at Ordos, to begin a second phase of production. State media reported him as saying that the industry needed massive pilot projects to promote innovation; otherwise, he said, it would be merely “building castles in the air.” Until December, Baikeli was governor of Xinjiang, a province where the coal-to-gas industry had promised a big boost to the economy and a captive market for its coal. “Provinces have strong economic incentives to push for these plants, to lock in a use for their coal for decades,” said Rob Jackson, a professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. “You can’t underestimate the importance of local economic development.” Nowhere is that more true than in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, where environmental considerations pale in comparison to the desire to maintain economic growth — and social stability — at almost any cost. “Local governments have not changed their minds at all,” said Ma Wen, another climate and energy expert at Greenpeace. Not only are Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and others still pushing for more investment in the coal-to-chemicals industry, but China is promoting similar projects in neighboring Kazakhstan and Mongolia under its Silk Road economic-development plan, he said. Outside the Datang plant, herders complained of dizziness, headaches, nausea and sore throats because of the foul air, while some animals had died prematurely. At least three protests took place last year against the plant, each involving hundreds of local residents. Still, nothing had changed: Several arrests had been made, one villager said, and no compensation had been paid. The plant uses water from a nearby lake for its industrial process, but water use by its employees, who live on the compound, is sucking up scarce underground supplies, Greenpeace says. “No matter how deep you dig a well, you can’t get water now,” said one man living near the plant, who said he had been told by security officials to stay indoors and not talk to reporters but did so anyway, by telephone. “No matter how many times you protest, the government always stands on the side of the factory,” he said. Xu Jing contributed to this report. **Read more:** In China’s Inner Mongolia, mining spells misery for traditional herders

North Korean tourist stops now serving corn floss tea

Yum! You might also know corn floss as corn "silk." Bellflower root is a real food, though: It's used in salads and as a traditional cold remedy. Those tourists, if they actually exist, are most likely Chinese. But you too can visit North Korea, which is working hard to attract Western tourism as a way to accumulate badly needed foreign currency reserves. I wrote earlier about the country's bizarre tourist hotels, which have such fun nicknames as "hotel of doom" and "Alcatraz of fun."

Philippines confirms second MERS case: How serious is the threat?

Health officials in the Philippines reported Monday that the country's second case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was diagnosed in a 36-year-old foreign man who had flown in from Dubai. The country has stepped up surveillance and quarantine measures at ports of entry and in the city of Muntinlupa, south of Manila, the country's capital. Patients at the hospital where the man is being treated were donning face masks, according to the Philippine Star.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Janette Garin,  secretary of health of the Philippines, told reporters that the man began showing symptoms July 2 and was admitted  July 4 to a hospital, where he tested positive for the virus. Garin urged the public not to panic and said that the man had a low amount of virus in his body and that officials had  located and are monitoring eight people he had come into contact with. The government has declined to release any additional information about the man, including his nationality, occupation or the reason for his trip to the Philippines. “[W]e appeal to the public to respect the privacy of the patient," she said in a media statement. "What is important now is for us to continue practicing proper hygiene, having adequate rest, balanced diet, all leading to a good resistance; allow us to emphasize that vigilance is still needed." The Philippine government has emphasized that the World Health Organization does not recommend any type of travel or trade restrictions related to MERS but asked anyone entering the country to report to a hospital if they experience signs of a flu such as a fever with cough that are very similar to symptoms of MERS. The first case of MERS was in February when a nurse who came from Saudi Arabia tested positive for the disease. She recovered and was declared free of the virus within a few weeks. South Korea is still grappling with an outbreak of MERS within its borders, and as of Monday 185 cases have been confirmed. Thirty-three of those patients have died, according to the WHO. **Read more:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This is what drinking too much water during exercise does to your body    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Theranos blood test: The insanely influential Stanford professor who called the company out on its 'stealth research'    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Diabetes drugs' happy side effect: Weight loss    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

For South Korean, rescues of people abducted by North Korea come with controversy

SEOUL — The walls of Choi Sung-yong’s office are covered with yellowed head shots of missing South Korean men. Most haven’t been seen since the 1960s or 1970s, when they were snatched by North Korean agents and detained with no explanation. One of the missing men is Choi’s father. South Korea’s government has had little success in bringing them home. So, after years of mounting frustration, Choi has gone rogue. He has become South Korea’s most high-profile advocate for the disappeared, a brash campaigner using shadowy brokers, bribes and lies to spirit the men out of one of the world’s most repressive countries. Since 2000, nine abductees have escaped the North, and Choi says eight of those — including a fisherman who returned last month — wouldn’t have made it out without his help. Those eight “owe me their lives,” Choi says. But on the fractured Korean Peninsula, even a seemingly noble act like rescuing the abducted can cause unforeseen anguish. Several of the returnees say Choi has endangered their wives and children left behind in North Korea because of his hunger for media attention. If some see Choi as a hero fighting an authoritarian regime, others say he acts recklessly. He often clashes with the same men he helps to bring home. Choi, 61, who heads the Abductees’ Family Union, has the bearing of an aging prizefighter — big arms, a wide nose and a wrinkle across his forehead deep enough to be a scar. He says his mission requires hardheadedness and a willingness to do things that few diplomats would dare. When Choi’s brokers track down kidnap victims in North Korea, for instance, they sometimes lie to the abductees, saying that long-lost family members are waiting for them in China, the first stop on the way home. It’s a “white lie” that helps some abductees overcome fears about leaving their families behind in the North and making a dangerous escape, Choi says. And indeed, some abductees are ultimately reunited with loving, long-lost relatives in the South. But in at least one case, the lie has proven damaging. A returnee now living in Seoul with his 89-year-old mother said recently that he had never intended to come to the South. Rather, he had expected to make a furtive — and temporary — trip into China to see relatives before returning to the North to his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren. Only when he got to China did he realize his predicament: He’d been led there by brokers who now warned him about the dangers of trying to return to North Korea and who didn’t intend to lead him back. “I never got to say goodbye to my wife and children,” said the returned abductee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his family. “On one hand, I’m grateful” to Choi, the man added. “On the other hand, he’s done wrong.” As Choi tells the story, he came to his job almost by accident, interested initially in finding only one man. Choi’s father, Choi Won-mo, was one of the nearly 4,000 victims taken by the North in the decades after the Korean War. Most of the abductees were allowed to return to South Korea within a year, but 516 remain stuck in the North, according to South Korean government records — presumably retained either because they were viewed as useful workers or because their backgrounds were suspect. The South Korean government has made repeated attempts to confirm the whereabouts of the abductees, but Pyongyang says that any South Koreans within its borders came there voluntarily. “North Korea does not even recognize this as an issue,” said Hwang Jung-joo, a director at the South’s Ministry of Unification, which is in charge of humanitarian issues involving the divided peninsula. Some activists say the South, cautious about provoking the North, prefers to deal with the abduction issue quietly — a contrast to Japan, where the fate of fewer than 20 recognized Japanese abductees is an obsession for politicians and fodder for tabloids. Japan has a cabinet minister responsible for the “abduction issue,” and then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi negotiated the release of five Japanese kidnap victims in 2002. Choi’s father had served during the Korean War in the Korean Liaison Office, a unit under the command of the U.S. Army that gathered intelligence and carried out special operations. He later owned ships for fishing off the west coast of Korea. He disappeared when Choi was 15, and Choi assumes that he is dead. Choi’s father this year was given a posthumous award from the South Korean government recognizing his “brave contributions” during the war. Starting in the 1990s, Choi, who owns and operates fishing boats of his own, decided he’d use all means to recover his father’s bones. He rented homes in three parts of northeastern China and met the businessmen and bribe-takers who routinely travel between China and the North. Choi paid those brokers to cross into the North to learn about his father. Instead, they came back with a cache of information about other abductees. Choi decided to go after the other victims, all while publicizing his successes, in an effort to remind Seoul lawmakers that some South Koreans remain trapped in the North. Several years ago, when he felt legislators weren’t paying enough attention to the abductee issue, he barricaded himself in the office of Park Geun-hye, then the leader of South Korea’s main conservative party and now the country’s president, until she met with him; he ultimately got support for a bill to increase assistance to abductees. Choi sees few moral complications in his work: South Koreans were wrongly taken, he says, and they should return. But some of his methods are “highly illegal,” Choi admits, and controversial. To find the addresses of some kidnap victims in the North, for instance, he says he has sent couriers with Japanese cameras and cellphones, which are distributed to members of North Korea’s Bowibu, or state security department. When abductees return to the South, Choi publicizes the homecomings, holding well-attended news conferences and brandishing photos for television cameras. The latest publicity move came ****in August, when Choi revealed theescape of Jeon Wook-pyo, a fisherman who had just crossed into China after 41 years in the North. It would take Jeon several more weeks to make it all the way back to South Korea. Choi says his brokers had visited Jeon in North Korea two or three times over five years to persuade him to escape. But since that news conference, Choi said, Jeon has cut off contact with him. Officials at the Ministry of Unification declined to discuss Choi’s work. Choi says his news conferences don’t place the families of abductees in extra danger. “In North Korea, if a person goes missing for 15 days, that family will be investigated anyway,” he said. At least a few of those who have returned to the South are fiercely loyal to Choi and say he deserves credit for speaking out about their plight. “He’s doing work even the government isn’t willing to do,” said Choi Uk-il, who escaped in 2007 after 33 years. Others see a more complex figure, one who has opened new wounds while trying to mend others. A smuggled photo in Choi’s office shows a group of abductees in the North at a reeducation session — a crash course in North Korean ideology. The photo is from 1974, and the men are young. Choi sees in their faces a call for help. **** “Look at that picture,” he says. “Nobody is smiling.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

With new Sejong City, South Korean government aims to rebalance power

SEJONG CITY, South Korea — On this country’s most controversial tract of land, 10,000 laborers are laying the groundwork for an ambitious new city that will either drive growth outside the overpopulated capital or end up as an ill- conceived waste of money. Sejong City resembles a construction site, not a boomtown — orange-painted cranes make up the skyline and dump trucks rumble over makeshift bridges — but next month, South Korean officials will begin moving here in droves. They’ll come as part of a long-contested plan that essentially divides the South Korean government in half, with the relocation of 36 ministries and agencies to a built-from-scratch bureaucrat’s paradise that was once a patchwork of peach farms. But even as the shift begins, officials aren’t sure whether it’s a good idea. If Sejong develops as planned, with a population of 500,000 by 2030, it could rebalance power in a country long dominated by the megalopolis capital of Seoul. But critics — including President Lee Myung-bak, who did not attend a recent launch ceremony here — say it’s crazy to set parts of the administration 75 miles apart. “It is not just inefficient to move to Sejong,” said Chung Un-chan, the South Korean prime minister in 2009 and 2010 who served under Lee and was against the idea. “It will be almost paralyzing for government operations.” The decade-old Sejong plan seems to reflect a change in the way South Korea thinks about its development: As the country has reached first-world status, experts say, its people have become less concerned about the rate of growth and more concerned about who benefits. They bemoan not only the broadening income gap, but also the geographical gap between Seoul and the rest of the country. The greater Seoul area, in the northwest, has half the country’s population and half of its businesses. Politicians have tried, with little success, to feed growth in farther-flung regions, with tax incentives and a plan for 10 “innovation cities” as breeding grounds for industry and private research. “There have been, like, 500 policies to help rebalance the country, and they have all failed,” said Yook Dong-il, a professor at Chungnam National University, a 15-minute drive from Sejong. “But they have all been micro-policies, nothing as big as the plan with Sejong.” Sejong began as a grandiose 2002 campaign pledge from future president Roh Moo-hyun, who wanted to win voters in a critical swing region and promised to relocate the capital entirely. Some in Seoul criticized the idea, but others figured the city could thrive just as well without the government. Still, the plan stirred controversy. A constitutional court ruled that the capital should stay put. Roh watered down his plan by half; his residence, for instance, as well as parliament and some key ministries, would stay put. Then Roh’s successor, Lee, tried to stop that scaled-back plan and proposed an unpopular alternative — calling for Sejong to become an education and industry hub, with conglomerates such as Samsung and Lotte instead of the government — which key members of his party didn’t support. The blueprint for Sejong, then, is less than what Roh initially wanted and just the opposite of what Lee wants. Roh, who committed suicide in 2009, had a “philosophy of balanced national development,” said a former prime minister, Lee Hae-chan. The current president, formerly Seoul’s mayor, once pledged to block Sejong’s development even if he had to “mobilize the military.” Sejong has grown into a $20 billion project that isn’t so easy to get to. A high-speed train connects Seoul and a station north of Sejong in 38 minutes. But it still takes 25 minutes by cab to get to the city itself, and cabs are hard to find. Buses come just once an hour, though officials promise transportation will quickly improve as demand increases. A few brand-new apartment high-rises at the edge of town will house most of the first wave of transplants: 900 bureaucrats next month and 4,000 by the end of the year. The neighborhood, cut off from the massive construction site by a two-story barrier, has a grocery store, a handful of restaurants and six schools. But Sejong has no hospital, no movie theater and no museums. A recent government poll indicated that 12 percent of relocating bureaucrats will commute from Seoul, sparking concern that Sejong — like Australia’s purpose-built capital, Canberra — could become a weekend ghost town. “It will take about 20 years” before the city stops feeling like a construction site, said Song Ki-sup, chairman of the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency, which is responsible for Sejong’s development. Sejong, for now, has one attraction: a stylish three-story public relations office, all curvy walkways and mood lighting, that shows off the vision for a great city. There, visitors can read about the design contests to build Sejong’s apartment buildings and about the New Age names for their green spaces (one complex will have a “Healing Zone”). A built-to-scale model of Sejong offers a view of main roadways, which loop the city, and the main government building, with a garden on its roof. The timeline for Sejong’s development begins in 2003 with the “basic plan” and moves quickly into the future. By 2015, the city is to have libraries, a sports stadium and hotels. By 2020, it will have department stores, a business park and a population of 200,000. By 2030, it will have 500,000 people and be a self-sustaining city. “We will find out if it works,” Song said. “But our aim is to build a city where everybody aspires to live.” **More world news coverage:** \- Niger struggles against Islamist militants \- Afghan police officer kills two U.S. troops \- A bureaucrat’s paradise in South Korea \- Read more headlines from around the world

S. Korean official predicted N. Korea urging embassy evacuations, said attack would follow

Today, North Korea urged a number of foreign embassies in Pyongyang to evacuate their staffs because the country would, according to the U.K.'s reading of the warning it received, "be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organizations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10." In other words, North Korea is telling foreign diplomats, including that of nominally friendly Russia, "war might be coming, so you better skip town."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University North Korea is known for issuing threats it doesn't see through and warning about wars that never come. Still, this move, potentially a first for North Korea, came as a big surprise. But it wouldn't have been so surprising if you're a regular reader of the JoongAng Daily, a major South Korean broadsheet newspaper with a sizable readership and a reputation for leaning a touch to the right. Three weeks ago, JoongAng ran a story, citing a single, anonymous official with South Korean intelligence, predicting that this is exactly what would happen. The South Korean intelligence official reportedly told JoongAng that North Korea would "inform foreign diplomatic missions in Pyongyang to pull out their citizens" as stage two of a three-stage process to push the Korean peninsula right up to, but not over, the brink of nuclear war. Stage one was "issuing war threats against the South and spreading the idea that a war is imminent."  Check. This is the scary part, if you believe the report: Stage three is "a terrorist attack on a public installation in the South such as an airport, or an armed attack like the sinking of the Cheonan." The Cheonan, a South Korean naval ship, was attacked in 2010, killing 46 sailors on board; Seoul firmly believes it was sunk by a North Korea mini-submarine. But perhaps even more unsettling is the idea of a public terrorist attack; it's not clear whether this would be something along the lines of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, when gunmen killed 166 civilians. Before we get too worked up about this story, though, it's important to note that the conservative South Korean press, for all its many virtues, has a bit of a reputation for hyping thinly sourced "scoops" about its mysterious Northern neighbor. This report also claims that Kim Jong Un narrowly survived an assassination attempt last year, an eye-popping assertion that has not been verified. So you should take it with a big grain of salt. Perhaps what's potentially most significant about the report is not the question of whether the South Korean intelligence source is correct about what's coming next, but rather whether Seoul shares this one official's view and might act on the suggestion that a terrorist attack might be imminent. If that is Seoul's position — if South Korea believes that the North is on track to kill some number of its citizens and maybe its civilians — then will it feel compelled to do something to preempt that attack? It seems unlikely North Korea really does want war, but it does appear to want to push everyone right up to the brink. The big danger is that some unexpected event will push the Korean peninsula over into a larger conflict that nobody really wants. As a number of analysts have warned, a preemptive strike from South Korea, perhaps meant to deter the Cheonan-style attack it might believe it coming, is exactly the sort of unwelcome event that might escalate things out of control.

Here’s how a North Korean soldier got inches from Rex Tillerson

The picture wigged some people out: But as North Korea watchers explain, there's very little to fear. Military and Red Cross talks have been held here over the decades without incident. Thousands of adventurous travelers invoke FOMO (or JOMO, depending on who's looking) among their Instagram followers by touring the village (celebrated as the Cold War's last frontier) each year. When there are visitors though, soldiers from both the North and South trail them very closely. As Scott Snyder, a North Korea expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, explained to me: Here's that picture of him from another angle: Here's another world leader in similar “peril”: And here are the requisite Twitter jokes about Tillerson's famous aversion to the media:

Japanese take action against Chinese smog

TOKYO — Even as it struggles to keep menacing Chinese ships from entering its territorial waters, Japan is bracing itself for an altogether different kind of danger from its larger neighbor – toxic smog. Under guidelines issued on Wednesday, Japanese authorities will urge residents to stay indoors if the level of toxic smog spreading to Japan from China exceeds twice the allowable limit set by the central government. The guidelines come in response to mounting concerns in Japan about the potential harmful effects of the toxic smog wafting across the ocean and after talks between the two countries on ways to curb pollution levels. In recent weeks, levels of air pollution in Beijing have hit all-time highs – the concentration of fine particulates reaching levels far greater than that considered healthy under the latest U.S. standards – and triggered health concerns beyond China. “There are increasing inquiries from the general public on the situation,” especially in western Japan, said Hitoshi Yoshizaki, deputy director of the ministry of environment’s air quality division. “Many people would like to know how to protect themselves.” The new provisional guidelines, compiled by the environment ministry, recommend that people stay indoors if the average amount of air pollutant, PM 2.5, is projected to exceed 70 micrograms per cubic meter – or twice the ministry’s maximum permissible level of 35 micrograms a day. Beijing’s pollution regularly exceeds 10 times that level – on Wednesday evening Beijing’s PM 2.5 levels were 273 micrograms per cubic meter. The air pollutant PM 2.5 is considered most hazardous because the particulates are small enough to enter the bloodstream and damage lung tissue. Since April 2012, levels over 70 micrograms per cubic meter have been recorded at six monitoring stations in Japan. In future, Japanese local authorities will recommend that those most vulnerable – people with heart or lung disease, the elderly and children – stay indoors if the PM 2.5 level exceeds that level. In China, where PM 2.5 has enveloped cities including Beijing, the government considers anything above 300 as “severely polluted” and “hazardous.” The main source of the pollution is believed to be intensive burning of coal in power plants and people’s homes in China, particularly in the cold winter months. Levels of PM 2.5 are being monitored at more than 500 stations across Japan but the government aims to increase that to 1,300. The municipal government of Fukuoka, the biggest city on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu and one of the closest to the Chinese mainland, has developed its own system for warning residents when levels of PM 2.5 exceed certain limits. However, with just a few weeks of data since concerns mounted in January, it is hard to assess the real risks to health, Yoshizaki said, noting that overall air quality standards had not dropped dramatically from a year earlier. Last week, officials from Japan’s Ministry of the Environment met counterparts at China’s Ministry of Environment Protection to discuss “potential collaboration” on projects to curb pollution, according to Yoshizaki. **— Financial Times** Ben McLannahan in Tokyo and Leslie Hook in Beijing also contributed to this story.

Slippers at work? Nonstop alcohol? Tales of an American executive in Korea

_Excerpted from “Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan” by Frank Ahrens._ My wife had to be somewhere in the room, but she seemed to have slipped just beyond my reach as I was jostled by the exuberant crowd that shout-sang along with the two Koreans sharing a microphone. And here I was: sopping wet, laughing, singing incoherently and hugging people I’d met only five days earlier. Welcome to Korea. I had expected South Korea to be more sterile. I’d had this feeling that South Korea existed 30 or so years in the future, where things are cleaner and more orderly. With its booming growth, strong democracy, ultrafast Internet, supersmart students and all the impeccably groomed Koreans I saw using next-generation Samsung and LG electronics in the TV ads I watched online, South Korea turned out to be that — and something else: a gritty, bare-knuckled uppercut to the jaw. The noise, the crowds, the traffic, the powerful smells, the nonstop visual stimulation — the all-night partying, the street protests, the fistfights in parliament — all combined to stagger me. My wife, Rebekah, and I arrived in Seoul in October 2010 after a 13-hour nonstop flight from Washington, D.C. Rebekah was about to begin a two-year posting in the U.S. Foreign Service at the American Embassy. I was to take over as director of global public relations for Hyundai Motor Co. We had both left The Washington Post. We had been married for only three months when we uprooted ourselves, taking new jobs in new careers. I had left a 21-year career as a journalist to make one leap into public relations and another leap to living outside America for the first time. What did we know about South Korea coming in? Little more than most Americans do: It’s the most wired nation on earth, the kids are ultra-high-achievers in academics, and they eat kimchi. Surrounded by our LG flat-screen TVs, Samsung smartphones, and Hyundai and Kia cars, most Americans know Korea for its powerhouse consumer brands — and perhaps for the murderous Kim dynasty in the North, whose periodic outbursts alternate between lethal threats and farce. As for what the worklife was like there, I had no idea. My first taste let me know how vastly different corporate cultures can be. At the end of my first week of work, my team at Hyundai invited me to a welcome dinner. In truth, it was my boss, Mr. Lee, who invited me and my team to dinner. I had not met or even heard of Mr. Lee until my first day. Mr. Lee had planned a customary Korean work night out, the sort of forced socialization, I would come to realize, that was common in Asian business. Your availability to the company begins before 8 a.m. Monday and ends on Friday night pretty much when your boss decides it’s time to call it quits. The twist was that I had brought Rebekah to dinner. This was wholly unexpected by my team, as wives do not attend work social functions. As it was explained to me, if my wife and I hosted, say, the 100-day party for our newborn — a Korean custom — the wife of my team leader might attend. But every other work-social function, she would not attend. It just wasn’t done. Not aware of this custom, Rebekah and I met the team at a Korean barbecue restaurant, where the meat is served with greens and noodles and tubers and pickled tubers — everything but barbecue sauce. This was the first example of a phenomenon our State Department sponsors had told us about: “Welcome to Korea, the land of Almost, Not Quite.” What they meant was that Korea, or at least Seoul, looks familiar to Westerners accustomed to large cities. But as you dive in, you find things are just a little ... off to us: Backing into parking spaces is the rule rather than the exception. No trash cans in any public space: office, sidewalk, theater, anywhere. The utter absence of voice mail. Cleaning women showing up in the men’s bathroom while it’s occupied. Business attire worn in the office with bedroom slippers. Green flashing lights on ambulances. Car navigation screens showing live TV that drivers watch while they’re driving. Communal plates at meals. We gathered around a table in a private room. Mr. Lee sat in the middle of one long side, the seat always occupied by the highest-status person. I sat across from him. The evening started off pleasantly enough. Then the soju came out. Soju is the national drink. Soju — like vodka in Russia — is more than just a drink. It is the means to team-building at work and relationship-bonding outside of work. I had read about the Korean drinking culture. Indeed, during my first interview with Hyundai, I was asked, “Do you drink alcohol? Your team will want to show respect to you by giving you drinks.” I told my Korean interviewer that I enjoy a good beer and glibly added that I was sure there were other ways my team could demonstrate their respect. I was wrong. By most reports, Koreans drink more alcohol than anyone on Earth. A lot more. According to a 2014 European survey, Koreans downed an average of 11 shots per week, more than double their closest rival, Russians, with five. Problem No.1: I myself am not really a drinker. Neither is my wife. That is to say, we don’t get drunk, for reasons of faith and health. Each guest at our welcome dinner table had a shot glass for soju and a larger glass — about the size of a bathroom sink glass — for beer. Both were kept full. Then emptied. Then filled, and so on. In Korea, it is polite to pour the drinks for your tablemates and considered rude if their glasses go empty. You pour either with two hands on the bottle or the right hand on the bottle and the left hand respectfully touching your right elbow. The person receiving the drink holds their glass respectfully with two hands. Then they return the pour. My new teammates would either toast “Geonbae,” which means “To your health,” or “Wehayo,” which simply means “To your ...” (fill in the blank: to your health, to your business success, whatever). Pretty soon, everyone was shouting “One shot!” and downing the soju shots. As the dinner progressed and everyone got drunker and more red-faced, variations on the “one shot” appeared: the “love shot,” where two drinkers loop arms, their faces close together, and down the shot; the shot where you prove you’ve downed your shot by turning the glass upside down over your head; and the Korean “bomb shot,” called a boilermaker in the States, where you drop your shot of soju into your beer, down it all in one drink, and rattle the glasses to prove they’re empty while your drinking mates cheer. The ringleader was Ben, my team leader. Ben was, like most Hyundai men his age, a Hyundai lifer and a patriot. “First job, last job,” they would all say. Once, when asked why he liked working for Hyundai, he said, “It makes me proud to help make Korea strong.” Like many Koreans in business, Ben had taken an English first name because Koreans fear their Korean names are too difficult for Westerners to pronounce. As a team leader, it was Ben’s job to execute Hyundai executives’ orders, wherever they may come, like army sergeants carrying out an officer’s orders. But that’s the Western way of looking at it. I would come to understand that Ben thought of himself as a father or a big brother to his subordinate team members. Ben’s attitude was just one of the many profound ways the concept of Confucianism — Korea’s de facto national religion — weaves its way into every strand of Korean life. Ben was also emblematic of Korean working stiffs in another way: He was a gireogi appa, or “goose daddy.” In the way that male geese fly far from their nests for long periods to gather food for their families, as the folklore goes, Korean gireogi appa sacrifice time with their families to provide for them by furthering their careers with Hyundai. This means living on opposite sides of the world, sometimes for years, missing births, anniversaries and huge chunks of childhoods, save for a couple of short visits per year, to take the job Hyundai has assigned. In Ben’s case, his family had followed him to a Hyundai posting years earlier in the United States and stayed behind when he was recalled to Korea. He saw his wife and kids once, maybe twice a year. For this evening’s activities, Ben’s job was to incite heavy drinking and high-volume merriment, and he ran quite a show. There was yelling, laughing, and cross-talking, and team members mocking each other, and “Wehayo!” shouted three times in a hearty toast, and people running around the table to pour soju for each other — and especially for my boss, Mr. Lee. At one point I asked Rebekah, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” The last time I had seen anyone drinking this way was during quarter-beer nights at West Virginia University in the 1980s. In the United States, with its more relaxed offices, work culture and after-work behavior weren’t all that different. In Korea, you behave one way at work and another outside of work. Just when I thought the commotion had reached its highest pitch, someone pushed a button on the table, summoning the waitress, and more meat was ordered. And more beer. After two hours of saturnalia, we were shocked to discover that we had completed only Round One of the evening. Round Two is noraebang, which means “song room,” which means karaoke. Problem No. 2: I don’t really do karaoke. And that’s an issue because karaoke is no joke in Asia. Every year, there are reports from the Philippines or Thailand or China or Japan about stabbings because someone was intolerably butchering a version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” which is an anthem of Asian salarymen — because, I think, Asian salarymen don’t get to do anything their way. We all piled out of the restaurant, walked to a nearby noraebang and crammed into a room with banquettes. Thick plastic-covered songbooks in English and Korean were handed around. The music started and one of my team members began singing while everyone else started clapping and singing along. Ben ordered soju and the action escalated as the strobe lights kicked in and the dancing started. After an hour or so, sweaty and exhausted, bloated from grilled meat, heads spinning, my wife and I begged out and asked to be driven home. The team was disappointed. Apparently, there could have been a Round Three in the offing. We piled into the back seat of the black Hyundai sedan sent for us and slumped together, holding hands. I felt like I’d been blown through a jet engine, then used to mop the floor of a frat house the morning after an epic party. Our silent Korean driver weaved through the endless red brake lights of Seoul traffic, seemingly as heavy at 11 p.m. as it had been during the morning rush hour. Through the tinted windows of our sedan we saw sidewalks packed with well-dressed Koreans window-shopping and taking selfies. Dancing videos promoting products and Korean soap operas stretched several stories high on buildings, turning darkness into a pulsing, multicolored daylight. Copyright © 2016 by Frank Ahrens. “Seoul Man” will be published Aug. 16 by HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Ahrens is now a public relations executive in Washington. E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook.

A remote corner of China wants access to the sea. The obstacle is North Korea.

**CHINA’S BACK YARD** | _This is part of an occasional series examining China’s efforts to win friends and clients in Asia and to assert a more dominant role across the continent._ FANGCHUAN, CHINA — You can almost smell the sea air from here, at the point where China, Russia and North Korea meet, where slogans pronounce “One eye, three countries” and tourists pose for photos against a green landscape in which the borders are imperceptible. But for the Chinese, smelling the sea air is all they can do. Their border lies 10 miles inland, because of the Russian annexation of the area in 1860. That means China’s landlocked northern provinces are dependent for sea access on Russia, whose efforts to develop eastern ports haven’t amounted to much, and North Korea — which has some reliability issues, to say the least. Now, China is hoping to triumph over decades of false starts and finally secure access to the sea, enabling it to ship goods produced here to destinations elsewhere in Asia — and farther afield — instead of sending them by train to ports to the south. Authorities are pumping money into infrastructure projects as part of President Xi Jinping’s plan to build a new Silk Road trading route and to make this area, which incorporates the Yanbian autonomous prefecture with its large ethnic Korean population, relevant again. South Korea wants a part of the action, too. It is eyeing the area as a kind of off-site Korean unification project, with businesses preparing for when North Korea opens up — or for when it fails, although they are careful not to talk in such a pointed way. “There are lots of companies just perched here, just waiting for North Korea to collapse,” said one foreign resident in the area, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his work. The biggest South Korean presence here — although its officials swear they’re here for the trading hub, not positioning themselves for the demise of North Korea — is Hunchun Posco Hyundai International Logistics. A joint venture between two South Korean corporate behemoths, it has built a big distribution center on the outskirts of Hunchun, a Chinese city half an hour’s drive from the point where the three countries converge. “Of course we see the potential of this area,” Yeon Jei-sung, the company’s president, said in an interview in his office. “The three countries meet here, and that in itself can be a core place for trade.” Such a pronouncement, however, is predicated on one crucial factor: the development of Rajin port. And Rajin port is in North Korea. “We should have taken it while we had the chance,” said a local real estate developer, referring to the Korean War, when China came to North Korea’s rescue. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid annoying local Koreans. While North Korea is promoting the area — Rajin and the neighboring city of Sonbong are together known as Rason — as a special economic zone, previous efforts at opening have not gone far. Over the years, this area has been described as “the next Rotterdam.” In the early 1990s, the U.N. Development Program spearheaded an ambitious project called the Greater Tumen Initiative, named after the river that runs through the region. The project went nowhere. This is not an obvious place for the world’s next great logistics hub. This is where some of the most forgotten parts of three countries converge: the Far East of Russia, where 6 million people live in an area the size of Europe; the depopulating northeast of China, which managed to miss out on the country’s boom of recent decades; and the northern reaches of North Korea, a difficult place to survive and where the “hostile” classes have long been sent to languish. North Korea established Rason as a free-trade zone in 1991, modeled on zones that had powered the export-led explosion of growth in China. But nothing much happened until 2010, when the regulations governing the area were loosened and the regime of Kim Jong-il began some tentative experimentation — for example, allowing residents to buy apartments and foreigners to enter more easily. This time, the project might stand more of a chance, said Adam Cathcart, a lecturer in Chinese history at the University of Leeds in England. “It’s been 25 years since they started talking about this, and it’s gone in fits and starts, but mostly not moving,” he said.“There is a certain critical mass now.” The huge amount of money that China is spending on infrastructure in the region could prove to be a game-changer, Cathcart said. China has built a $7 billion, 225-mile-long high-speed railway line from Changchun, the capital of Jilin province, to Hunchun. It is set to open this month. The Russian news agency Interfax reported in May that provincial authorities had suggested extending the line to Vladivostok, Russia. The plan is that the rail line will eventually connect with North Korea. For now, China is building a bridge across the Tumen River at the Quanhe border crossing with North Korea — it is clearly visible from lookout points in the area — and China also is building a road to Rajin. This area of northeastern China was a center for heavy industry, particularly mining and automotive manufacturing, during the first half of the 20th century, especially during the Japanese occupation. But it suffered under the market-oriented economic reforms that Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping initiated in 1978 and more recently as large numbers of the ethnic Korean population have left for better opportunities in South Korea. Xi has a plan to stimulate the growth of heavy industry in northeast China, part of his “Belt and Road” initiative, through infrastructure such as the rail project, aimed at making it easier for people to come here. The area is also crucial for South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her “Eurasia Initiative,” which would link South Korea to Europe by rail but for the not-inconsiderable physical obstacle that is North Korea. With that in mind, Posco, a South Korean steelmaker, has teamed with Hyundai to build the logistics center in Hunchun, a city of 220,000. It has three storage units acting as a staging post for goods on their way in and out of the region, including seafood — clams, squid and octopus — from North Korea. The logistics center also handles agricultural goods, timber and auto parts from China, and expansions are planned depending on demand. A Washington Post reporter saw several trucks with Rason license plates entering China at the Quanhe border crossing near Hunchun. But being able to ship Chinese products out in the other direction, through Rajin port, would provide a huge boost to the region, proponents say. Today, sending a container from Hunchun by train through China and then by sea to South Korea costs about $2,000. Exporting it directly from the port of Rajin would halve that cost, said Yeon, the Posco president. “Rajin is going to open up — maybe in three to five years,” he said. “It’s imminent.” But Yeon has never been to Rajin, partly because of a South Korean government requirement citizens to get official permission to enter North Korea. Despite the obstacles to gaining access to North Korea, South Korean companies, hungry for new markets and eyeing the 26 million potential consumers in the North, still view the area as a new opportunity. Recent reports, including one by the South’s Korea Development Institute, have suggested that South Korean companies could contract Chinese firms to run factories in border cities including Hunchun and hire North Korean workers. North Koreans already work in factories run by South Korean companies at a small inter-Korean industrial park, but sanctions have limited the firms’ ability to hire additional cheap labor from the North. A recent poll from the South’s Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry found that 87 percent of companies surveyed have or would have an interest in doing business in the North if unification were to occur. There are many impediments to a breakthrough, not the least of which is North Korea and its irascibility. “The problem is still Rason and getting to it,” said Cathcart, who has written reports about the region. “The relationship between China and North Korea with regards to the use of Rason is still problematic. It’s not unfettered access.” South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative and its plans to link up with the Trans-Siberian and Trans-China railways depend on North Korea’s allowing the South’s trains to pass through the country. But Pyongyang in June blocked South Korea’s bid to join the organization that approves cross-border rail lines, a requirement in building a trans-Asian railway. And China’s plans have been complicated by North Korea’s 2013 nuclear test, which resulted in new international sanctions, and by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s decision to execute his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, the main interlocutor in business deals between North Korea and China. For its part, Russia has shown little interest in the area. A lonely-looking Russian-built storage facility is visible from the Posco center, but locals say it has never been operational. And Russia’s Summa Group was supposed to be developing the port at Zarubino, also near this intersection, but has reportedly run out of money. China has more reason than ever to develop this area, says Xuan Dongri, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at Yanbian University. “China is pretty anxious about this,” he said, adding that without North Korea’s cooperation to develop the region, China will be hampered in realizing its dream of greater prosperity. “No matter what, this brother of ours is still very important,” Xuan said. “And for China’s dealings in northeast Asia, North Korea is the biggest obstacle.” Seo Yoon-jung and Gu Jinglu contributed to this report. **Read more:** In Cambodia, the push and pull of China’s orbit North Korea’s growing economy — and U.S. misconceptions about it North Korea might be courting Russia, but China still looms larger China promotes ‘Asia-Pacific dream’ to counter U.S. ‘pivot’

North Korea claims it can cure MERS (and a whole bunch of other things)

TOKYO — North Korea has made some wacky claims over the years — like the one about discovering unicorns and the photos showing Kim Jong Un at the top of a snow-capped Mount Paekdu, which would have you believe he apparently climbed in dress shoes. And don’t forget that time his father, Kim Jong Il, reportedly hit five holes-in-one the first time he played golf.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But Friday’s assertion that a North Korean pharmaceutical company has trumped global science and come up with a vaccine for MERS has got to be right up there. The official Korean Central News Agency — not considered among the world’s most trustworthy news sources — announced Friday that the Pugang Pharmaceutical Company had developed "Kumdang-2," a vaccine made from extracts from ginseng grown in rare earth elements. The injection is “highly effective in preventing and curing the MERS virus and other contagious diseases,” the Pyongyang-based agency claimed. It even published a photo of the medicine, which comes in glass vials in a gold box, the kind that ginseng tea is sold in in North Korea. "As a strong immune-activator, the injection has been recognized to prevent different malignant epidemics," it quoted Jon Sung-hun, a doctor and director of the pharmaceutical company, as saying. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a zoonotic virus that passed from camels to humans and was first seen in Saudi Arabia three years ago, has killed 24 people in South Korea since an outbreak began last month. There's no known cure or treatment for the virus, despite the best efforts of international science.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico North Korea — which shut its borders for four months amid concerns about Ebola, happening half a world away — has been clearly concerned about MERS and checking temperatures at an inter-Korean industrial park on the northern side of the border.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But, surprisingly, it had not imposed the kind of blanket quarantine seen during the Ebola pandemic. Perhaps we now know why. People who had been injected with Kumdang-2 (the name means “golden sugar” in Korean, thought it's not clear what Kumdang-1 treated) had not contracted any infectious diseases, even as they had traveled to the areas hit by those diseases, KCNA reported. "This means that Kumdang-2 is effective in coping with the MERS virus," it said. North Korea had previously touted its golden concoction in 2003, when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome hit Asia, and a few years later amid outbreaks of avian flu, the South’s Yonhap News Agency. The medicine even has its own Web site, available in English and Russian, declaring: “Everyone has the right to be healthy!"    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  The Web site makes for some fun reading. Under “Dosing and treatment course,” the North Koreans recommend using one or two ampoules on the first day and then gradually increasing the dosage.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico After two days of injections, most people will “feel strong, refreshed and happy,” although “some patients may feel that their diseased parts are stimulated to a small extent,” the website says.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Web site warns that a few patients (“less than 0.001 % of the total”) will feel “heavily stimulated at the diseased parts and/or experienced throbbing or stifled feelings at the heart.” “Such feelings were found especially among feeble girls and weak elders,” it says. “They are not side effects, but signs of healing response. Therefore, you should not worry about them.” Kumdang-2 can be used for an impressive array of illnesses, according to the Web site: from chilblains and diabetes to impotence and “spontaneous gangrene.” Unfortunately for anyone convinced by such claims, the only place to buy this miracle medicine — outside of North Korea, that is — appears to be Russia. Under the “where to buy” tab is only a Moscow address and a Web site in Russian, which sells a variety of North Korean ginseng products.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As luck would have it, your correspondent met the boss of this North Korean company some years ago in Pyongyang, the very Dr. Jon quoted in the KCNA report.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico I was a correspondent for the Financial Times, making my second visit to Pyongyang in 2006, when I asked if I could met Jon, the president of Pugang Corp, a North Korean conglomerate — in the mold of the Southern megaliths like Samsung and Hyundai — that was involved in businesses as diverse as mining, motorbikes and pharmaceuticals. Much to my surprise, Jon agreed to meet me and we talked business over cups of tea — yes, ginseng tea — in the coffee shop of the Potonggang hotel in central Pyongyang.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Pugang was among the North Korean companies whose assets had been frozen under U.S. financial sanctions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But it was finding ways around the sanctions, he told me at the time. Its best-selling product at that time was a blood purifier derived from soy beans called "royal blood fresh" and was being marketed as an effective prevention against deep-vein thrombosis. Pugang was exporting the product in boxes saying only "Made in Korea" and sending it through third countries to far-flung markets including, he said, to the United States. Jon — a rotund man who spoke perfect English, the result of growing up in Tanzania, he said — told me that North Korean companies were still able to export and were finding new banking channels to evade the American sanctions, imposed for alleged counterfeiting and money laundering. "It is true we are having great difficulties, but they cannot kill us," he said. Friday’s assertions show that Pugang is at least still alive, if not kicking. Perhaps there’s something to the Kumdang-2 after all?

‘How would I live if smoking is banned?’ Japanese politicians decry calls for smoke-free Olympics

Smoking is on the decline in Japan, but not fast enough, according to Olympic and health officials, who are seeking to snuff out cigarettes in public spaces ahead of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.  Bettcher and his team are especially concerned about the effects of secondhand smoke, which reportedly kill about 15,000 people a year in the country.  Smoking is largely entrenched in Japanese culture, and while the country’s laws discourage smoking in public spaces, there are no penalties for allowing it. For example, it’s not uncommon for smoking sections in bars and restaurants to bleed out into the nonsmoking sectors. And while smoking is technically prohibited in hospitals and schools, medical staff and teachers still sometimes smoke directly outside the facilities’ doors. “The tobacco issue is something that can’t really be solved in a Japanese manner,” Kazuo Hasegawa, a nonsmoker who developed lung cancer, recently told Reuters. “Without outside pressure, Japan won’t move on this.”  The IOC appears to be struggling with those same issues now in Japan, but the issue is even more complicated because of the ties between the tobacco industry and the Japanese government — which ran Japan Tobacco Inc., the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer, until the mid-1980s. The Japanese government still holds a 30 percent stake in the business.   Takeshita suggested restaurant owners should get to choose whether to allow smoking in their establishments and leave a sign at the door. Anything less than a complete ban in indoor public spaces would not be enough, however, according to Bettcher, WHO’s director for prevention of noncommunicable disease. “A recent newspaper described Japan as a ‘paradise for smokers,’ and I’m sure it wouldn’t want that title,” Bettcher said (via Reuters). “It’s not a good impression to give.”

In South Korean classrooms, digital textbook revolution meets some resistance

SEOUL — Five years ago, South Korea mapped out a plan to transform its education system into the world’s most cutting-edge. The country would turn itself into a “knowledge powerhouse,” one government report declared, breeding students “equipped for the future.” These students would have little use for the bulky textbooks familiar to their parents. Their textbooks would be digital, accessible on any screen of their choosing. Their backpacks would be much lighter. By setting out to swap traditional textbooks for digital ones, the chief element of its plan for transformation, South Korea tried to anticipate the future — and its vision has largely taken shape with the global surge of tablets, smartphones and e-book readers. But South Korea, among the world’s most wired nations, has also seen its plan to digitize elementary, middle and high school classrooms by 2015 collide with a trend it didn’t anticipate: Education leaders here worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more. Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full rollout won’t be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and second-graders, government officials say, probably won’t use the gadgets at all. The newest thinking, in the eyes of some education experts here, calls into question South Korea’s long-held tenet that technology automatically brings progress. The JoongAng Ilbo, one of Seoul’s major daily newspapers, warned in an editorial about the country’s “exaggerated trust” in digital education and the wrongful assumption that wireless education means better quality. Other countries are watching closely, because no other nation, according to government officials here, has a similarly ambitious digital plan. The nearest comparison might be in Florida, where officials last year proposed phasing out traditional textbooks by 2015. But South Korea’s education system has long been known for pushing the limits. It is among the world’s most demanding: Most students meet with private tutors or attend cram schools. Parents obsess over their kids’ achievement. South Korea has among the world’s highest literacy levels and highest private education spending. “The concern about the digital textbook,” said Kwon Cha-mi, who runs the digital program at one of the pilot elementary schools in Seoul, “is that young students won’t have as much time to experience real life and real things. They’ll just see the whole world through a computer screen.” At first glance, some of the trepidation sounds like the typical concerns of an older generation that doesn’t understand the new. But South Korean students are showing the downside of uber-stimulation. About one in 12 students between ages 5 and 9, according to a government survey, is addicted to the Internet, meaning they become anxious or depressed if they go without access. Some experts suggest a similar problem in the United States, where between 8 percent and 12 percent of children show signs of Internet addiction, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Education officials here fear that if tablets and laptops become mandatory in the classroom, students could become even more device-dependent. They might also suffer from vision problems. Some parents, officials say, have expressed the concern that their kids will struggle to keep their focus on studying when using an Internet-connected device. Before making a complete transition to digital books, the government should study the “health effects” on students, said Jeong Kwang-hoon, chief of the online learning division at the Korea Education and Research Information Service, a government-sponsored institute that is working with private companies to create digital textbooks. South Korea’s education ministry never said explicitly that paper textbooks would disappear. But the 2007 plan spoke in sweeping terms about “overcoming the limit” of traditional learning, so education experts here assumed as much. Only last summer did the government unveil the specifics. South Korea said it would introduce the first set of e-textbooks nationwide by 2015 at the latest. The content would be accessible on any device — on tablets or laptops, in classrooms or at home, on Apples or Samsungs, the homegrown electronics company whose rise corresponds with Korea’s economic emergence. But the plan was scaled back, too, with officials saying paper textbooks still need a prime place in classrooms. “There have been some changes in ambition,” said Ra Eun-jong, the deputy director of textbook planning at the education ministry. “In some way, paper and digital textbooks will be used together. But we still haven’t figured out the best mix. . . . It might just depend on the teacher’s personal style.” Students in classes using digital textbooks — at the beginning, they might be used only for a few subjects, such as science and social studies — will be able to retrieve their homework from a “cloud” computing network, the education ministry says. Conceivably, they will be able to access their homework in any place with Internet service or cellphone service; they could even finish up their assignments on their smartphones while riding Seoul’s subway, where the service network reaches underground. At least 10 South Korean publishing companies are building digital textbooks. The crudest versions are much like copied pages of a traditional textbook; the pages are digital, but you can’t play around with them. The more advanced versions, though, are packed with 3-D animation and video clips. There’s also the possibility that the textbooks can be updated in real-time — although textbooks here are government-approved, and any changes would require a bureaucratic review. Most of these publishing companies have their background in traditional textbooks, and for the moment, their developers find themselves torn between an old model and a new one. Despite higher upfront development costs, e-textbooks, stripped of the costly printing process, are typically cheaper than traditional ones. South Korea’s government has always insisted on affordable textbooks, unlike in the United States, where the market is more lucrative (South Korea’s paperbound textbooks cost about $9). But the fear among publishers is that the move to e-textbooks will cause the entire industry to shrink. For now, one publishing executive says, companies are developing e-textbooks only because the shift is inevitable. From surveys of the pilot schools, government officials here say digital textbooks help the attitude of students. But there’s no evidence that they help or hurt grades or retention. Digital textbooks do, though, change the very nature of the classroom. Teachers who embrace the digital textbooks, education experts say, become more like “companions” in the education process, not just lecturing, but also helping students to conduct their own Google searches and to make sense of simulations featured in the e-textbooks. At Seoul’s Guil Elementary School, where fifth- and sixth-graders participate in the trial, every student in the digital classrooms has a Hewlett-Packard laptop. Students toggle between their digital textbook and the Internet, which they use like an encyclopedia for fact-checking and research. On this particular day, students are learning about pinhole cameras — a simple device that captures images upside-down. When teacher Lee Yeon-ji asks her 24 students how the device works, she sends them to the Internet. “I think I found something that sounds true,” one student says. Minutes later, she asks them to double-click on a video, embedded in the digital textbook, illustrating the process. Students watch the video either on their laptops or on a high-definition monitor at the front of the classroom, in place of a chalkboard. The Guil principal, observing in the back of the classroom, marvels at the way the students follow along, speeding between searches and simulations. “The students are focusing,” Yoon Taek-joong, the principal, says, and that sort of focus requires a digital brain. “My brains and their brains must be totally different,” Yoon says.

Critics call Singapore an autocracy. But I never felt more free than when I lived there.

Between my early life in India and my current life in the United States, I spent 14 **** years in paradise: Singapore. From clean water and crime-free streets to reliable public transportation and easy access to libraries, the state government anticipates all the basic needs to provide its residents a good quality of life and eliminate the stresses that can impede personal progress. But in the coverage that followed the death of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew on Monday, Western media has painted a very different picture. They describe a crushing autocrat that chained his people and stripped them of basic freedoms. My experience was quite the contrary. Outside of this tiny island utopia, I never felt more free.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico My husband whisked me and our baby away to Singapore in 1998 after landing a job there, despite my fears about adapting to an unfamiliar culture. When we first arrived and checked into a hotel, I called room service and asked for a jug of filtered water – a standard health precaution. The hotel employee dismissed my concerns: “You can drink water from the tap in your bathroom.” At first, I was horrified by the suggestion. In India, water filters were as common as TVs and refrigerators in middle- and upper-class homes. But here, I soon discovered, the state maintained a high-quality water treatment process that delivered purified water nationwide. Not only was Singapore’s water drinkable straight from the tap, but it always gushed with good pressure, even on the top floors of the tallest buildings. It was my first introduction to a government that works.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In my first days in Singapore, I worried about safely getting around town, especially with a baby. I had never used local trains and feared ending up in a dangerous neighborhood. But what would be reasonable fears for a newcomer in most countries were gratuitous in Singapore. Everywhere were street signs and directions in English, clearly marked and intelligently placed, as if invisible planners were anticipating your next question. On my first try, I navigated to Orchard Road, the nation’s retail hub, and back to my hotel without having to ask anyone for directions. There was no litter in Singapore’s streets. Every building looked clean and every walkway looked newly washed. The national library had numerous branches, stocked with wonderful books. With my baby in a stroller, I could go practically anywhere. It was like an India I had always dreamed of: clean, green and hassle-free.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico How was this possible? Singapore gained its independence nearly 20 years after India, and yet, the island nation now boasts a remarkably diverse economy, the world’s top airline, clean river, and a thriving trade port – all achieved in just a few decades. Certainly, Singapore benefits from being a fraction of India’s size, with a population of 5.5 million people covering just 275 square miles. But by any measure, it developed at a staggering speed. The engine behind that transformation was the governance of Lee Kuan Yew, the man whose vision took this little dot of a city-state “from third-world to first.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But not everyone shared my admiration. At the time, a friend of mine from the U.S. told me nothing could make her move to Singapore: “I would hate to live in a country where my freedoms are curtailed,” she declared loftily. I could only laugh. There I was, freer than anytime I had been in my life. I had just found a job I loved. I could go see a movie with friends and return by myself late at night. I could fall asleep in a taxi, after reeling off my address, and the driver would safely take me home and gently wake me up. Singapore maintains an efficient – if strict – judicial system, fundamental to living in a low-crime society while practicing individual freedom. I had tasted the real freedom that came with security.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Many point to the price Singapore’s citizens and residents pay for achieving that security. The government imposes strict laws with steep fines and punishments for even minor transgressions: Breaching the ban on selling gum can fetch a fine north of $70,000. Vandalizing property can lead to caning. These kinds of sentences may be an affront to American ideals, but in Singapore, like many Asian countries, ensuring the greater good is paramount to self-determination. Americans, it should be noted, also pay a price for the premium they put on individual liberties.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Westerners ridicule Singapore for restrictions on personal expression and protest, but overlook how the nation provides more freedom than some of the most-lauded democracies. In Singapore, there was no gun-culture like America’s or neighborhoods with street gangs to be avoided. As my daughter grew older, I could easily let her move around the city with no worries about her safety. Around the country, there are plenty of mosques, churches and temples in close proximity, along with Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist national holidays. The national government is highly transparent and virtually incorruptible, functioning better than some chaotic, so-called democracies. And yet the world asked why average Singaporeans, who had good schooling, a job, affordable housing, healthcare, child-care and elder-care don’t protest from roof-tops?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Yes, Lee Kuan Yew was not a paragon of the kind of democracy that throws up populist political leaders. Yes, his acerbic remarks would never have won a TV debate or an election in the U.S. But he was not one of the self-serving, corrupt dictators that developing countries produce so often. It would be folly to deny him his due credit for building a nation regularly listed as the world’s best place to live. He accomplished in one generation what took other newly developed countries three or more. He delivered the strong medicine needed to transform a nascent and suffering country into a mature nation, capable of punching far above its weight. Perhaps another leader would have given a sweet placebo, or worse still, poison. May Singapore never squander the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **More from PostEverything:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Guns, sex and arrogance: I hated everything about America — until I moved here    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Why Obama’s key trade deal with Asia would actually be good for American workers    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico India has outlawed homosexuality. But it’s better to be transgender there than in the U.S.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

First MERS victim has fully recovered

As we wait for details on the second case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the United States, here's some good news about the first one: The patient was released from a hospital Friday and is considered fully recovered, according to the Indiana Department of Health.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference on the new case, a patient in Florida. But health officials reported Saturday that the first case, an unnamed U.S. health-care worker who had been living and working in Saudi Arabia, is fine. “The patient has tested negative for MERS, is no longer symptomatic and poses no threat to the community,” said Alan Kumar, chief medical information officer at the Community Hospital in Munster, Ind. The hospital talked to the CDC before releasing the patient, the hospital said. MERS comes from the same family, coronavirus, as the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which killed almost 800 people worldwide in 2003. MERS had been confirmed in 401 people in 12 countries, earlier this month, causing 93 deaths. The cases originated in six countries in the Arabian Peninsula. Most of these people developed severe acute respiratory illness, with fever, cough and shortness of breath.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The virus's incubation period — the time between exposure and development of symptoms — is about five days, similar to SARS. While experts do not know how the MERS virus is spread, the CDC advises Americans to protect themselves by washing their hands often, avoiding close contact with people who are sick, avoiding touches to their eyes, nose and/or mouth with unwashed hands, and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces. People who develop fever and cough or shortness of breath within 14 days after traveling from countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula should see a doctor. The Indiana patient traveled from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to London on April 24, and then to Chicago by air. He took a bus to the Highland, Ind. area and went to Community Hospital in Munster, Ind. after falling ill. He was kept in isolation until he recovered. Authorities contacted most of the passengers on the flights and the bus, and none are symptomatic, according to the Indiana health department. So far there has been no clear evidence that the virus can be transmitted by casual contact. Hospital staff who had direct contact with the patient are still off duty and remain in temporary isolation in their homes until lab results confirm they are not infected. Related: CDC confirms first case of deadly MERS virus in Indiana    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

Japan and South Korea resolve dispute over ‘comfort women’

THE GREATEST challenge to peace in East Asia arises from authoritarian China, so it has been a worrying anomaly that one of the most strained relationships recently has been between democracies Japan and South Korea. The resolution between those two nations of a long-standing historical dispute, announced Monday, is therefore very good news. China’s challenge does not arise from its growing prosperity. On the contrary, that has been a boon for hundreds of millions of Chinese and should be welcomed by other nations. But China’s Communist rulers, especially since the inauguration of President Xi Jinping, have married economic power to a more assertive, even bullying foreign policy. Coupled with increasing repression and government secrecy at home, the rising militarization has worried China’s neighbors. Their biggest fear is that China’s regime, denying its own people liberty and ruling in the name of a discredited communist ideology, will fan nationalism at home to bolster its popularity. In such a climate, alliances among the Pacific region’s stable democracies, especially the United States, Japan and South Korea but also Australia, Taiwan and the Philippines, become ever more important. But Japan and South Korea have been feuding over the legacy of Japan’s colonialization of the Korean Peninsula in the last century. In particular, Koreans have objected that Japan has not adequately acknowledged or compensated what are euphemistically called “comfort women” — Korean girls and women who were taken from their homes during World War II and forced to engage in sex with Japanese soldiers. Now the two countries have “finally and irreversibly” resolved that dispute, their leaders said Monday. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed “sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.” The Japanese government pledged $8.3 million to a fund that South Korea’s government will help administer for the benefit of surviving sex slaves. For her part, South Korean President Park Geun-hye promised that, if Japan makes good on its end of the deal, her nation will consider the matter closed and refrain from “accusing or criticizing” Japan on the issue in international forums. Both leaders deserve credit for putting national and global interests ahead of political obstacles. Ms. Park already was under suspicion because her father, president from 1962 to 1979, was seen by many as too friendly toward Japan; now she is facing criticism from politicians and activists who say Japan didn’t accept legal responsibility clearly enough. A nationalist wing of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, believing that Japan resolved all wartime issues when it normalized relations with South Korea in 1965, was adamantly opposed to further apologies. These constituencies won’t go away, and other issues will give opportunities to those who remain suspicious: a tiny disputed island between the two nations, disagreements over how textbooks portray their fraught history. But the settlement over comfort women, if implemented in good faith, removes the biggest obstacle to improved relations and to smoother cooperation of both countries with the United States. That is good news for the new year. **Read more on this topic:** David Ignatius: A diplomatic juggling act in Asia Fred Hiatt: Wartime ghosts shadow Japan and South Korea’s future

Chinese mall becomes ‘prison’ for bears, belugas, wolves

A Chinese shopping mall has become a “prison” for a variety of marine and polar animals. Two white bears — billed as polar bears but more likely polar bear–brown bear hybrids — five walrus calves, six young beluga whales and two Arctic wolves are among the animals on display in the Grandview Mall Ocean World in the southern city of Guangzhou. Animals Asia, a Hong Kong-based charity, calls the conditions in the mall “horrifying” and describes it as a “prison for animals.” In China, an article complaining about belugas swimming in dirty water, a whale shark being confined to a small tank and a grouper dying went viral on social media and provoked outrage. ”The owner of Grandview Mall Ocean World should be kept in a fishbowl for his whole life,” one person wrote on the Sina Weibo microblogging site. “It is indoors. Exposing such adorable animals to the noise and the glare for a long time might not be good for them,” wrote another. On a recent visit, one bear paced back and forth in a small enclosure, displaying behavior that experts say reflects stress and possible psychological problems. Wolves lay listlessly in a small room, while walrus calves and belugas swam back and forth in confined spaces. “Taking animals from their natural environments can never be defended, but when they’re re-homed in conditions like we’re seeing at the Grandview Aquarium it’s the worst possible situation,” wrote Animal Asia’s Animal Welfare Director Dave Neale in a blog post.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “While those behind this may claim this as education, it’s clear the motivation here is bottom line profit. As long as businesses are allowed to use animals in this manner, wealth will always be put ahead of welfare.” On a recent visit, WorldViews overheard some visitors complaining about the “skinny” and “pathetic”–looking animals, although others seemed content to take photographs and move on. Nevertheless, Neale took some encouragement from the negative reaction to the mall on social media. “What is clear is that a significant section of Chinese society will not accept this, and the negativity surrounding the Grandview Aquarium is the only thing that will challenge developments like this," he said. Grandview Mall Ocean World declined requests for comment, but manager Li Chengtang was quoted in local media as saying the aquarium provides enough space for animals to live and play, and that professionals were monitoring the animals' health. Responding to activists' criticisms about the aquarium training sea lions to perform, Li told local media it aims to offer an experience of the "polar ocean world" as well as scientific knowledge. “Aquaria can help to educate the public,” he was quoted as saying.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Guangzhou Ocean and Fishery Bureau has opened an investigation into the aquarium and found that some animals died or were hurt when being moved into the aquarium, Guangzhou Daily reported. The aquarium is one of 39 ocean theme parks in China, a booming industry that is capturing many marine mammals from the wild to stock its tanks, including hundreds of bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales. There are concerns that many animals in the Chinese ocean park industry are being caught in ways that cause stress and fear and disrupt social groups — and are then kept in inadequate conditions that are likely to cause suffering. _China’s booming ocean parks spell misery for bears, belugas, dolphins_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

At Kennedy Center, an uneven Hei-Kyung Hong is at best when showcasing round tone

Hei-Kyung Hong seemed like a fish out of water for most of her recital Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, presented by Vocal Arts D.C. The soprano, in her 50s, has made a career as an opera singer. Her brief, somewhat dutifully performed program of art songs, in German and Korean, left room for three operatic encores, where a voice once inhibited seemed finally to burst forth. Hong was at her best in slow songs with long melodic lines, like Schubert’s “Nacht und Träume” and “Ständchen,” which showcased her full, round tone and solid breath support. In faster, busier songs, her vibrato activated the sound with a less flattering, nervous quality, and the German diction sometimes became just slightly garbled. Hong’s program was anchored on Schumann’s song cycle “Frauenliebe und -leben,” not exactly an innovative choice, and performed here with dignity but without any other particular distinction. Accomplished accompanist Vlad Iftinca held one’s attention during that cycle’s many piano interludes and postludes. A set of Korean songs, by composers who came to the fore after the end of the country’s occupation by Japan, was a pleasant surprise. Some of these pieces were distinguished, negatively, by a cheesy tonal style, but Sung-Tae Kim’s “Dong Shim Cho” was a quite pretty, Puccini-esque lament. Doo-Hwae Koo’s “Bird’s Song” offered Hong a chance to make some charmingly avian warbles and screeches, although the high notes, avoided for much of the recital, sounded dusty at times. Occasional hoarseness, evinced by coughing, had worsened by a final Richard Strauss set, but those three Puccini encores seemed to revive both Hong and her audience.

I toured the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant. This is what I saw.

FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Japan -- On Thursday, I visited the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for the first time, and it was a bit like seeing the movie after having read the book -- vivid images flooding every space that my imagination hadn’t yet filled. The visit didn’t do much to change my thinking about the main problems at the plant. But it did give me a sense of what it’s like to walk the premises and to work there, in layers of suffocating protective gear. I also got a sense of what it’s like to eat lunches provided by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco — in this case, white-bread sandwiches filled with a mayonnaise-meat ooze. Tepco provided the tour Thursday to more than a dozen foreign journalists, and the first impression came on the bus ride to the facility. The plant is even more isolated than you'd expect. On the way there, you drive for miles through a recommended evacuation zone, an area of gutted car dealerships, abandoned homes and weeds high enough to obscure traffic signs. Starting about three miles from the plant, only authorized vehicles are allowed to enter. Polite policemen in face masks wave in Tepco vehicles, and for the rest of the drive, there are no human beings to be seen. Soon after we arrived at the plant, we were escorted to a change room where we stripped down to our underwear and then dressed ourselves in Tepco-provided gear. First, gray and navy athletic gear that seemed suitable for yoga. Then socks. Then white gloves. Then a baggy white suit, followed by another layer of socks, two more sets of gloves, a cotton cap and plastic covers for our shoes. Last came the tight-fitting face mask, the sort that made us all look like nocturnal tree animals, with enormous eyes and extended honking noses. Similar equipment seems to be required for every employee at the plant, or at least the ones we saw. With the masks on, holding any kind of conversation is difficult. Because of that, workers need to know what they’re doing before they actually get there. Seeing the nuclear plant firsthand, there’s no clear sign of chaos or trouble. Work is done mostly in silence. And some of the biggest problems — such as the leakage of contaminated water into the ocean — are happening out of sight. But cleanup from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami has happened on a need-to-fix basis. Some buildings are pristine. Others have been ravaged by the natural disasters and left to rot. In one area of the nuclear plant, an abandoned car is wedged between pieces of rubble, its windshield shattered. In another area, a set of picnic tables — presumably an old lunch spot for employees — is now covered with a rich red rust. Tepco allowed us out of the tour bus at three places around the site. We spent five minutes looking at tanks used to store contaminated water. We walked inside the No. 4 reactor building. Lastly, we caught a glimpse of construction taking place along the coastal side of the facility. Dosimeters buzzed sporadically, detecting high radiation levels. But after two radiation checks on the way out — one for surface contamination, one for internal contamination — I was given a clean bill of health. The greatest physical damage might have come on the way home: Still hungry after lunch, we stopped for doughnuts.

South Korea’s ferry tragedy touches on country’s suicide epidemic

Kang Min-gyu was 52-years-old when he apparently hanged himself Thursday. He had just witnessed a truly devastating event: The capsizing of the South Korean ferry Sewol on its journey to the holiday island of Jeju. Hundreds of those still missing from the disaster were students at the high school where Kang was vice-principal. While he was rescued, they were not.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In another country, Kang's death might be taken as an isolated incident, but in South Korea, a land where suicide has become a mainstream problem, it's hard to ignore a broader trend. South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, more than double that of the United States. According to one recent OECD report, Korea had bucked a trend of falling suicide rates among developed nations, with suicide rising to become the fourth most common cause of death. Unlike most other countries, South Koreans actually become more likely to commit suicide as they age.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University High-profile suicides have become a regular feature in the media. Former South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun jumped off a hill to his death in 2009. Park Yong-oh, a well-known businessman who once led the Doosan Group, the country's oldest conglomerate, also committed suicide that year. In 2010, singer and actor Park Yong-ha committed suicide at the height of his career, just one of a string of suicides in the entertainment industry, and earlier this year, a well-known reality TV show was taken off the air after a contestant killed herself.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Many South Koreans wonder why they are afflicted with this suicide problem. Some attribute it to the country's rapid industrialization and the enormous pressure put upon people to adapt and succeed. Others argue that the government takes too lax a view on mental health issues – as one recent op-ed in the Chosun Ilbo put it, "Korea spent W1.8 trillion over the last five years to prevent traffic accidents, but invested less than W10 billion in suicide prevention."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Some attempts to deal with the problem have clearly backfired, too, such as the now-infamous attempt to turn the notorious Seoul suicide spot Mapo Bridge into a "Bridge of Life" with illuminated signs near the railings saying things like "the most shining moment of your life has yet to come" in a bid to discourage jumpers. According to the Wall Street Journal, suicide attempts quadrupled in the first year after the Samsung-sponsored project opened.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There may be a cultural side to suicide here that's specific to Korea: the concept of "han," which might be translated into English as a sense of burden or deep sorrow that can also lead to resilience. Experts believe that the Korean concept of han is related to the country being dominated by more powerful neighbors during its history, and that it may be linked to depression. The idea of han is often relevant when Korea faces hard times, and now seems to be no exception. Concerns about incompetence and negligence seem to be turning into a crisis of identity for some Koreans. "Even if the sinking was an accident caused by careless staff, Koreans will say that it's a shame for Korea," Minjeong Gu, an editor in Paju, northwest of Seoul, told GlobalPost recently. " 'Shame' is one of the most commonly heard words in Korea."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In the end, however, han alone probably can't explain Kang's reported suicide, and it's important to note that while the concept of ritualized suicide exists in Korea, it's a far less common idea than hari-kiri is in Japan. Kang was a man who had just witnessed an extraordinary disaster. Society can help explain why he may have committed suicide, but it'd be wrong to ignore the immediate situation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

To promote kimchi abroad, Korean scientists are trying to get rid of the smell

Move along, kombucha. You’re old news, kefir. The next big fermented food craze is . . . kimchi? If Western consumers on a health kick can be convinced to drink yeasty, probiotic tea and tart, cultured yogurt, then why wouldn’t they be up for spicy pickled cabbage fermented with garlic for months on end? Well, that’s the goal of South Korean scientists at the World Institute of Kimchi on Kimchi Street in Kimchi Town, on the outskirts of the southern city of Gwangju. “We are trying to globalize kimchi,” said Ha Jae-ho, head of the institute, describing it as a “functional food.” Think of it not just as soft power, but soft and somewhat slimy power. It’s already growing in popularity throughout the world, but it’s hard to overstate the importance of kimchi to Koreans. Kimchi is a side dish to every Korean meal. The standard varieties are made from napa cabbage or large Korean radish, but there are lots of other types, including kimchi made from cucumber, onions and leafy greens. The vegetable is salted and then usually rubbed with chili powder, garlic, ginger and scallions. Then it’s left to ferment — the longer the better. There are lots of regional variations, from the mild kimchi of Pyongyang to the super spicy varieties in the south and the fishy kimchi of coastal areas. The average South Korean eats 57 pounds of kimchi a year, according to the institute. They eat it in kimchi stew, in kimchi fried rice, grilled with meat, layered with tofu, and by itself. Koreans take kimchi when they go on vacation, and the institute made space kimchi for South Korea’s first astronaut. “Kimchi is something that makes people turn up their noses, but it is becoming more and more popular in the U.S. right now” — and not just at farmers markets but at regular grocery stores, too, said Johanna Mendelson Forman, a professor at American University who specializes in gastrodiplomacy. Trader Joe’s sells 14-ounce jars of kimchi. Whole Foods carries 163 kimchi products, and some stores offer kimchi on the salad or olive bars, a spokeswoman said. Forman remembers seeing a recipe for kimchi in a Giant grocery store flier. Millennials, in particular, are interested in experimenting with healthful foods and making food as a “craft,” she said. So how can South Korea build on that? In Kimchi Town, the World Kimchi Institute — not to be confused with the Kimchi Research Institute at Pusan University — sits beside the Gwangju Kimchi Museum, which is totally separate from the Museum Kimchikan in Seoul. The institute holds an international kimchiology symposium and prints a book of frequently asked kimchi questions. (Last year’s volume ran to 186 pages.) A poster announces an upcoming 20-week “kimchi sommelier” course. The world kimchi festival is held here every November. It’s around that time of year, when the weather gets cooler, that Koreans make kimchi, a ritual called “kimjang.” Naturally, they’ve had the process recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. In the $10 million museum, visitors learn that kimchi invigorates the body, that its lactic acid bacteria can “promote good digestion and detoxify the digestive system” and that kimchi “destroys harmful germs.” Koreans say that kimchi wards off a range of ills, and it even sparked a children’s cartoon. “I can whip any disease, illness, cold, flu or virus on the planet,” the Kimchi Warrior declared during the swine flu outbreak a few years back, shooting a torrent of kimchi at a pig from a jar strapped to his back. South Korea has had some notable success with cultural exports. Korean dramas and pop music — K-Pop — are  huge across Asia, as is Korean plastic surgery. Korean food has become cool in the West in recent years, with bulgogi meat appearing in fusion tacos and hipster bars making cocktails with soju, Korea’s answer to vodka. But kimchi? Well, kimchi is a hard sell. Even among kimchi-loving Koreans, many have separate kimchi fridges to stop the dish from tainting other food. If they keep it in their regular fridge, it goes into a vault-like box. For this reason, scientists are trying to increase the good bacteria — especially the lactic acid that gives kimchi its probiotic qualities — and decrease the bad parts, namely the smell so pungent it can take days to work its way out a person’s pores. “Most Western people don’t like the smell of kimchi because we use of lot of garlic and ginger, and that produces a lot of sulfur compounds,” said Ha. As it tries to “spread kimchi culture worldwide,” the institute is highlighting  kimchi’s high fiber content and ability to counteract bad bacteria, without mentioning its sodium content or Koreans’ high incidence of stomach cancer — something that some people consider to be linked to kimchi consumption. In labs at the institute, scientists are working on the distinctive fumes, at least. “We’re trying to engineer the smell out of kimchi,” said Lee Mi-ae, a white-coated researcher. “But it’s difficult because the smell is linked to the flavor of the kimchi.” Proponents of Korean food, including kimchi, see a good opportunity for promotion during the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in February. “Of course, there are well-known Korean dishes like barbecued meat and noodles,” said Yoon Sook-ja, head of the Institute for Traditional Korean Food, part of the agriculture ministry. “But we’re also looking for simple ways to sell and promote other Korean food. We’ll have bulgogi meat in a bun like a hamburger, and bibimbap” — a stirred rice and vegetable dish — “in a cup,” she said. South Korea launched a $77 million gastrodiplomacy initiative in 2009, promoted by the wife of the president of the time. The idea was to promote Korean cuisine to the world, but it petered out when the president, Lee Myung-bak, left office. Hwang Kyo-ik, a culinary writer in Seoul,  called  the government’s efforts “embarrassing.” “It usually takes about 30 years for foreign food to cross the cultural barriers, as it takes time for food to become a part of life,” Hwang said. “The South Korean government is trying to do this within a few years as if it’s a construction project.” Forman, at American University, thinks there is a broader market for Korean food — even for kimchi. “There’s an overwhelming correlation between knowing a country and having positive opinions about it,” she said. “When Nixon went to China, people started going to Chinese restaurants for dinner. And the ‘Global Thai’ campaign led to an explosion of Thai restaurants in the world.” To help consumers around the world develop a taste for the Korean superfood, Ha, the institute director, recommends mild, white kimchi made with cabbage but without chili powder. He calls it “starter kimchi.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

Second case of MERS in U.S. is health-care worker in Saudi Arabia, visiting family here

A second case of the deadly respiratory virus known as Middle East respiratory syndrome has emerged in the United States, once again involving a health-care worker who lives in Saudi Arabia and was visiting his family in the United States, health officials said Monday. The 44-year-old man is in isolation at Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando, where he arrived on May 8 showing symptoms of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed he had the virus Sunday night, agency Director Thomas Frieden said in a teleconference Monday. “The patient is in good condition and is improving,” said Antonio Crespo, one of the hospital’s infectious-disease specialists. “We are taking every precaution but believe the risk of transmission from this patient is very low since his symptoms were mild and he was not coughing when he arrived at the hospital.” The man left Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 1, and flew to London, then on to Boston, Atlanta and Orlando, where he is visiting family. U.S. health officials are attempting to contact more than 500 people in 20 states who may have been exposed to the patient, and international authorities are doing the same overseas. Officials said the virus does not appear to be transmitted by casual contact but instead requires close contact for transmission. “Our experience with MERS so far suggests that the risk to the general public is extremely low,” Frieden said. Sixteen personnel at the Orlando hospital are being monitored for symptoms, and family members of the man are staying at home, a hospital spokeswoman said. MERS, which was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, can cause severe acute respiratory illness with fever, cough and shortness of breath. More than 30 percent of patients who have symptoms of MERS have died. There is no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment for MERS, which comes from the same family of viruses as the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS killed almost 800 people around the world in 2003. As of Monday, there were 538 MERS cases in at least 12 countries that have been confirmed and reported to the World Health Organization, including 145 deaths. Of those, Saudi Arabia had 450 cases and 112 deaths, officials said. The new patient worked at a Jiddah hospital that was treating MERS cases. While in Orlando, he did not visit any theme parks in the area, said John H. Armstrong, Florida’s secretary of health. Monday’s announcement came just days after a health-care worker who was the first confirmed U.S. case of MERS was released from an Indiana hospital Friday. Health officials said he no longer had symptoms, tested negative for the virus and posed no threat to the community. The Indiana and Florida cases are not linked, authorities said. Experts have worried that the recent increase in cases may be linked to mutations in the virus. But CDC officials said Monday they found no significant changes or mutations in the genetic sequence of the virus in a sample from the Indiana patient. Some of the increase in cases in the Middle East is because of better monitoring and tracking; the CDC and the WHO have teams in Saudi Arabia to help with the investigations. Airport and U.S. customs staff members are getting refresher training to look for symptoms among travelers, but the CDC is not recommending airport screening at this time, said Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Officials don’t know how many U.S. health-care personnel are working in the Middle East, “but we do know it is not rare,” Frieden said. In the Indiana case, a U.S. citizen who had been living and working in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, flew to Indiana late last month to visit his family. The hospital where he worked in Saudi Arabia had treated some MERS cases, health officials said. The man flew from Riyadh through London to Chicago before boarding a bus to the Highland, Ind., area. He went to Community Hospital in Munster, Ind., on April 28 after becoming sick. He was kept in isolation. Authorities contacted most of the passengers on the flights and the bus, and none are symptomatic, according to the Indiana health department. CDC officials praised the Indiana hospital for its aggressive efforts to control the infection. Once the patient was a confirmed MERS case, hospital officials reviewed security tapes, monitored the sign-ins required of everyone — from doctors to housekeepers — who entered the patient’s room and tracked them through their ID badges, embedded with electronic chips, which show their locations at all times. About 50 employees were sent home and kept isolated until the hospital was sure they did not have MERS. They were planning to return to work Monday and Tuesday, according to Alan Kumar, the hospital’s chief information officer. Related: First MERS victim has fully recovered CDC confirms first case of deadly MERS virus in Indiana

Tibet is harder to visit than North Korea. But I got in and streamed live on Facebook.

A month ago, I never would have imagined I would be standing in front of the Potala Palace in Tibet, streaming a live video on Facebook and talking openly about economic and cultural discrimination and environmental pollution under Chinese rule. And yet there I was, free to speak, unhindered by the Foreign Ministry minders who had brought us on a rare trip here. It was, as far as I know, the first-ever Facebook Live conducted in Tibet. The Tibet Autonomous Region, as China calls central Tibet, is harder to visit as a journalist than North Korea: There have been only a handful of government tours organized in the past decade, all closely controlled. In 2010, correspondents reported that security agents were lying down in the corridor outside their rooms to prevent them from sneaking out in the night to talk to ordinary Tibetans. But this trip, my first, had a much more relaxed feel about it. Although most of the day and evening was taken up with organized activities, there was a little free time. To our surprise, we were actually allowed to leave the hotel on our own to explore Lhasa and talk to ordinary people, without any sign of being followed. On Sunday, I told one of the Foreign Ministry officials accompanying us that I needed a few minutes to do a Facebook Live in Potala Square, and I was allowed to do so unhindered, and largely out of earshot of our minders. I can’t imagine being allowed to do that in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, let alone in Lhasa. Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1951, two years after the Communist Party took power in Beijing. They claimed to be liberating its people from feudal serfdom, and that Tibet had historically been part of China. Many Tibetans, however, see themselves as a separate people and complain of repression under Chinese rule. After an uprising in 1959 was brutally suppressed by Chinese troops, controls were tightened and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s religious and political leader, fled to India, where he still lives in exile. Today, more than 125,000 Tibetans live in the diaspora. Now China says it wants to turn Tibet into a “world-class” tourism destination: We had been invited to Lhasa to attend the Third China Tibet Tourism and Culture Expo.  The Tibet Autonomous Region of China is home to about 3.1 million people, and is made up of 475,000 square miles of high-altitude plateau, grasslands, forest and mountains — roughly the size of Texas and California.  There was also an awkward moment when we asked our tour guide at the Potala Palace whether any tourists asked about the 14th Dalai Lama, whose home this magnificent building had once been before he fled to India. We have to go, our minders suddenly insisted, one after the other in quick succession. We are out of time, they said, hurrying us along. Nevertheless, the freedom we were given did mark a shift in the way media tours are handled. There was, perhaps, also a realization that using a North Korean style alienated journalists and fueled a negative perception about Chinese rule here. Of course, our interactions with ordinary Tibetans were limited, and not just because we had little time. We had to be careful we were not being watched or followed, and wouldn’t get people into trouble. Several people said they could not speak on political issues, and one said it was dangerous to do so. Others, though, did speak, on our assurance that we would not reveal their identities. Several people expressed unhappiness with the fact that young Tibetans are growing up learning Chinese in school, and studying and speaking Tibetan as though it were a foreign language. Others spoke of economic discrimination, or of cultural and political marginalization. I’ll be writing more about this in future reports from Tibet.  Nevertheless, the fact that we could talk to any ordinary Tibetans at all seemed like a hopeful sign. At least, until the trip went sour. On Tuesday, we visited the town of Nyingchi, also known as Linzhi. There, we were given a tour the North Koreans would have been proud of. A visit to an ecological institute and animal husbandry station kicked off the day, where we looked at photographs of flowers and then ventured outside to look at plants and pig enclosures. In the afternoon, we visited a “folk village” — an as-yet-unoccupied replica of a Tibetan village built by Chinese real estate companies for the benefit of Chinese tourists, complete with luxury hotels. It was Disney meets Potemkin. Then, we pulled into a “real” Tibetan village, where we would meet villagers who were renting out their homes for tourists. As we entered, a police car left. The streets were entirely deserted, and not by accident. Two Tibetan people were supplied for us to talk to, both of whose homes were decorated with posters of Communist China’s past and current leaders — one was a party member and former soldier in the Chinese army, the other a woman whose real feelings we would never really know. All day, we had been asking to visit a nearby monastery. There are two close to each other around 15 miles south of the hotel where we were staying, both built in the 7th century in the reign of Tibet’s first king, Songtsen Gampo. Officials first said a visit would be arranged. But then the lies began. The monastery was too far in the other direction, and we wouldn’t have time, we were told. The road to Lamaling monastery was blocked by a landslide caused by heavy rain, another official claimed. And then, the most ridiculous lie of all, when Xue Chengtao, director of Nyingchi’s foreign affairs office, told us there were actually no monasteries in the area at all. How far away is the nearest one, we asked. More than 100 kilometers away, he said, and not of any historical significance anyway. (That’s about 60 miles.) All day, officials dragged their feet, in what seemed like a deliberate attempt to ensure that we would return after nightfall. We eventually got into the hotel around 9 p.m., on a tour scheduled to end at 6:30 p.m. Still, four of us tried to get away, jumping in a taxi close to the hotel. A taxi and a white SUV followed us. We got out, went for a walk, switched cars, thought we had lost the tail. Then another taxi appeared behind us, overtaking us for a closer look, then pulling back again. At the turnoff to the monastery, police were waiting for us, briefly questioned us and then sent us back to the hotel. At least six security officials were stationed in the lobby and at the hotel gate to make sure we didn’t leave again. Clearly, officials in Nyingchi were determined to prevent us from speaking to any monks. The Facebook Live in Lhasa generated an incredible 2,600 comments, nearly 1,600 shares and 60,000 views. I haven’t had a chance to look at all the comments yet — but I want to thank everyone for the amazing response.

The important thing missing in this video of Xi Jinping walking Chinese streets

The cellphone footage above shows something you don't see often: A Chinese president taking a stroll in a Beijing alleyway.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Xi Jinping was walking in the trendy traditional neighborhood of Nanluoguxiang on Tuesday, stopping to chat with local youths and visiting the home of a nearby resident, the Associated Press reports. It appeared to be yet another carefully planned, nominally impromptu event designed to show that China's president is more in touch with the people he leads than his predecessors (in another recent move, he ate buns at a humble Beijing restaurant).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University China's leaders generally rarely appear in public, instead preferring to remain in official buildings, luxury compounds and private limos. Still, many people in China are less surprised at the appearance of the video than by one notable omission from it: Xi is not wearing a mask. Face masks have become de rigueur in Beijing at times of low air quality, and, as you can probably see from the video, Beijing is experiencing a lot of smog right now. For the first time ever, China has declared an orange alert over parts of the country and shut down some factories and construction sites (it apparently didn't work). One man in the province of Hebei is even trying to sue the government for the poor air quality.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It seems unlikely that Xi left his mask at home by accident, and few failed to notice his hint. "Xi Jinping visits Beijing’s Nanluoguxiang amid the smog: Breathing together, sharing the fate,” ran the headline on state news agency Xinhua, a reference to an air quality-related phrase made popular by the Beijing Times' Weibo account.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As the story was posted to Weibo, commentators picked up on the lack of a mask, too. "It surely deserves a thumbs up, breathing smog together," wrote a user named Maxuan. Another user named Pingping081 addressed Xi directly: "President Xi, we support you. Hope you take good care and making steady progress, lead us walk out of smog and receive a new era!" In general, the Weibo comments were largely positive (leading to some speculation that there may have been censorship involved), but one user wondered whether "big Xi" was setting a bad example by risking his own health.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Xi's move and the rise of the "breathing together" slogan seems to tie in with a new tactic in dealing with China's now-notorious smog: If we can't beat it, let's learn to live with it. Xinhua recently reported that the smog had "awakened the creativity of individuals who want cleaner air," while a post on the CCTV Web site listed the "five surprising benefits" of pollution (that article was scrubbed after it was widely ridiculed, but not before Tea Leaf Nation translated a copy).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The most surprising reasoning yet, however, came from Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor of military strategy at PLA National Defense University. In an interview with CCTV, Zhang explained that the smog would make it "almost impossible" for laser-based weapons to work. Zhang was later forced to elaborate after his comments went viral. "I just stated a laser weapon's weakness," Zhang said, according to the South China Morning Post. "I don't support smog."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _(Many thanks to our Beijing researcher for Elena Liu for translation in this post)_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Seeing Korea through his parents’ eyes

Think of the most put-together traveler you can imagine. James Bond with a tux and a passport, perhaps. Then picture the exact opposite. That’s my dad. George Kim is the anti-James Bond, the ill-prepared tourist with the giant camera slung around his neck who always seems one turn away from navigational disaster. Once, when I was young, we were on our way home to New Jersey from Connecticut and somehow ended up in the Catskills. Don’t get me wrong. Dad is a sharp guy even at 72, a retired electrical engineer who now teaches entrepreneurship classes. But his long-standing absent-mindedness, above all other reasons, is why I had put off traveling to my parents’ homeland of Korea despite Dad’s nagging. If you don’t speak Korean, or don’t speak it well (like me), you need a tour guide to experience the country properly, especially beyond Seoul. I finally mustered the courage, and booked the trip. I say courage, because Dad was going to be my guide. It was a first-time pilgrimage for me — an overdue exploration of my parents’ past and my own heritage as a Korean American. It was also a milestone for my parents. They immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s, but they’ve spent a good chunk of the past seven years of their retirement in South Korea, and I was the first of their four adult children to visit. Details: South Korea The plan was for my father and me to spend about a week seeing Seoul, Busan and Pohang, a port city in the east where my parents make their home. That’s where my father teaches at Handong Global University, a Christian school. My mother, Duckja, would join us there. A sound plan on paper, but could I survive the guided tour? Not surprisingly, things didn’t start out well. Dad was two hours late picking me up at the airport when I arrived. We spent another hour trying to find his car in the airport parking lot, even though he had parked it just minutes earlier. Then we got lost on the way to our Seoul hotel. By the time we checked in, I was hungry and deliriously jet-lagged. Thankfully, it took only 90 minutes or so for Dad to settle on a place to eat. Discovering the Korea of my parents’ younger days also seemed hard at first. On our first morning in Seoul, Dad and I sat at an outdoor table sipping Starbucks coffee. I scanned the signs around us: Outback Steakhouse, Dunkin’ Donuts, California Pizza Kitchen. Was this Korea or Rockville Pike? But Dad helped reveal the past. At Seoul Plaza, a green space in the city center, he pointed out a number of round chips in the bricks of the older buildings — bullet holes left over from the Korean War. Dad was 8 when North Korean tanks under the command of Kim Il Sung rolled down Sejong-daero, a main Seoul thoroughfare, and surrounded the plaza. He recalled the tidy lines of soldiers, the helpless civilians and the popping gunfire as militia from both sides ravaged the city. He and his family fled south, eventually to Busan, until the war ended. Nearby Gyeongbokgung Palace, one of Korea’s national treasures, has also suffered an unfortunate history. It was all but leveled during the 20th-century Japanese occupation and remains under restoration. To say that Dad still holds grudges against both North Korea and Japan would be an understatement. A few blocks southeast, off a street called Ujeongguk-ro, behind the spot where street vendors were selling plastic Buddhas and mounds of japchae noodles, was another precious site — the former location of the small house where Dad had lived as a child. The property has since been leveled, and the site now houses the Central Buddhist Museum. Next door is the Jogye Temple, one of the most famous Buddhist sites in Korea. Dad told me how he and his friends would peer over his backyard fence and mischievously throw rocks at the temple’s roof lights, trying to shatter them. They occasionally succeeded, he said. I was amazed at his home’s central location. Mom’s childhood home was a few miles away but in the same part of Seoul. The experience was the equivalent of realizing that your parents had once lived in a house that was bulldozed to make room for the Lincoln Memorial. We wandered around the nearby sites, including the sprawling Changdeokgung Palace and grounds, where my parents went on dates after the war. Dad then took me down some narrow streets where he had walked when he was young. The roads were all dirt back then, he remembered. He would often play with his toys in the mud, or sometimes just with the mud. I’m the travel opposite of Dad. And, in fairness, it’s not because I’m a seasoned traveler, but because I’m a neurotic one. I came armed with two guidebooks (one in paperback, one on Kindle); all-weather clothing; a cursory knowledge of the language, thanks to months of lessons on Rosetta Stone; power adapters for most of Asia; and a smartphone with what seemed like every travel app in the app store. As we set off on the five-hour drive to Pohang (Dad rebuffing my offers to take the wheel), the countryside opened up before us. Beyond Seoul, much of Korea is mountainous. The endless hills brought West Virginia to mind. I followed our progress on Google Maps — both out of curiosity and to make sure that we wouldn’t take a wrong turn and end up in China. I peppered Dad with questions about everything I saw. Space is at a premium in much of the country, and the rolling horizon struck me as a bit claustrophobic. Every piece of developable land is spoken for, often by high-rise apartment buildings, while unsightly high-tension wires crisscross the hilltops like skeins of yarn. The smog is thick in spots, some of it coming from Seoul but much of it from China. About 50 miles southeast of Seoul, near Chungju, we came upon a rest stop to end all rest stops. It looked like a small mall, with batting cages, a jewelry store and even a decommissioned F-4 Phantom II fighter jet, a Cold War mainstay, displayed in the parking lot. It was after dark when we finally arrived in coastal Pohang, and we almost made several wrong turns. We joined up with Mom and ate at a tasty, if unique, restaurant called Shabu Hyang, where you boil your own beef soup and roll your own spring rolls. Pohang’s main drag stretched along a boardwalk that smelled faintly of sulfur. On the not-too-distant horizon, I could make out what appeared to be a large neon city. But Dad explained that this mini-Las Vegas was something else entirely: the Posco steel plant, one of the world’s largest, gussied up to make it more palatable to look at. The next day, we explored some of the smaller communities around Pohang. We traveled to an oceanside village called Odo-ri, the site of a new church where my Mom, an ordained pastor, preaches. We were far from Seoul and other cities that Western tourists might think of visiting. In Chilpo-ri, the next village over, we drove on mud-covered cement roads barely wide enough for Dad’s compact car. One street led right up to a fleet of small boats bobbing on the waves. A fisherman nodded hello. The frothy Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, washing over the shoreline’s dark boulders reminded me of Maine or New Hampshire. But the ubiquitous tsunami warning signs were a reminder that this wasn’t New England. Later, we headed an hour south to Gyeong-ju. The area is chock-full of temples and sites linked to the ancient Silla Kingdom, one of three that controlled the peninsula around the time of the Roman Empire. At Anapji, a Silla palace site with a tranquil artificial pond, Mom overheard a cluster of people speaking Korean. She told me that they had a thick country accent, but the difference didn’t penetrate my wooden ears. By the time we reached Busan, my exasperation with Dad was growing again. The booming resort city on Korea’s southern coast, with its spaghetti bowl of streets, didn’t help. To compensate for Busan’s bustle, Dad drove at half the speed limit. At one point, we somehow found our way into a dead end next to a pier with no railings. The situation compelled Dad to perform a risky K-turn maneuver that brought us just several feet from plunging into the East Sea. And though a torrential rainstorm had descended, Dad had his heart set on more sightseeing. Halfway down the slippery steps to the seaside Haedongyonggung Temple, Mom and I made an executive decision to head back to the car. Yet for all the logistical headaches, I was fascinated by Busan’s dichotomy. In the eastern part of the city was Haeundae Beach, Korea’s answer to South Beach — night clubs, designer shops and sleek hotels surrounded a manicured strand. In the middle of it all was the huge Shinsegae Centum City department store, which claims to be the largest in the world. The store has 14 floors that feature a supermarket, a short-track ice rink and a driving range, so the boast appears to be legit. To the west, across the bay, an older Busan beckoned. The sidewalks were livelier and the streets more disorderly. There was no manicured beach; rusty trawlers crowded the water. In place of designer clothing stores, elderly vendors sold seaweed and other food from the backs of pickup trucks. Jagalchi Fish Market, a pungent, chaotic shock to the senses, anchored this side of Busan. We walked past crowded, smelly stands selling mackerel, tuna, octopus, eel, sea urchins, oysters and some of the largest crabs I’ve ever seen. Vendors sliced up that morning’s catch and served it up on plates along with fresh wasabi. I could have easily spent hours there with Dad and Mom, snapping photos of the fishy maelstrom. But Jagalchi would be the last stop. I had a bullet train to catch. Before long, I’d be speeding on the KTX back to Seoul and eventually home. At the train station, I hugged Mom goodbye. Then Dad and I went inside. He carried my bag to the ticket counter, made sure I was on the right train and helped me find my track. We headed to the main hall for our final goodbyes. As he walked off, I followed him with my eyes until he was out of sight. All at once, Dad’s annoyances didn’t matter much anymore. They were as permanent as fog. And that’s when I realized that he had been, in fact, the perfect guide. Kim is mobile/tablet editor at   The Washington Post. **More fromTravel:** Smart Mouth: The Korean stew that “M*A*S*H” made Songdo, South Korea: The city that could change the way we travel South Korea’s Jeju Island, paradise with a dark side Discovering Korea’s imperial past Smart Mouth: A marathon of Seoul food, just the way Koreans do it Travel Guide

How air conditioning transformed the U.S. economy

As anyone who's sweating their way through the current U.S. heat wave can attest, high temperatures are no fun. People become sluggish and irritable. It becomes hard to work, hard to concentrate, hard to do anything __. When temperatures scream past 100 degrees, therisk of heat-related death increases dramatically. In fact, there are even studies suggesting that extreme heat can strangle a country's livelihood. A 2008 study by three economists, led by Northwestern's Benjamin Jones, found that poorer countries experience a plunge in economic output during hotter-than-average years. It's not just that drought kills off crops. Industrial output declines, and political unrest becomes more unlikely. What's curious, however, is that this __happens mainly in poorer countries — wealthy countries are far more immune to the heat penalty. One explanation for the difference, of course, is air conditioning. Today, most Americans can minimize their exposure to sweltering weather. We can wake up in our thermostat-tuned homes, hop into our AC-cranked cars, and drive to our cooled offices. Granted, not everyone's so lucky — plenty of people don't have office jobs, and blackouts have left thousands here in D.C. without power — but indoor climate control is a major feature of the industrialized West. And it appears to have large economic benefits. Stan Cox, in his fascinating book, "Losing Our Cool," offers a long list of ways in which air conditioning has transformed the U.S. economy. Here's a description from the National Building Museum of the state of affairs in the 1920s, before the invention of AC: Everything changed after the discovery in 1928 of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were used as coolants in air-conditioning (and, we later learned, chewed a hole in the ozone layer). Retail stores could now operate year-round. Americans could flock to otherwise inhospitable regions in the South and Southwest. Cox has even argued that AC was a major factor in the resurgence of the Sunbelt-based Republican Party. But there's a flip side. All this AC could prove unsustainable. The amount of energy consumed by U.S. homes for air conditioning has doubled in the past 12 years, according to Cox, and now accounts for nearly 20 percent of our electricity use. What's more, developing countries like China and India want in on what's viewed as an utter necessity. The New York Times recently reported that sales of AC units are rising 20 percent per year in those two nations. If all of these countries keep burning coal to satisfy demand for indoor cooling, the result will be more carbon dioxide in the air. (The newer, ozone- friendly HFCs used in the units are also highly potent greenhouse gases.) That means a hotter planet overall, which will, in turn, require even more __air conditioning to survive. As a reminder,here's how frequent 100°F days will become across the United States if carbon emissions keep rising at their current rate: The current "freak heat wave" will become the norm for _one-sixth of the year_ in D.C. (That's in addition to all the other climate consequences — sea-level rise, droughts, agricultural disruption — that could prove far more difficult to adapt to.) In our endless quest to cool ourselves, we've managed to heat the world. So is there a way to break this cycle? One oft-discussed option is to make air conditioning more energy-efficient. And that might mean more than just tinkering with existing units. In countries like Japan and South Korea, many homeowners find it wasteful to cool a whole vacant house all at once, preferring to focus on individual rooms where people are actually sitting. Better insulation and ventilation can reduce the need for AC, as can plant-covered "green roofs" that cool buildings naturally. There also exist promising alternatives to traditional AC, including ground- source heat pumps, which channel hot air in a house down into the ground during the summer. In his book, Cox suggests going even further: He argues that people might be better off in some respects if they learn to rely less on artificial temperature control. There's scant evidence that keeping office temperatures at icy levels improves productivity. Indeed, it's possible that the human body is actually healthier when it's not kept enshrouded by air conditioning all the time. Some researchers have even suggested, for instance, that our reliance on indoor cooling has helped spur an obesity epidemic. Some parts of the developed world are slowly pushing to temper their addiction to air conditioning. In Japan, Cox notes, the government has pressured businesses to keep thermostats at a mild 81°F during the summer. After some initial resistance, businessmen took off their suit jackets and adjusted. Similarly, malls in Hong Kong are now pledging to turn down the AC to save energy. Still, on a day when temperatures are reaching dangerously high levels in many parts of the United States (the high is approaching 105°F in D.C.), calls for conservation are a tougher sell. Mostly it's worth noting how different heat waves today are from the heat waves of the 1920s — because of how drastically we've adapted.

Seoul, a city ‘with no soul,’ builds its own High Line on an old overpass

SEOUL — The South Korean capital is not famed for its aesthetics. Built up quickly during the country’s astonishingly fast industrialization, it’s often been derided with the saying: There’s no soul in Seoul. But the city has a new initiative to change that: Seoullo, or Seoul Street, an elevated urban walkway similar to New York’s famed High Line. Built on a mile-long stretch of highway overpass that had been destined for demolition, Seoullo 7017 is to open on Saturday. (It’s named for the year the overpass was built — 1970 — and the year the walkway opens.) It will link the Namdaemun market, a ramshackle tourist hot spot that has been in decline for a decade, with a neglected neighborhood on the western side of the railroad tracks that run into Seoul Station. The area around the station is not exactly salubrious either, with its underpasses and sidewalks having become a magnet for homeless people. “This will not only restore the overpass, but become a catalyst for the revival and regeneration of neighboring regions through the high number of visitors,” Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said during a recent visit to the site. After it emerged from the Korean War, Seoul was rebuilt almost in the blink of an eye as South Korea began its transformation into an economic powerhouse. Starting in the 1960s, city planners ordered the construction of dozens of elevated highways to keep traffic flowing through the capital. Fast forward a few decades, and these hulking overpasses became not only a blight on the landscape, but also a safety risk, as heavy use literally shook their foundations. In 1994, one bridge across the Han River, which bisects Seoul, collapsed, killing 32 people. In recent years, the overpasses have gradually been coming down. One in the center of the city was torn down to make way for Cheonggye Stream, a seven-mile-long artificial river that opened in 2005. With paths and bridges, it has transformed its environs, attracting locals and tourists at all times of the day and night. The sunken parts in the city center are also several degrees cooler than street level, providing welcome respite in the humid summer. The highway over the tracks into Seoul Station was found to have serious safety problems in 2006 and had also been slated for demolition. But it got a reprieve when city planners realized it could be turned into a walkway instead, as the High Line was. “Seoul lacks green space,” said Kwon Wan-taek, the city official in charge of the project, as he led reporters over the walkway, where workers were planting in pots and installing lights. “Pedestrians need green areas, but it costs a lot to find new land. It’s much more efficient to turn old space into green space instead of tearing it down.” Almost half of Seoullo’s $53 million construction cost has been spent on strengthening the overpass and ensuring that it is safe for large numbers of pedestrians. It is designed to bear the weight of 50,000 people, 10 times the number that will actually be allowed onto the walkway at any one time. The project is part of a wider urban regeneration effort that has seen the creation of pedestrian-only streets and redesigned sidewalks to make the city more walker-friendly. Seoul is home to some 10 million people; the greater metropolitan area, incorporating bedroom communities, has a population of 25 million. The walkway will have planters with 250 kinds of trees and plants, all in alphabetical order and with QR codes so visitors can learn about the flora. It will be illuminated with LED lights that will make the whole structure glow blue at night. The project was designed by the Dutch architecture group MVRDV. Unlike the High Line, built on an old rail line on Manhattan’s Lower West Side, the walkway will connect with buildings — there are already bridges into an office tower and a hotel — and will have cafes and performance areas. There are even trampolines for kids — with fences to make sure they don’t bounce over the edge. John Hong, a professor of architecture at Seoul National University, said the overall vision for the project was awesome. “Seoul is peeling back these previous layers of progress,” he said. “But instead of just tearing it down, the city is saying, ‘Why don’t we keep it and make it into history?’ ” The west side of the tracks has been neglected over the years, but the walkway will make the area more accessible. Developers hope it will enable people to discover forgotten parts of Seoul, such as an old Catholic church and a laurel known as “Hitler’s tree,” grown from the sapling the German dictator gave to Korean marathon runner Sohn Kee-chung for winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The project hasn’t been without controversy. Residents and vendors at the market end of the walkway are up in arms that there has been no plan for parking or easing traffic in the already-congested area. And expectations of development at the other end of the walkway have led to rampant real estate speculation. But Hong said the overall project should create a sense of community in a part of the city that has been severed by railroad tracks for decades. “It’s not just about this little piece of highway,” he said. “It’s about the way it connects all these neighborhoods together.”

Anti-American countries can become pro-American. Here’s how South Korea did it.

When it comes to global public opinion, the United States can be polarizing: Often, you either love us or you hate us. But although we in the U.S. might perceive certain countries as intrinsically pro-American or anti-American, the truth is more complicated and attitudes can be more fluid. A great example of this is South Korea, where opinion toward the U.S. has transformed in only a decade, from skeptically apathetic to warmly supportive. South Korea today is one of the most pro-American countries in the world; 77 percent say they have confidence in President Obama's leadership, almost double Americans' own 45 percent approval rating.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As South Korean President Park Geun-hye visits Obama today, it's worth reflecting on the lessons of South Korea's turn back to the United States. As of 2002, when most of the world reported sky-high favorability ratings for the U.S. – it was still soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – South Koreans held some of the least favorable views of the U.S. in the world, according to Pew's data on global opinion. Only Middle Eastern countries (and Argentina) liked the U.S. less. The next year, in 2003, South Koreans were more likely to hold an unfavorable view of the U.S. than favorable.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In 10 years' time, though, South Korean public opinion has swung dramatically in favor of the United States. According to new data released by Pew, an astounding 78 percent of South Koreans say they hold a favorable view of the U.S. That's the highest pro-American approval rating that Pew has recorded in the past year. (Kenya may rate higher, though; it reported 85 percent approval in 2011 and has not been polled by Pew since.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So what happened? The U.S. and its policies certainly played a role, particularly by keeping tens of thousands of American troops based on South Korean soil. But those troops are still there and South Korean opinion has changed dramatically. That appears to have happened in large part due to social forces within South Korea itself. In 2002, a young rapper named Park Jae-sang performed alongside several other top South Korean musicians in a massive concert meant to protest the U.S. military bases in their country. Park would later become famous as Psy, the singer of "Gangnam Style." The performance was sort of like Live Aid, except instead of raising money for starving Ethiopians they were stomping cardboard models of American tanks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The concert, like anti-American protests around the same time, was on the surface a response to an incident that June when one of the many U.S. military vehicles in South Korea struck and killed two 14-year-old girls walking along the side of a road outside Seoul. Because of the terms of the U.S.-South Korean treaty that allows for America’s military presence there, the incident was considered a “military operation” and thus outside of Korea’s jurisdiction. A U.S. court martial acquitted the driver and his commander. Furious at the acquittal, Koreans protested for months, some seeing echoes of the foreign empires that had dominated their country for centuries. Universities became hotbeds of anti-American rage. A Gallup poll found that 75 percent of 20-something Koreans said they disliked or hated Americans. Many charged that the United States was making South Korea its pawn.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's easy to sympathize with South Koreans unhappy with a foreign military presence and enraged that the accidental killers of two young girls might go free. Still, as I've written previously, there was something more at work. One of those forces is the “Sunshine Policy,” South Korea’s pursuit of rapprochement with North Korea from 1998 to 2008. The policy attempted to soften the tension between the two Korean nations, something that often required breaking, rhetorically or even politically, with the United States. President Roh Moo-hyun did this in part by criticizing the U.S. containment policy – and thus, implicitly, the enormous American military force stationed in his country – in an effort to demonstrate goodwill toward North Korea and, he hoped, to lay the groundwork for real cooperation. A 2003 State Department report warned that the Sunshine Policy, and the political rhetoric and media coverage it produced within South Korea, were raising anti-American sentiment and risking the entire U.S.-South Korean alliance.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But there is also something perhaps deeper, something alluded to in the 2002 protests, in which Koreans accused Washington of trying to control their country, as past Asian empires had done. As South Korea transitioned from military dictatorship to democracy, and from a poor rural country to an advanced urban society, Koreans started to feel “new stirrings of nationalism arising from their country’s rapid economic growth and political liberalization,” historian Jinwung Kim has written. That nationalism manifested, in part, as a rejection of “Korea’s ‘big brother,’ the United States,” Kim wrote. Research by Katherine H.S. Moon, an academic at Wellesley College, linked the “rejection of authoritarianism” and growing national consciousness to “resurgent nationalism” and a newly mainstream anti- Americanism.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University These attitudes peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s – just as Psy dropped a model tank before cheering crowds in Seoul – and, Moon writes, focused on the ever-visible American military presence. South Koreans were newly organizing themselves around a national pride and consciousness. But their nationalist energies, which they had developed as they formed a civil society and rejected the military dictatorship, suddenly lacked an outlet. Probably no one decided to refocus those energies on opposing the U.S. military presence, but it’s not hard to see how that might have happened organically, as Moon suggests. Though the U.S. force serves South Korean interests, it also can be seen as an insult to Korean nationalism, a reminder that it still relies on outside powers, and an intimation, however true or false, that the country might not be fully in Korean control. In the mid-2000s, though, South Korea started downgrading its Sunshine Policy and shifting back toward the U.S. Partly this was due to internal politics, which saw power shift from the pro-Sunshine left to the pro-American right. But North Korea also helped, reneging on past agreements, aggressively expanding its nuclear weapons program and, in the process, alienating South Korea and accelerating Sunshine's demise.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's hard to see these lessons applying directly to, for example, Pakistan, where only 11 percent approve of the U.S., according to Pew data out today. There's no Sunshine Policy in Pakistan and it would be difficult to downplay the effect of U.S. policies, particularly drone strikes, on public opinion there. But maybe a lesson we draw is that public opinion toward the U.S. can change from negative to positive, and quickly, given the right circumstances.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Can China escape its choking air pollution?

THE NORTH of China choked on a deadly fog this week. The good news is that China’s government has a new plan to address the country’s air pollution, and increasing unease among the nation’s new middle class is placing some pressure on the regime to make good on its commitments. Yet orchestrating a quick and significant reduction in air pollution would challenge any government, and China’s has a mixed record of enforcing environmental standards. At stake is the health and livelihood of hundreds of millions of people. Toxic air pollution got so bad this week in the metropolis of Harbin, which boasts a population of more than 10 million, that buses were getting lost in the dull haze, cars were using their fog lights and airports were closed. The government is considering heavy restrictions on travel and industrial activity. Even when the pollution isn’t so spectacularly bad, air purifiers have become a must-have home appliance and a common subject of small talk among those who can afford them. A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted that, between 1981 and 2001, particulate pollution in China was five times worse than what the United States experienced before Congress passed the 1970 Clean Air Act, and that was before China’s rapid economic expansion over the past dozen years. The analysis concluded that dirty air shortens people’s lives by an average of 5.5 years in polluted northern China compared with the cleaner south. Part of the issue is that pockets of high pressure around northern China prevented the air from clearing. But the real problem is large-scale coal burning. The country has abundant amounts of the sooty fuel, and it is responsible for about half of the world’s annual coal consumption. Apart from spewing massive amounts of climate-change-inducing greenhouse emissions, burning coal releases particulate matter into the air, from which it enters people’s lungs and bloodstreams. The poor planning and corruption of an unaccountable political leadership, insulated from public pressure and common sense, in large part created this choking industrial hell; they have encouraged coal-fired power generation and coal burning in homes for years, flouting environmental concerns. But last month the regime announced that it would attempt to limit coal use to 65 percent of energy consumption by 2017. Last year coal produced 67 percent of the country’s energy. The government also unveiled reduction targets for various types of particulate matter and restrictions on auto pollution. Authorities are right to focus on reducing coal consumption, which will have to drop much more in the long term. But doing that well will be a challenge. The government’s plan to power Beijing with synthetic natural gas, derived from coal, could reduce ambient air pollution, but it would also produce a lot more carbon dioxide emissions and gobble up fresh water in areas of the country that can hardly spare it, a World Resources Institute analysis found. And the whole program requires that state authorities enforce it. China already has pollution standards that often haven’t been respected. This time around, will local officials stick to official policy when it might curtail economic growth or limit the opportunity for corruption? The well-being of northern China depends on the answer. **Read more:** The Post’s View: New analysis confirms the danger of climate change Eugene Robinson: No more excuses on climate change Jim Yong Kim: U.S. takes key climate change steps, but the world must do more

Beach near Fukushima nuclear plant is a sliver of normalcy

IWAKI, Japan — Every day, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., a part-time worker at one of Fukushima’s most well-known beaches walks toward the shoreline and lowers a dosimeter to the water. The device measures radiation, and its readings this summer have delivered the best news that one can hope for 40 miles south of a still-leaking nuclear plant: The levels are normal. Nearly 21 / 2 years after a series of meltdowns at the coastal atomic plant, normalcy has become the Fukushima prefecture’s scarcest commodity, and those who live here cherish it — or anything approaching it — in whatever form they can find. Local officials describe Nakoso Beach as a symbol of recovery, its seasonal opening day two weeks ago feted with hula dancers and hopeful speeches. But the officials acknowledge that Fukushima’s recovery is tenuous, and only by the standards of a traumatized region does Nakoso Beach feel normal. At Nakoso, beachgoers are greeted by two signs: one advertising Fukushima’s sunshine, the other announcing the water’s latest radiation levels. The lone surfer on a recent Monday — a chiseled 38-year-old — spends his workdays blasting radioactive contamination from residential rooftops. The 56-year-old who handles the dosimeter is a former fisherman, put out of his job by a regional fishing ban on 41 species. Occasionally he still takes his boat 20 miles offshore and trawls the ocean floor for tsunami debris. “I’ve found washing machines, bicycles, parts of trucks, even housing material,” Nobuyuki Ueno said. Some days, Nakoso provides a sneak preview of a full recovery — a thousand people, maybe more, packing the mile-long beach. But, in general, crowds have dwindled, tourists are way down, and trepidation about being outdoors is higher — particularly because some nearby areas remain highly contaminated. At the very least, those who come to Nakoso, where radiation readings are about the same as those in New York City, have contemplated the risks and decided that they are minimal. On a recent overcast afternoon, only one beach umbrella was pressed into the sand at Nakoso. Three snack bars, selling ramen and doughy fritters stuffed with octopus, were nearly empty. A few teens held foot races along the shore. Izumi Seya, 21, drove an hour with her friend to the beach from her home inland, having been warned by her mother not to go into the water. She went in anyway. “A normal summer,” said her friend, Masumi Shiota, 22. Iwaki is the southernmost city along Fukushima’s coast, and before the triple meltdown of 2011 spread radioactive material across the region, beaches were one of its major selling points. Other communities in the prefecture spent millions building massive (and ultimately useless) coastal concrete fortifications, intended as protection against tsunamis. But Iwaki had 40 miles of white sand — nine beaches in total. Every year, about 180,000 people visited. Iwaki’s coast, like most of northeastern Japan, was pulverized by the disaster. During the March 2011 earthquake, the largest in the nation’s recorded history, the ground in Iwaki shook for 190 seconds. A tsunami wave traveling at the speed of a plane bulldozed beachside homes. The ground sank under the churning water. Concrete barriers guarding the beaches were twisted and uprooted. In Iwaki alone, more than 300 people died. Some of them ran the inns and restaurants that catered to beach tourists. Seven of Iwaki’s beaches remain closed because their infrastructure was so badly gutted. After some quick cleanup, the city reopened Nakoso last summer for a truncated season. The other beach to reopen, Yotsukura, did so this year. North of Nakoso, surfers still use at least one unsanctioned beach, which stretches in front of a partly damaged neighborhood. But other beaches, like Usuiso, look like ghost towns. Only the rusted lifeguard tower is standing. Officials in Iwaki admit that they’re lucky in one respect: Contamination of their beaches hasn’t proven as serious as feared. About 50 percent of Iwaki’s land needs decontamination work — a process that will take at least three more years — but no beach yet has yielded worrisome radiation levels. This despite the several hundred tons of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility that has seeped or been dumped into the ocean. Experts say that some of the contamination has been penned in by man-made barriers around the plant. The rest has diffused or fallen to the ocean floor, binding to clay and silt. The surface water, the experts say, is far less dangerous than the depths. “The environmental contamination is enormous around the plant, but not so much beyond it,” said Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo. Iwaki’s problem is as much about perception as contamination. Because of the partial fishing ban, for instance, fishermen at one port in Iwaki catch only one-third the volume they did before the disaster. But those fish have one- fifth the value because of consumer fears. **** The city relishes any chance to show that life here is normal. All major factories here have reopened. Warren Buffett visited. So did Nissan chief executiveCarlos Ghosn, who called the recovery of his plant in Iwaki “spectacular.” The city recently hosted one of Japanese pro baseball’s three all-star games. “Still, just this word — Fukushima — makes people a little hesitant,” said Hiroshi Satoh, director of regional promotion at the Iwaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, admitted a few days ago that contaminated groundwater seemed to be flowing into the ocean, something experts had suspected. The company couldn’t identify the source of the leak, a spokesman said, but the worst area was confined to the waters around the plant. In Iwaki, several managers in the city tourism office held an emergency meeting. They decided to enlist a new research lab to double-check the local monitoring. They also chose not to close the two open beaches. **** “Our monitoring data has not changed,” said Joji Kimura, deputy director of Iwaki’s tourism division. “Even if radiation is leaking from the plant, it’s becoming diluted by the time it reaches our beaches. Realistically, there could be some impact” from the new discovery, with a drop in the crowds. “But we will not know until the end of the summer.” Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

4 Japanese lessons for withstanding big storms

Few countries know bad weather like Japan, where typhoons hit regularly and winds can reach up to 94 mph, as they did earlier this year. And judging by some of the engineering and planning in the coastal mega-city of Tokyo, few countries are better prepared. As Hurricane Sandy makes landfall on the U.S. East Coast, here are some Japanese lessons for what is this week an American problem. **1) Obsessive drilling.** Schools and office buildings hold regular and rigorous emergency drills, with even the prime minister sometimes participating to underscore their importance. "Japan is arguably the world leader in readiness," a Time magazine reporter wrote last year, after the world watched in amazement as Japanese made orderly queues and followed widely observed protocol in response to the March earthquake and tsunami. In many ways, the country's storm preparedness is a byproduct of its efforts to prepare for earthquakes, which are both more difficult to foresee and potentially deadlier. Officials emphasize that all citizens, not just emergency response officials, must maintain constant readiness. **2) Massive underground drainage.** The enormous, almost haunting chambers underneath the Tokyo district of Edogawa are meant to reduce flooding from storms by 80 percent. The facility, photos of which are provided by the Edogawa government, looks like something from a science fiction film set, and is even open to tourists. The runoff silos have ceilings 83 feet high and are connected by four miles of tunnels. Here's a map of the system:  **3) Swaying skyscrapers.** Many of Tokyo's buildings are designed to withstand powerful earthquakes, which also makes them well-suited to handle typhoon-strength winds. This allows them to sway, which is safer but alarming to watch. "Modern buildings – and Japan's addiction to concrete, means most tall buildings are very modern – are built with deep foundations, the most advanced supported by shock absorbers that allow the structure to move with the earth, rather than against it," the Guardian explained last year. This is in part a legacy of the country's devastation after a 1923 earthquake – the anniversary of which is now Disaster Prevention Day in Japan – and World War II. Because so many buildings are so new, unlike those in U.S. cities such as New York, they often boast newer technology, from the foundation to the elevator shafts. **4) Fear.** A 2004 study published in the Journal of Risk Research found that Japanese citizens were far more likely to be prepared for major storms – planning escape routes, bolstering such home improvements as roofs and drainage, and taking out insurance policies – if they reported that they were "fearful" or "very fearful" of such a storm, as many people did. Strikingly, the study found that this didn't correlate as strongly with people who had experienced more storms or storm damage in the past, meaning that fear itself seems to be driving their preparedness. I don't know how to compare the degree of fear of storms in Japan versus in the United States, but it's worth noting the anecdotal reports of East Coast city grocery stores selling out of wine but not staples.

Songdo, South Korea: The city that could change the way we travel

The scene outside the cab window is ominous: six lanes of black sedans, apple-green buses and scooters sit crammed fender-to-fender, their shrill horns and screeching brakes piercing Seoul’s hazy, exhaust-choked air. Talk about traffic! I haven’t even arrived in Songdo yet, but watching this, I can already understand its appeal. Over the past decade, the South Korean city of Songdo has sprung up on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land on the Yellow Sea, 40 miles south of Seoul. Linked by a 7.4-mile bridge to Incheon International Airport, the city is regularly hailed as an experimental prototype of the aerotropolis, an urban development concept with the potential to significantly affect the way we travel. I’m heading to Songdo from Seoul to have an up-close look at this cutting-edge new milestone in the future of travel. Details, Songdo, South Korea My cab crawls out of the South Korean capital at a sloth-like pace, modern skyscrapers gradually giving way to concrete and barracks-style high-rises, then finally to open highway. Forty-five minutes later, we’re approaching Songdo, where cranes and partially constructed glass skyscrapers clutter the skyline. Once in town, we drive past a Starbucks and a North Face store before the cab drops me at the Sheraton. The next day, I meet with Scott Summers, vice president of investment and marketing at Gale International, the development firm behind Songdo, for an official tour. We drive along wide, empty boulevards, past towering glass buildings and deep holes where more will be built. Unlike Seoul’s identical rows of concrete structures, Songdo’s skyscrapers curve and bend, evoking beautiful glass and steel waves. We stop in at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club, an elegant wood-and-glass building overlooking an 18-hole course, pop into the model of a soon-to-be-built apartment complex and take a leisurely boat tour down one of the city’s canals. As we float in the glass-enclosed barge past a trio of fountains shaped like naked, full-bellied Korean boys, Summers points out where an art center and a concert hall will eventually be built. It’s quite impressive, this aerotropolis. What is an aerotropolis? At its simplest, it’s a city built around an airport. Instead of sticking an airport on the outskirts of an existing city, building a city around the airport allows for faster movement of goods and people. And as Greg Lindsay, co-author of “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next,” argues, in the era of globalization, efficiency is paramount. Lindsay believes that the old real-estate rule of “location, location, location” is being swapped for the new rule of “accessibility, accessibility, accessibility.” “Cities have always formed around transportation — ports and harbors and then train stations,” says Lindsay, pointing to Boston, New York and Chicago as examples. “Air travel is the only way to connect globally, and now, more frequently, cities will grow around airports.” Long before the term was coined, aerotropolises such as Tysons or Reston in Virginia were growing around existing airports. But even 10 years ago, when Songdo’s development first began, the aerotropolis wasn’t a well-known notion. “We weren’t cognizant of the aerotropolis concept at the time,” says Jonathan Thorpe, senior executive vice president and chief investment officer of Gale. “It just made sense.” In 2001, the South Korean government approached the New York-based firm about developing a city that, by virtue of its proximity to the newly opened airport in Incheon, would attract multinational corporations and potentially turn the region into the world’s gateway to northeast Asia. “The idea was that it would be an international business district and that foreigners would find this a convenient place to set up business,” says Thomas Hubbard, who served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea when the project began. “The model was Singapore.” Understanding the mission of attracting new Western business, Gale has built state-of-the-art, high-tech LEED-certified office buildings, apartments, shops and schools, imported elements from other cities, such as New York’s Central Park, and wooed Jack Nicklaus into building one of his iconic golf clubs. There’s a lot of Songdo still to be built, but even as it’s under continuing construction, there are signs that point to its becoming an important business and residential hub. Last fall, the United Nations selected the city as the home of its new Green Climate Fund agency. Initial estimates expect 500 employees and their families to move to Songdo. While Songdo’s status as a sustainable city certainly helped in its successful bid to house the Green Climate Fund, so did its proximity to Incheon International Airport. “You land at the airport and there’s a convention center, a hotel, a golf course,” says Lindsay. “Business travelers already live out of conference hotels; now you’re seeing conference cities. You still go to Seoul if you have leisure time, but this is the hyper-efficient movement of people. This is taking the scale of business travel to the extreme.” If accessibility and efficiency are key to the business traveler, the aerotropolis’s impact is clear. In some instances, the effect on leisure travelers is equally, garishly obvious. Across the bridge from Songdo, Incheon airport is building a massive playland to rival Macau and Las Vegas. The actual airport is already a shopper’s paradise. It’s the No. 1 duty-free airport in the world, with $1.53 billion in sales last year, and the halls are lined with 73 high-end stores, including the first Louis Vuitton airport shop. I wander down the broad, brightly lit halls and study the stores-within-stores. Divided into categories, each massive shop includes several smaller markets inside. The cosmetics store is packed with counters for L’Occitane, Kiehl’s and Shiseido. The accessories store includes counters for Furla, London Fog, Burberry, Christian Dior and Chanel. There are floral scents, thick lotions, soft silks, rich leathers, bold colors, classic patterns. It’s luxury overload for every sense. Outside the terminal, on the man-made island where it sits, development is underway on a mega-resort and casino, a water park, a shopping mall and several hotels. By the end of the decade, this new pleasure carnival will open and connect back to the airport by a magnetic levitation train that will make a 33-mile loop around the entire island. “The concept of an airport is changing,” says Min-Jae Chun, director of the Airport City Development Group. “In the past it was just about transportation. If you want to progress, you have to create a destination.” These new Vegas imitations probably won’t hold much appeal for Americans, who are unlikely to fly 12 hours or longer when our own candyland is so much closer. But a quarter of the world’s population is within 31 / 2 hours of Incheon, and by 2018, the airport anticipates 62 million visitors a year, with 65 percent coming from Japan and China. “These cities are being built as tourism infrastructure for people who can now afford to travel,” says Lindsay. “These are the mega-resorts for the world’s emerging middle class.” The aerotropolis, however, does cause other, less readily obvious ripples in how we travel that will affect American travelers. “Once you build these infrastructures and you make travel more efficient, you change global travel patterns,” says Lindsay. “It opens up places. It makes it easier to create hubs and connect. It leads to a rise in travel destinations we never thought of before or that were really difficult to get to.” He points to Dubai as the ultimate example. “It was barely on the map 20 years ago,” he says. But after spending $500 million on a new concourse, and after Emirates airline acquired several new long-haul jets, the city became an important hub, linking places that had never been connected before. “The Seychelles becomes easier to reach because you can stop over in Dubai,” says Lindsay. “In Africa there are 14 aerotropolises being built. And in places like the Middle East and Asia, people are sitting down and building cities from scratch around the airport. China alone is building the equivalent of Rome every week. It will be interesting to see what destinations open up.” Songdo aims to be the best of these new aerotropolises. It has taken features of well-loved cities, such as Venice’s canals and Savannah’s pocket parks, and replicated them. It’s a smart, wired, sustainable city. It’s as accessible to the airport as Reston Town Center is to Dulles. If Songdo is South Korea’s Reston, as Thorpe has said, then perhaps it will have the same impact. Over the past 50 years, the area around Dulles has been transformed from farmland into two of the richest counties in the United States. Gale International and the South Korean government certainly hope to replicate that sort of transformation. And other cities are following close on Songdo’s heels. “Beijing is already building a second airport larger than the first, with the capacity for 200 million passengers per year and an airport city to go around it,” says Lindsay, which would make it the busiest airport based on passenger traffic. As the number of aerotropolises worldwide mushrooms, the impact on travelers will become clearer. Already, we see the concept making business travel easier, opening up leisure travel for entirely new populations and exposing current leisure travelers to new places on the globe. “The fact that United Airlines intends to start flying to Chongqing [China] with its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners is telling,” says Linsday. “A decade ago, how many Americans had even heard of Chongqing? “More places are about to appear on the map.” Details: Songdo, South Korea **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

North Korea isn’t a traditional nation-state. It’s more like a cult.

Regarding the Aug. 2 news article “Tillerson seeks talks with N. Korea”: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s assuring outreach to North Korea is a refreshing and, I believe, correct approach. North Korea is not a traditional nation-state but a cult that possesses territory. Cults need to maintain tension with the outside world. Sanctions, isolation and threats only increase the leader’s control. And as seen with other cultic groups — such as the Jonestown settlement in Guyana and the compound near Waco, Tex. — outside pressure can push cults into suicidal acts. Cults must be handled differently from nation-states. Their members are isolated from alternative views, compelled to obey the leader and frightened of outsiders. North Koreans need more contact with foreigners, more outside news and more opportunities to travel. Dialogue and person-to-person meetings would likely reduce North Korea’s siege mentality. Coincidentally, the Aug. 2 news article “U.S. rules on N. Korea trips fuel worry” noted that many Korean families remain shattered since the Korean War, and contained a suggestion that the United States and North Korea sponsor family reunions. South Korea, Japan and other countries with large Korean communities also could participate. Such small events might be the first step in reducing North Korea’s fear of the outside world and showing the regime that peaceful opportunities await beyond its borders. ****Chris M. Centner** , Reston**

The deadly MERS virus is spreading at a terrifying rate

On Thursday, the Saudi Arabian health ministry confirmed 13 more cases of patients contracting MERS-CoV, the acronym for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, as well as two more deaths. MERS-CoV is an infectious disease with no known cure and is considered more deadly than SARS--which killed some 800 people during a 2002-2003 outbreak that first started in China. Since 2012, 83 people have died and 285 people have contracted the virus in the Kingdom alone. It has spread to the neighboring United Arab Emirates. Reports also suggest pilgrims from as far afield as Malaysia and the Philippines contracted the virus while on _hajj_ in Mecca.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University What's been truly alarming has been the recent surge in numbers of those infected, with more confirmed reports so far this year than in all of 2013. Ian Mackay, an epidemiologist at the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre at the University of Queensland, has been monitoring the spread of the disease. In the chart he tweeted below, note the dramatic spike in cases in the past month (KSA is the acronym for the Kingdom).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Saudi health ministry has been criticized for inadequately dealing with the situation. A lack of data shared by the Saudis has made it difficult for experts like Mackay as well as monitors at the WHO to study whether the virus has mutated and become more easily transmissible between humans--a development that could pave the way for a pandemic.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Public health experts and epidemiologists are still struggling to understand where the virus originated and how it spreads--with most suggesting it emerged through contact with camels, and others pointing to bats as prime carriers of the virus.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University On Monday, the Saudi government removed health minister Abdullah al-Rabiah from his post, without offering an official explanation. His replacement, Adel Fakieh, promised "transparency and to promptly provide the media and society with the information needed." But that may not soothe local fears. In Jeddah, where the majority of cases have been reported, four doctors resigned earlier this month after refusing to treat MERS-CoV patients. That's hardly a vote of confidence as international health officials and Saudi Arabia's panicked neighbors look to the Kingdom to stave off a potential global outbreak.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

In South Korea, beauty is skin deep (just make sure to pierce the stubble)

SEOUL —When it comes to taking care of his skin, Lee Woo-jung just does the basics: toner, essence, moisturizer and “BB cream,” the tinted sun cream that covers up flaws without being too makeuppy. This kind of beauty routine is standard among image-conscious South Korean men in their 20s — which is to say, most South Korean men in their 20s. “People look at me differently when I take care of my skin,” said Lee, 27, a gym owner who was walking through the trendy Seoul district of Hongdae with his girlfriend recently. “It helps me when I’m working because I have a good image. When I approach other people, they are more open to me.” Tall, with perfect hair and chiseled cheekbones, Lee turned heads as he indulged an impertinent reporter’s questions. His looks may have been exceptional, but his skin-care routine was not. South Korea has become famous in recent years for skin-care products for women, which incorporate everything from regenerating snail mucus to animal placenta. Now young — and some not so young — men are also buying into the beauty obsession that has swept this land, boosting the nation’s already booming cheap cosmetics business. “In South Korea, being young and active are considered very attractive qualities. Youth equals ability,” said Eric Min, deputy editor in chief at Luel, a glossy men’s magazine with a whole section devoted to grooming. Min, 41, has bright, flawless skin with not even the faintest wrinkle. “So you get plus points here if you look younger.” The South Korean beauty-product industry boasts about $10 billion in sales annually through stores such as Nature Republic, Etude House, Missha and Tony Moly. Exports to China and Southeast Asia have been growing at a rapid pace, and many tourists here head straight for these shops. South Korean beauty routines for women involve a confounding array of steps, involving multiple cleansers, potions and creams. Does the essence go on after the serum but before the emulsion? As the women’s market has become saturated, beauty companies have been stepping up their marketing to men. It’s a huge prospect in South Korea — and increasingly in other parts of Asia, thanks to the phenomenal popularity of Korean dramas and music — where the masculine ideal of beauty might be described as “metrosexual” in the West. More than 10 percent — or $1.5 billion — of domestic beauty-product sales are now coming from products for men. The men’s market has been growing at about 9 percent each year for the past four years, said Kang Jae-joon, head of equity research in Korea at the investment manager Franklin Templeton. The most popular products for men include skin-care preparations — toners, essences and lotions — and pencil kits for filling in the eyebrows. BB cream is also popular — it can be passed off as sunblock — although the Iope brand makes a version of its famous cushion foundation compact for men. Innisfree, another popular brand, even puts out a line of brown, green and black face paint for army conscripts called “extreme power camo cream, with tea leaf extract for soldier” that is gentler on the skin than the standard- issue stuff. There are numerous Web sites where men demonstrate how to apply makeup so it looks natural, and how to transform themselves from scruffy to smooth. While face products for men are not an entirely foreign concept in the United States — brands such as Lab Series and Clinique, both owned by Estee Lauder, offer lines for men — it’s nowhere near the scale seen here. In South Korea, getting ahead is not just about having a good résumé but a good complexion to go with it. “Korean society is very competitive, and for young men to improve their career chances and while looking for a girlfriend, looking good helps their competitiveness,” said Kang, 48, who says he uses mask packs to care for his skin after doing outdoor sports. Kang’s colleague Oh Se-bom, 32, has a much more complicated skin-care regimen involving anti-aging products such as eye cream. He said Korean cosmetics companies realized they had left half the domestic market untapped. “For Korean companies, the men’s cosmetics market is like a blue ocean,” Oh said. “So they’re all strengthening their lines.” Representatives of Innisfree, part of Amore Pacific, one of South Korea’s largest beauty companies, were scouting for new customers at a baseball game on a recent sunny Sunday. As the Doosan Bears played the Kia Tigers, Innisfree was holding a promotional event in the stands. Women in white Innisfree uniforms handed out samples of sea salt cleanser and a seven-day trial-size toner from the new Forest line for men. “There are a lot of people in our target demographic here,” said Lim Chae-dok, a marketing executive at Innisfree who was overseeing the baseball promotion, referring to men in their 20s and 30s. “The Forest brand isn’t well-known yet, so while they’re enjoying the baseball game, they can also absorb our message.” For men, cosmetic sampling is really important, Lim said. “A lot of men don’t choose their own products, they just take what their girlfriend gives them,” he said. Innisfree would not provide details of its sales but said it offers 30 products for men. Since strengthening brand communication for the men’s line, it has seen 13 percent growth in new customers, the company said. A 37-year-old office worker named Choe Yong-son was watching the game with his family. “During my military service, my skin got really ruined, so I started using my mom’s products, her special moisturizers,” said Choe. He now uses his own toner and moisturizer, as well as sunblock “because my wife tells me to.” But it’s really just the minimum, he said. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but after they get married, Korean men don’t really care that much about their skin. Only before.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report. **Read more** Gloria Steinem on why she’s going to North Korea U.S. ambassador to South Korea is back on the streets — and on the tweets Chinese tourists, with Korean drama stars in mind, flock to Seoul for cosmetic surgery

After four months, North Korea’s Ebola quarantine comes to an end

Embassies and international aid agencies in Pyongyang received a "note verbale" from North Korea's State Emergency Anti-Epidemic Committee informing them that the quarantine was now over for all visitors except for those arriving from a handful of west African countries. Tour operators have also been informed by their North Korean partners and the state airline that the borders are being re-opened. With no cases of the virus east of Africa, the strictly-enforced 21 day quarantine for everyone entering North Korea — locals and foreigners alike — was puzzling and inevitably sparked theories about what the ban could really be about. Some speculated it had to do with information control, some with domestic instability and others thought that it actually might be about Ebola. Although the outbreak happened half a planet away and North Korea is not exactly over-run with visitors at the best of times, the country’s medical system is so primitive that one case of Ebola could wipe out a sizeable chunk of the population, observers and traders said. A decade ago, North Korea shut its borders when bird flu broke out in Asia. In the note sent to diplomats and aid workers "paying gratitude for well keeping the measures taken to prevent the spread of Ebola virus." North Korean authorities said Monday that the quarantine would now apply only to those coming from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — where the outbreak began — as well those from Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Mali and Cote d'Ivoire. "Those coming from other countries can work as usual, receiving medical observation through frequent contact with Pyongyang Friendship Hospital for 21 days," said the note, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. North Korea had been strictly enforcing the quarantine, requiring all foreign residents to remain at home for 21 days after being out of the country and sending a doctor to their apartments each day to take their temperature. Even cleaning staff were not allowed into their homes, and groceries were dropped at the door. This was a major problem in a repressive country where foreign diplomats and aid workers need regular “sanity breaks,” leaving North Korea regularly to enjoy some outside freedoms. Under the quarantine, working conditions had become so curtailed that some agencies were even considering suspending operations. Tourism companies have also been told that they can start applying for visas again. “We have been informed by Air Koryo that North Korea’s borders are now open for travel and the 4-month long Ebola travel ban was lifted as of Monday, March 2,” Uri Tours, one of the companies that takes people to North Korea, posted on its Web site Tuesday. “According to Air Koryo, everything is back to normal! We’re waiting for further confirmation from our tour partners in Pyongyang as to when tours will resume, and what this means for the Pyongyang Marathon.” The marathon, due to be held in the middle of April, had been closed to foreign competitors because of the ban. The race has historically attracted some competitors from Africa — in 2013, the men’s winner was Ethiopian. Young Pioneers, another tour operator, said that it had been told that the marathon not take place this year for tourists due to the Ebola restriction, which interfered with preparations for the marathon event. The Arirang mass gymnastics performance has also been cancelled, even though it was not due to be held until August. Nick Bonner, director of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, said that it had a tour group of about 15 people scheduled to arrive in Pyongyang on March 14. "We are still waiting for absolute confirmation from our partners that these visas will be issued without any restrictions or caveats, and that the tour will proceed as normal, but all the signs so far are looking good," he said. "This is not just good news for those tourists interested in visiting one of the world’s most mysterious countries, but also in terms of the work that can now continue in breaking down the barriers and misunderstanding that still exist," he added. The ban was put in place on October 24 as the Ebola outbreak ravaged three West African countries and a handful of cases occurred abroad. At the beginning, it did not seem to be particularly strictly enforced, but as time went on - and ironically as the outbreak was gotten under control at its source — North Korea applied it to the letter. As recently as last week, businessmen on the Chinese border with North Korea described the extent to which Pyongyang was going to protect against transmission of the disease. They described quarantine centers and an arduous process by which trucks were sanitized. The ban was particularly surprising given the effort North Korea has been putting into promoting its tourism industry. It has has set a goal of luring one million tourists to the country, although it has not set a time frame for doing so. Even those working with North Korea's tourist industry say this number is "aspirational," estimating that the country has 100,000 outside visitors a year. The vast majority are from China.

Singapore tries to imagine a future without its founder, Lee Kuan Yew

SINGAPORE — When his ruling party won all but two of the 84 seats up for grabs in parliamentary elections nine years ago, Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, declared: “Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.” Fast-forward to today, and things are changing in this high-tech city-state. For one, people here are facing the prospect of a Singapore without Lee. Now 91, the elder statesman was hospitalized with pneumonia at the beginning of February and placed on a ventilator. The office of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong — Lee’s eldest son — said Tuesday that his condition had worsened as the result of an infection. On Wednesday, it said he had deteriorated further and was critically ill in the intensive care unit. Although Lee Kuan Yew has been ill before and rebounded, there is a sense here that this time is more serious and that Singapore might, on the 50th anniversary of its independence, be marking another historic moment. After becoming the Southeast Asian island’s first prime minister in 1959, Lee oversaw its independence from Britain and Malaysia, then used a farsighted economic vision and an iron fist to transform Singapore from a Third World colonial trading post into a glittering, multicultural commercial hub. This was done by encouraging business with easy regulations and low taxes, and by using big government to look after citizens. But progress was made at the expense of civil liberties, with the media stifled — often through libel suits — and political dissent barely tolerated. Although his three-decade reign as prime minister ended in 1990, he held advisory positions until four years ago and has continued to exert his influence through his son, who became prime minister in 2004, and his People’s Action Party, which has a stranglehold on Parliament. “Just like all the great men who built Southeast Asia in the post-colonial period, Lee Kuan Yew is a presence for as long as he breathes,” said Ernest Z. Bower, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Singapore is now looking for change and evolution,” Bower said, “but they’re not sure. I think there’s a little bit of fear and anxiety about all of this.” Even Lee Hsien Loong acknowledges that Singapore is at an “inflection point.” While older people here remember what life was like before the transformation and have been willing to put up with the restrictions, people in their 20s and 30s increasingly are not. “Previous generations had all their necessities taken care of and were happy with [Lee Kuan Yew] when he was prime minister,” said Abdul Kadir bin Ibrahim, a Singaporean in his 50s who runs a clothing store in the Arab Street district. The younger generation is more outspoken, he said. “Most of them are highly educated, and they come from families where they have not had to struggle to survive, and they have been more exposed to the outside world, so it’s inevitable that there will be some change.” Carlton Tan, a 28-year-old commentator, is one of those younger Singaporeans who has mixed feelings. “We simultaneously love and hate, respect and despise, cherish and abhor, the man,” he wrote in a recent column. “We are thankful for our decades of economic progress, but we wonder whether it was really necessary to sacrifice our freedoms. We are grateful for the stability and security, but we wonder whether we can maintain it without a strong civil society.” Now, Singaporeans can honor their founding father by “asking tough questions, making hard choices, and imagining a different Singapore,” Tan wrote. An opportunity to vote for a different Singapore is approaching. During the last general elections, in 2011, the ruling party lost six of 87 parliamentary seats — a result that was considered an omen of change. The opposition is expected to win more seats in elections to be held next year. Political changes have been accelerated by economic ones as income disparities have widened. The number of billionaires is rising while an increasing proportion of the population struggles to afford housing and other basics. Immigration is also a pressing issue. Foreigners constitute a third of Singapore’s population, and while many are working in construction and household jobs that educated Singaporeans do not want to do, there is a growing sense that they are also taking more coveted jobs from Singaporeans. The government — perhaps with one eye on the similarly glittering, commercial island of Hong Kong, where calls for greater democratic representation resulted in protests last year — has seemed more willing to create some space for civil society. Gillian Koh, a senior research fellow with the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore, notes that ground-up activism has resulted in tangible changes in recent years, such as the easing of death-penalty policies, the strengthening of harassment laws and a major recalibration in social-support policies. The government’s responsiveness to concerns raised by civil society and citizens’ activism may mitigate the appeal of opposition politics, she said. But the departure of Lee could also have implications for the United States. Although Singapore is not a treaty ally, Washington has for decades relied on Lee to interpret events in Asia for it. “Every president since Nixon has valued his counsel as a person who has been the world’s premier China watcher,” said Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the co-author of a book on Lee, whom he calls “the grand master.” “He’s a person who can understand China and its leadership and its choices from the inside,” Allison said. “I would say that we need someone like Lee Kuan Yew more than ever because, coming from a small, very successful city-state, he can look to either a Chinese or an American like an independent, wise counsel.” But some analysts note that the Obama administration has lessened Washington’s reliance on Singapore. While Lee used to visit the White House almost every year, his son has been there only twice during President Obama’s tenure. **Read more:** Singapore tops list of world’s most expensive cities What does Singapore have against gay penguins? Singapore restaurant turns to drones to deliver meals

Universal medicine for travelers

When Jessica MacKenzie Murthy needed medical attention in Bangalore for three bouts of food poisoning, a sinus infection and one pregnancy, she didn’t rush to the nearest ER. With a clear head often absent in emergency situations, she bypassed the public hospitals for private clinics and, once admitted, eyeballed the facility for proper hygiene. En route to one appointment, she and her husband witnessed a doctor’s unsanitary behavior on a traffic median. In the examining room, Murthy politely asked the physician to slip on gloves or wash her hands. Thousands of miles from home, the American visitor was both the patient and the health-care advocate — for herself. “You have to prepare very differently” for getting sick abroad, said Murthy, an Alexandria resident who lived in India for two years in the mid-2000s. “Hospitals can be zoos in other countries. Nothing works quite like it does here in the States.” Before leaving on a trip, most travelers prepare for what they imagine as the worst: rain, sunburn, boredom. The remedies for these potential inconveniences are simple: Throw in a slicker, a bottle of sunscreen and a heavily downloaded Kindle, then slam the lid shut. But sometimes the setback is more serious than a lobster-red nose. What could ail you? Food poisoning, a broken limb, a deep laceration, typhoid, dengue fever, malaria. And what can fix you? Proper medical care, no matter the continent, country, city or mountain village. Depending on the malady, you could self-medicate with the proper pills, lotions, bandages and rest. But when the illness exceeds your CVS medical training, you’ll need to seek professional attention. A scary concept in an alien land, but done right, the experience can be painless. To ease the ouch of mind, body and budget, we sought advice from travel medical experts on how to navigate international health-care systems as foreign and chaotic as Bangkok’s street-food scene. The professionals offer tips for each step of the process, from the preventive stage to the unwell phase, when no amount of apples (or bottled water) will keep the doctor away. On the comments page of InsureMyTrip.com, a travel insurance aggregator, travelers gush about how travel medical insurance gave them “peace of mind”; “fortunate” and “felt very comfortable” were also popular words. In the first 100 of 1,466 responses, not a single person related a negative story involving an injury or a claim. Nor did anyone complain about wasting money for an unused service. “There’s the ease and then there’s the cost control,” said Bruce Kirby, president of the U.S. Travel Insurance Association. “The premiums are so small because the occurrences are so small.” When you travel without insurance, you have to pay for all medical expenses out of pocket — sometimes up front, in cash. In the case of an evacuation, which can cost several thousand dollars, those pockets had better be coal-mine deep. Those with insurance, by comparison, don’t have to worry about smashing the piggy bank for massive expenditures. Depending on the plan, the company will dip into its own coffers and cover your bills like a generous benefactor. David Shlim, president-elect of the International Society of Travel Medicine, spent 15 years working at a medical clinic in Kathmandu. The physician knows the life-saving advantages of insurance. He recalled the tale of a Dutch tourist who arrived at the Nepalese facility with black spots inside his cheek. The medical care workers diagnosed blood blisters caused by a lack of platelets, a life-threatening condition. The patient’s insurance company responded to the emergency with an air ambulance that transported blood from Singapore to Kathmandu and retrieved the patient for a transfusion. Tragedy averted. To determine whether you’re a good candidate for travel medical insurance, Peter Evans, executive vice president of InsureMyTrip.com, suggests that you first check your U.S. medical insurance. If your plan covers health incidents abroad, including evacuations, then skip to the next section of this article. If it doesn’t, keep reading. When choosing a plan, you need to factor in such variables as your destination (remote and rural or modern and urban), planned activities (strolling or scuba diving) and your age and personal health, specifically any preexisting conditions. You can also choose between single- and multi-trip coverage, depending upon how often you spin the globe. For the most basic plan, the cost will equal your daily Starbucks coffee-and-scone fix — from $3 to $8 a day. For example, Evans, who’s 52, calculated that for a three-week international trip, he would spend $58 on a plan that would pay up to $50,000 in emergency medical protection and up to $500,000 for an evacuation. Apparently, peace of mind is a bargain. “It’s probably one of the most unsettling things to be ill in a foreign country,” said Phyllis Kozarsky, a travel health consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “and there’s nothing sadder than being in dire straits and having to pay $50,000 to $100,000 for medical care.” Kozarsky has experienced the discomfort of ailing abroad and the disappointment of a ruined trip. Soon after arriving in India in 1987, she succumbed to illness and had to fly home for treatment. “I did everything wrong that you could imagine,” said the professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Emory University in Atlanta. “I was outside at night in shorts. I had no access to clean water. I had holes in the screen and an old air-conditioner. I ate anything. I was a high-risk individual.” Physician friends of her Indian sponsor family diagnosed her symptoms as pneumonia, diarrhea, dehydration and an unconfirmed case of Legionnaire’s disease. Kozarsky did not have supplemental travel health insurance, but she had connections, which absolved her from the quest for outside medical care. The flip side: If you buy insurance, you gain connections. In addition to easing the financial strain, travel medical insurance also pairs the patient with an assistance company that will provide support from the first distress call to the final discharge. The advocate offers such invaluable guidance as pointing the patient to a reputable hospital and facilitating treatment by corresponding with the attending physicians. No matter how great the care we get, sometimes we just want our mommy. After seven days of hospitalization, some firms will fly your mom, or another family member or a friend, to your bedside. Your favorite stuffed animal can come, too. In case of emergency, call 911, or the foreign equivalent of H.E.L.P. For non-urgent matters, dial yourself. When mild health issues crop up, such as a persistent cough or food poisoning, you have the power to self-heal. But you’ll need the proper instruments. “If people have the skills to self-treat for minor respiratory illness or diarrhea,” says Kozarsky, “it’s sort of empowering.” Before you depart on your travels, the CDC consultant recommends walking up and down the pharmacy aisles, tossing in necessary items. Her kit, for instance, might include an anti-diarrheal such as Imodium, a painkiller such as Advil, bandages, steroid cream, cough medicine (tablet or capsule), a mild laxative and sleep aids. If you’re allergic to bee stings, pack an EpiPen; if pollen or other allergens tickle your nose, stock up on Claritin or another antihistamine. Also throw in extras of any medications you normally take at home, in case you lose a few or your return is delayed. And don’t forget the Cipro or Zithromax, prescribed antibiotics that can resolve a slew of stomach and respiratory ailments caused by bacteria. (Ask your doctor for instructions on use.) If you’re parachuting into an exotic locale with such potential risks as malaria or typhoid, visit a travel health clinic for counseling and possibly an armful of vaccinations and a mouthful of medications. (The International Society of Travel Medicine manages the Global Travel Clinic Directory, a list of facilities around the world.) Travelers with chronic diseases or conditions should also consult with a travel health provider and share all the details of their trip, including the altitude. Thin air can bedevil folks with compromised respiratory systems, for example. Despite extreme vigilance — frequent hand-washing, drinking only bottled water, abstaining from raw fruits and veggies — pesky viruses and bacteria may still scale your fortified walls. But if you’re patient, they’ll leave. For example, food poisoning symptoms should pass within six to 12 hours, and untreated diarrhea typically improves within five days. In addition to taking intestinal medicine, sick individuals should stay hydrated with “safe” liquids, doctors say; serious dehydration can land you in the hospital. Fever can be trickier to self-diagnose. If you are traveling in a malaria-free area, Shlim says to wait a day or so; if the fever exists, seek medical attention. However, if you are in a region where the mosquito-borne disease persists, hang up your stethoscope and flag down a real doctor. There’s a right way and a wrong way to receive medical care while traveling internationally. Here is an example of how you _should not_ do it. A year ago in Havana, I was hobbling around the Cuban capital with a Snuffleupagus-size appendage puffy with fire-ant bites. (The accident — stepping on the insects’ low-rise home — had occurred in southern Florida.) I didn’t know how to find medical attention in a communist country that didn’t accept credit cards or provide ATMs. At the urging of another American traveler, I visited the hotel infirmary, where a nurse flipped me on my stomach and poked me with a needle. I spent the remaining days with an itchy, swollen foot and a throbbing posterior. For all I knew, she’d shot me up with vodka. The lesson learned: You need to be well informed about where to go for medical help and what treatment you’re receiving. And maybe learn a few phrases in the native language, such as, “Is this going to hurt?” For starters, travelers should tap into the fairy godmother resources offering medical guidance. For example, the Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that certifies health-care facilities in the United States, has expanded to international hospitals and institutions. Its list covers countries from Austria to Yemen, with Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, Mauritius and many other destinations in between. For more than a half-century, the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travellers has been on a mission “to coordinate an international network of qualified doctors and mental health practitioners committed to providing the highest standards of medical care to travellers.” Italian physician Vincenzo Marcolongo was inspired to create the organization after he assisted a distressed Canadian in Rome. The group provides a growing database of more than 400 clinics in 120 countries that agree to treat any member (free to join; donation much appreciated) for a set fee of $100 per office visit and $170 for a night call. “We visit the doctors and have close relationships with them,” said IAMAT president Assunta Uffer-Marcolongo, the founder’s wife. “The traveler knows that he will not be overcharged.” Health-care systems vary tremendously worldwide, as do hospital cultures. Shlim, for one, praises facilities in Thailand, such as Bangkok’s Bumrungrad International Hospital, which has garnered several awards for its quality service. In India, Murthy preferred private hospitals over the government-run options, even though her physician husband worked in a public institution. She found the private venues to be better funded and stocked with more modern equipment. Nonetheless, in certain cases, she said, patients would have to purchase their own supplies — sutures, saline solution and medications, for instance — in advance. Her recommendation: Bring cash and a gofer/friend who can run to the pharmacy for you. Despite the diversity in systems, some universal tips do apply. Americans can often find familiar care at hospitals affiliated with universities, such as Johns Hopkins, or U.S. health-care centers, such as Harvard Health. Or look for places that cater to expats, business travelers or medical tourists. Kirby suggests contacting the U.S. Embassy for recommendations or asking a hotel concierge working at an international chain. Of course, no one wishes to interrupt his or her holiday with a hospital visit. But to look on the bright side, sampling a country’s health-care system is a truly immersive experience. Too Pollyannish? How about this: You might have saved some money by falling ill abroad rather than at home. When my friend Ed suffered a stroke in Mongolia, he paid less than $950 for a three-day hospital stay including a private room, around-the-clock nurses and an MRI. After he returned home, Ed received a bill from an American doctor who had been visiting Ulan Bator and had initially assisted with his care. The fee for the two-hour consultation was hundreds more than the entire hospital portion in Mongolia. _Have your own tale of sickness while traveling abroad? Share it in the comments section of this storyhere._ **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

South Korea has already won

_Max Fisher is a foreign affairs blogger at The Washington Post._ On March 30, three days after North Korea severed a military hotline with the South and announced that South Korean President Park Geun-hye “will meet a miserable ruin,” the country declared a state of war. “The time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle,” an official statement said. Meanwhile, many of South Korea’s youth were worried about something else. A 25-year-old pop star named Seo In-guk had appeared on a popular reality TV show the night before and, in a misstep that quickly dominated online conversations, had washed his strawberries incorrectly. Ilbe, a conservative Web forum — a place you might expect to find a nationalist screed — was preoccupied with a month-old debate on regional differences in how to eat sweet and sour pork. Pop stars, bourgeois lifestyle commentary and funny videos often seem to interest young South Koreans more than Pyongyang’s latest provocation. North Korea may be trying to intimidate its neighbor, particularly on economic and cultural fronts that increasingly matter, South Korea has already won the fight. Of course, young people are discussing the risk of a second Korean war. But, even if this week’s chest-thumping has them a bit jittery, they typically mock Kim Jong Un and dismiss his war declaration as hot air. It’s a distraction from more pressing matters — not a particularly high bar for a youth culture obsessed with the latest Korean pop girl group or Samsung gadget. “Netizens and ordinary citizens alike are fairly fatigued with the recent stream of threats,” James Pearson, the Seoul-based editor of KoreaBang, a blog that covers Korean social media trends, told me. “People just laugh.” How South Korea should respond to North Korea will be debated there long after the North’s latest threats wind down. But one thing is sure: South Korea’s strategy has helped create one of the most astounding national success stories in generations. A large part of that story was economic: Land reform spurred the transition from a rural to an urban society; exports brought money into a country with few national resources; and state-managed capitalism appealed to foreign investors while distributing gains across classes. More recently, politics fostered growth as South Korea embraced democracy, nurturing its middle and creative classes even though many of its fellow “Asian tigers” did not. Today, the nation is not just stable and well-fed — two things the North isn’t — but free, wildly prosperous and enriched by a culture that is spreading around the world. Maybe that’s another reason South Koreans don’t seem too worried about Kim’s probably empty threats: They know that the real conflict — the miniature cold war of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s over whether North or South would come out ahead — is over. Half a century ago, although North Korea was wealthier than South Korea, both were military dictatorships and among the world’s poorest countries. Today, the North still is, but the average South Korean enjoys a living standard on par with that of Israelis and Europeans. Economists describe this development without exaggeration as “the miracle on the Han River.” In 2011, the Samsung Group, South Korea’s largest corporation, reported $247 billion in revenue, or more than six times the gross domestic product of North Korea. North Korea, economically isolated by its bellicose foreign policy, relies overwhelmingly on its two largest trading partners: China and, yes, South Korea, both of which accounted for more than 70 percent of North Korea’s trade in 2010. That year, the North sold about $1 billion in goods to its southern neighbor. If war broke out, or if Kim so offended Seoul that it closed off trade, his country’s sudden loss of hard currency would be disastrous. A recent UNICEF nutritional study estimated that the growth of one in 10 North Korean children is severely stunted by malnutrition. In the center of Pyongyang towers a 105-flight reminder of the country’s enduring failure: the ghastly, pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, unopened and unfinished since 1986. If this is what the country looks like now, what would it look like minus that $1 billion — 2.5 percent of its economy? You will never hear Kim Jong Un admit it, but he needs South Korea to survive. Evidence of North Korea’s dependence on the South can be found at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, just six miles north of the demilitarized zone. The jointly run plant has North Korean laborers working with the South Korean staff of South Korean corporations. It produces tens of millions of dollars for North Korea every year and, in turn, grants the South cheap labor. Kaesong is one of the few remaining products of Seoul’s ill-fated “Sunshine Policy,” meant to kill Pyongyang’s bluster with kindness, often in the form of aid. South Korea shut down most of those programs in 2010, after the South Korean naval ship Cheonan was mysteriously sunk, Seoul believes, by a North Korean submarine. But it kept Kaesong open because it’s a good deal. This past week, North Korean border guards announced they were closing the facility to South Koreans, sending many back across the border. The North has closed the facility to the South before, and probably will reopen it soon. But even if the North cuts off Kaesong, whom will it really be hurting? South Korean firms can find other sources for cheap labor. A North Korean city reliant on the plant, The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan wrote, would “all but collapse economically, potentially causing social unrest among citizens with direct knowledge about capitalism and South Korea’s relative wealth.” As the North remains ever-reliant on a distrustful South and an increasingly wary China, South Korea has expanded its exports beyond technology into popular culture, two realms long dominated by the West and Japan. Korean music, movies and television have proved so irresistible that they’re pushing across Asia into Japan, which has been a gold mine. As North Korea kidnaps Japan’s citizens and fires missiles over its territory, South Korea is sending its pop singers and soap stars into the heart of its former colonial master while funneling bushels of Japanese yen back home. PSY, of “Gangnam Style” fame, has even made it big in the West. During a November visit to Europe, he attracted up to 20,000 Parisians at an impromptu concert. The next month, he performed for and met President Obama. Of course, South Korea’s economic and cultural victory could turn to ashes in the extremely unlikely but still terrifying possibility of conflict. A war would hurt North Korea most of all, probably causing its military — and thus the Kim regime — to collapse, but also would be horrifically costly for South Korea. Seoul is well within range of North Korean artillery, not to mention vulnerable to a nuclear attack. But South Korea has been living with this threat for years. That doesn’t mean it should lessen the vigilance that has kept it ready through two generations of armistice. But it does suggest that it has figured out how to live with the North: a draft, an enormous standing army and the help of the United States’ troops and nuclear deterrent. “The only thing to remind anyone of the impending threat is the occasional army helicopter buzzing overhead or reservists in their field dress, hopping on the subway,” Pearson said of life in Seoul. Security, even in the face of extraordinary danger, is just a part of success — something that allows South Koreans to devote their energy to conquering the world with high-tech exports and addictive pop culture, peacefully attaining the power and wealth that Kim and his belligerent forefathers could only dream of. **max.fisher@washpost.com **

With talk of Ban running for South Korean presidency, his hometown is abuzz

EUMSEONG, SOUTH KOREA — Saying that Eumseong likes Ban Ki-moon is a bit like saying that Koreans like kimchi. It’s technically true, but it doesn’t quite capture the strength of the feeling. If you arrive in this backwater south of Seoul by train, you’ll be greeted by a huge banner declaring, “Eumseong is the home town of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.” But if you arrive by car, you have two options. Turn right at the bobblehead-style statues of Ban with his U.N. briefcase and Ban literally holding the whole world in his hands, drive up Ban Ki-moon Street, past Ban Ki-moon Plaza and into the town center, where there’s a huge billboard of a smiling Ban and a banner declares the imminent opening of the taekwondo tournament — yes, the Ban Ki-moon Cup. Or, if you continue straight, you’ll arrive at Ban’s birthplace, where a replica of his first home has been built, complete with a sign above one door reading, “The room that Ban Ki-moon was born in.” Oh, and there’s a museum that tells Ban’s life story: “He is the pride of South Korea and is writing a new chapter for world peace.” You can take home a pamphlet with 19 famous Ban sayings (No. 14: “It is wise to be humble.”) Yes, this is in South Korea, although anyone who has been to museums and monuments in the North lauding founding president Kim Il Sung could be excused for wondering if they took a wrong turn at the demilitarized zone. But this tired town has few things going for it, so it’s understandable that it wants to capitalize on the fact that Ban, the most prominent South Korean on the global stage, was born here. This Banstravaganza is paying ever-bigger dividends for Eumseong as speculation mounts that the mild-mannered career diplomat will run for the presidency here. Ban’s term as secretary general comes to an end in December, and South Korea’s presidential elections are due one year later. The domestic political scene is in a state of disarray, with no clear conservative successor to President Park Geun-hye and an opposition mired in infighting. Ban meets Park at every multilateral meeting where they’re both present, and one particularly long meeting in New York earlier this year had South Korean columnists speculating that they were hatching a plan for the presidency. Ban, 72, stoked the speculation when, during a six-day visit to South Korea in May, he said at a conference that he would decide what to do next after his term at the United Nations is over. “When I come back on January 1 next year, it will be as a South Korean citizen. That is when I will consider and decide what I ought to do as a South Korean citizen,” Ban said, in a sharp departure from his previous silence on the subject. Political analysts in Seoul say that if Ban were to run for president, he would almost certainly win, as his name recognition and reputation are so high. His close acquaintances say that Ban’s decision to run would be made not out of personal ambition but out of a sense of obligation. “He is thinking about it very seriously,” said Kim Sook, who served as South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations until 2013 and remains close to Ban. “He has a deep sense of responsibility and duty to his own people and the nation of South Korea. And many people are asking him to do something for his country.” But Ban is no politician, and he is not known for having an electric personality. He won the top job at the United Nations in no small part because he had said or done little objectionable, and reviews of his tenure at the world body are not exactly glowing. But here in Eumseong, he is a hometown hero. “He’s amazing. He used to be foreign minister and then he went off to do great things at the U.N.,” said Yang Man-hee, deputy manager of the town’s train station. “People in Eumseong are very proud of him.” Since Ban’s speech in May, the number of visitors to the birthplace and museum complex has doubled to about 500 a day on the weekends, said Woo Chun-ja, who runs the museum. Visitors can have their photo taken in the chair that Ban sat in during his last visit, read about the Ban Ki-moon English speech competition and the Ban Ki-moon marathon, or add a message to the wall covered with sticky notes declaring “I love you, Ban Ki-moon.” “Lots of people say they want him to run,” Woo said. “There aren’t that many things to see here in Eumseong, but I think many people want to see the kind of place the world president was born in.” The complex was built to inspire young people to follow in Ban’s footsteps, said Lee Pil-yong, the mayor of Eumseong, whose business card declares, of course, “home town of Ban Ki-moon” and whose office is decorated with large photos of the two of them together. “We want to help kids have big dreams,” he said. Asked about the personality-cult aspect of the place, Lee said it was totally different from the situation in North Korea. “When we built this, there was no talk of him becoming president. There’s no political intention here,” he said. An adviser to Ban said that the secretary general “doesn’t feel comfortable” about such exaltation but that there was nothing he could say about it because it was a local government decision. A trickle of families traipsed around the site on a sweltering weekday recently. Park Kyung-ha, visiting from the southern city of Ulsan with her family, wondered whether Ban should just retire. “I have some concerns about his health because of his age, but I believe he will make a great president,” she said. Her 14-year-old daughter, Kang Ji-yeon, was enjoying the visit. “It’s fun. I want to come back,” she said. But her son, Kang Hyun-seok, 16, was a bit more skeptical. “I read about him at school and I knew what great things he’s achieved, but coming here made me feel a bit strange.” **Read more**

After ferry disaster, a Katrina-like reckoning in South Korea

SEOUL —South Korea has a history of disasters, from building collapses to airplane crashes. But the slow sinking of a passenger ferry this month has become its Katrina moment, a failed test of capability in a country obsessed with progress and success. After decades of development, South Korea has approached Western living standards. And yet the capsizing of the Sewol — with 476 people on board — had the markings of a Third World calamity. For South Koreans, the disaster has sparked not only mourning but also guilt, exposing what they see as deep-seated flaws in the country’s emergency preparedness. Some have cast the ferry sinking in more damning terms, saying South Korea has overlooked safety and regulations in focusing on its famously rapid economic growth. “When we look at this disaster, it’s clearly man-made,” said Kim Geon-ju, a volunteer assisting relatives of ferry passengers. “I’m ashamed.” The circumstances of the sinking make it particularly wrenching. Most of the deadliest maritime disasters have occurred in horrid weather or well off the coast. In this case, the seas were calm and the shore was relatively near. There also was an element of real-time agony. The ferry listed for more than an hour before it capsized, and even as it slipped deeper into the Yellow Sea, parents of the many teenagers on board felt that quick action could lead to the discovery of survivors. Over the years, South Koreans have grown confident of their ability to do things competently. They have the world’s 15th-largest economy, they boast the largest smartphone manufacturer, Samsung, and the largest shipbuilding industry. The country is driven by a pressure-cooker education system that cranks out diligent, albeit stressed, students. Since the end of the Korean War, South Korea has transformed itself perhaps more than any other country in the region, rising from economic ruin and successfully moving from military rule to democracy. But in the aftermath of the Sewol disaster, newspaper editorials are arguing that the transformation is not as complete as has been thought. Some of the commentaries take aim at the country’s safety standards, but others probe deeper, searching — and perhaps over-reaching — to find blame in Korean society. “Our nation has run headlong toward the goal of becoming wealthy for half a century,” read one, in the JoongAng Ilbo, a major daily. “But we turned a blind eye to the goal of being a civilized and safe society.” As of Sunday, 187 people were confirmed dead and 115 were still missing. If no survivors are found, it will be South Korea’s deadliest ferry sinking since 1970, and its first major disaster since 2003, when an arsonist set fire to a subway station in the city of Daegu, killing nearly 200. It will also be the deadliest maritime accident ever sustained by a country belonging to the OECD, a group of wealthy, democratic nations. (South Korea joined in 1996.) Prosecutors say the ferry — overloaded with cargo and top-heavy after renovations — listed and capsized after it took a sharper-than-recommended turn. But the factors that caused the ferry to sink do not fully explain why the accident happened and what caused it to be so deadly. Maritime and disaster experts cite a pile-up of errors — each of which, by itself, might not have been significant. Inspection of the ferry was lax. Crew members appeared to have had little safety training. Passengers were told to stay put when the boat began to list. The captain and the crew were among the first to flee. After the ferry’s distress call, substantial help was slow to arrive. And immediately after the accident, South Korean agencies jockeyed for a role, with no clear control center delegating responsibilities. On Tuesday, President Park Geun-hye apologized to the country for the government’s poor initial response to the disaster. In the first days, attention focused on the captain and some members of the crew, whose actions in escaping a vessel with hundreds aboard were called “tantamount to murder” by Park. But some experts and civic groups say the problems started well before the Sewol left for its 13½ hour journey from Incheon to Jeju. Korean media reported the Chonghaejin Marine Co., which operated the ferry, last year spent 60 million won ($58,000) for lobbying and entertainment — and just 514,000 won ($490) on safety training. Moreover, South Korean ferries underwent what some politicians here say were cursory safety checks conducted by watchdogs with cozy ties to the shipping industry. The Sewol itself received good marks on a safety check in February. After an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash-landed last year in San Francisco, South Korea’s government asked for systematic safety checks on vessels in order to prevent large-scale accidents, according to documents obtained by a Seoul-based civic group. Four-person teams composed of police, maritime and other government officials checked the condition of 36 ferries. The average inspection took 13 minutes, according to the documents. “We consider this as proof that there weren’t inspections on safety in a meaningful sense,” said Jun Jin-han, the manager for the Center for Freedom of Information, which obtained and shared the documents. “An accident like this was bound to happen. This was not just caused by mistakes of the captain or crew, but by a combination of mistakes at many levels.” The families of the missing have reserved some of their greatest scorn for South Korean coast guard and other government officials, whom they say acted inefficiently and chaotically after the disaster. Divers — working in tough conditions — took almost four days to enter the submerged vessel and look for survivors. In the first hours of the disaster, the Ministry of Security and Public Administration badly overstated the number of people who had been rescued from the vessel. One spokesman put the figure at 368; in reality, it was 174. The security ministry had inherited responsibility for some elements of disaster safety only this year, in a move that deemphasized the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Cho Won-cheol, who runs the Disaster Prevention and Safety Management Center at Yonsei University, said only two employees were transferred from NEMA to the security ministry at the time of the hand-off. “They entered this disaster with no knowledge,” Cho said. Some experts hope Korea will learn from the Sewol, investing more in emergency training for civil servants and beefing up watchdog groups. That didn’t happen after previous disasters in part because of a national mind-set — often described as “balli-balli,” or hurry-hurry — to move on quickly and focus on the future. “Korea is unique, to a degree, in the sense that it experienced so many dramatic events — war, vast growth, a very quick democratic transition,” said Lee Chang-won, a professor of public administration at Hansung University in Seoul. “In all of this, regulations and rules have been looked over. The thinking is, is it worth stalling progress to deal with these regulations if there’s only a 1-in-10-million chance something goes wrong?”

South Korea makes a point about its claim on islands disputed with Japan

DOKDO/TAKESHIMA ISLANDS — These two tiny volcanic islands, poking up from the sea like rabbit ears, can be scaled only by wooden steps that ascend almost vertically. A pulley system hauls food to a cafeteria built 300 feet above the waves. The only mailbox on the islands has a notice stenciled on the front, reminding that service will be slow because mail is picked up every two months. “The postal box is a symbolic object,” the sign reads, “implying South Korea’s control.” The islands, administered by South Korea but claimed by Japan, provide a window into Asia’s fastest-growing problem, the fight over small bits of land that have oversize and symbolic importance. In the case of these islands, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, the show of Korean control is pushed to extremes: Only two non-government employees live here, a fisherman and his wife, both Koreans. But three South Korean telecommunications companies provide the islands with 3G cellphone service. The notion of symbolic control has grown increasingly important in recent months amid a region-wide surge of nationalism and upcoming political leadership changes in South Korea, Japan and China. As a result, countries that once played down territorial disputes now use them to foment national pride. These small islands have become dangerous friction points between Asia’s most economically linked countries, with all sides calling their claims irrefutable and just, and brushing aside the idea of compromise. The fierce dispute between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea has spurred fears about potential armed conflict, but the dispute over Dokdo has levied a toll of its own. It has stalled military cooperation between Washington’s two closest Asian allies and reignited historical animosities that date back to Japan’s brutal land grab in the region before World War II. The South Korean government took a dozen foreign journalists to the islands Thursday to underscore its claims. The day started in Seoul at a just-opened downtown Dokdo museum and continued later with a three-hour flight to the islands in time for lunch at the cafeteria, which normally serves the national police who live here on two-month rotations. Dokdo consists of two main islands and a handful of rocky droplets, which do little more than break waves. The taller of the two, with a razor-sharp backbone, is home to the fisherman and his wife, who catch octopus and live in a three-story house — paid for by the provincial government — along the shore. “It’s not as big as it looks,” the fisherman, Kim Sung-do, said. “The top floor is all water tanks” for storing drinkable water. A handful of people have lived on the island on and off since the 1960s. Kim once worked for a fisherman who lived there, and he and his wife have been residents since 1981. The stouter of the main islands has a helicopter pad, a lighthouse, a weight room, a small branch of the South Korean national library and a dormitory. Forty-five police officers live here, as do two civil servants and three lighthouse attendants. There are no women. There is one dog, named Seodo. The police can move almost nowhere easily. Steps, some almost twice the size of normal ones, link the docks at the bottom of the island with the living quarters. The police stand in pairs on patrol, holding guns, waiting for maritime intruders. Seventy-nine Japanese boats have circled the islands this year, the police chief here said, but none has entered South Korea’s territorial waters. The police are happy to joke around, and two, at the urging of a cameraman Thursday, broke into an extended dance mimicking Psy, the South Korean pop star. Although the police spoke about their job seriously, saying they’d defend the islands to the death, some also acknowledged their neighbor as a friend more than an enemy. “Japan has accomplished a lot,” said Jeong Eun-jae, 31. “I admire their economic achievement, their diligence. They’re nice people.” It’s at the two countries’ leadership levels that the rhetoric becomes less compromising. Both Japan and South Korea, in official documents and on government Web sites, say that these islands are unequivocally theirs, according to “international law.” “Dokdo is indeed our territory and a place worth staking our lives to defend,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said when he visited the islands in August, a trip that stoked tensions. “There is no doubt about the fact that Takeshima is Japan’s territory,” Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said weeks later. North Korea supports the South’s claim. The countries base their competing claims on a sequence of centuries-old records and half-told versions of more recent history. One of the clearest differences in their respective narratives comes in 1905, when Japan’s government, with a cabinet decision, incorporated the islands into Shimane prefecture. According to Tokyo’s official story, the move “reaffirmed” sovereignty dating back centuries and stemmed from a citizen’s wish to use the islands to hunt sea lions. According to Seoul’s version, though, Japan strong-armed the deal after forcing Korea to revoke its diplomatic rights and used the island as a staging ground for its war with Russia. This presaged Japan’s 1910 invasion of Korea, and many Koreans refuse to separate the two. South Korea regained control in the years after World War II and has stationed coast guard officers there since 1954. Since 2005, tourists have been allowed on the islands, and several hundred come by ferry almost every day. They’re permitted to stay for 30 minutes, and on Thursday, they wandered around in the sunshine, snapping photos and waving flags. One man took off his shoes and bowed, doing it twice more as journalists snapped photos. “Korea!” the man howled. Japan, however, objected to the journalists’ trip. “From the Japanese point of view,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Masaru Sato said in an e-mail, “visiting Takeshima from Seoul is not a domestic trip, but an international trip crossing the border between Japan and Korea.” Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

‘Eventually we will face a situation that will be beyond our control.’

_Lally Weymouth is a senior associate editor for The Washington Post._ South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, was supposed to visit President Obama in Washington this coming week to discuss the growing threat from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear-armed North Korea and her country’s vexed relationship with Japan. But with the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and her falling poll numbers, Park cancelled the trip. She talked with The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth. Edited excerpts follow. **Why did you cancel your trip? What can you do here to contain MERS?** My visit to the U.S. was very important. The spread of MERS is being brought under control, but we still have a significant number of confirmed cases, so I resolved to put the safety of the Korean people first. **Seoul and Tokyo have historically had a very tense relationship over the interpretation ofWorld War II history — even though you have many common interests. How can you improve the relationship? Will you meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe? ** We have history issues that need to be dealt with. At the same time, Korea’s relationship with Japan and coordination on the security front should not be adversely impacted by those issues. As for Prime Minister Abe, I have had a chance to engage with him on a number of occasions. There has been considerable progress on the issue of the comfort women, and we are in the final stage of our negotiations. So I think we can expect to look forward to a very meaningful 50th anniversary of the normalization of our diplomatic ties. **You have always said that the issue ofcomfort women — that is, Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during the war — has to be dealt with. Can you describe the progress?** Obviously, because these are behind-the-scenes discussions, I would be remiss to disclose the elements of the discussions. **Are you hoping that Prime Minister Abe might make some kind of apology?** Historians in Japan as well as historians across the world have been calling on the Japanese leadership to come clean about what they have done in the past so we can move forward. But denial and efforts to gloss over what happened have stymied our ability to make progress. As for the comfort women, we only have 52 surviving victims. It behooves Japan to bring healing to their wounds and to bring honor to them before another comfort woman passes away. **How do you assess the situation in North Korea, with Kim Jong Unexecuting so many senior officials?** Since [he] took power 3  1 /  2  years ago, he has executed some 90 officials. Indeed, the reign of terror continues to this day. Although one can say that the reign of terror might work in the short term, in the mid- to long term, it is actually sowing and amplifying the seeds of instability for the regime. Currently, North Korea is constantly upgrading and enhancing the sophistication of its nuclear weapons, and developing and honing its missile capabilities as well. These represent a threat not just to the Korean Peninsula but also to the international community. So it is extremely urgent that we achieve a denuclearization of North Korea. **How can that be done when they don’t seem to care about the outside world?** The Korea-U.S. alliance relationship, as well as the international community and also five of the six parties engaged in talks, need to step up the pressure . . . to bring them back to the negotiating table. We can instill in them the belief that possessing nuclear weapons is an exercise in futility. **How? By increasing sanctions?** We could step up pressure vis-a-vis North Korea. **Last week, the United States government announced that there were “additional unidentified nuclear facilities” in North Korea. Does South Korea think that North Korea’s nuclear program is larger than was previously believed?** The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have not been able to go inside North Korea [in quite a while], so there is a probability that what you just said is true. **When you look at the Iranian sanctions regime, which resulted in denuclearization talks, would you like to see a similar approach to North Korea?** Of course things should turn out that way, but I believe in reality [in this part of the world] it might be more difficult. **You have a good relationship with China’s president, Xi Jinping. China is one of the last countries to have some influence over North Korea, and it provides the country with much of its energy. Does Xi share your views? Would he cut off some of the energy China sends to North Korea?** I have had summit meetings with President Xi Jinping. In the past, we were not able to engage in in-depth discussions on the topic of unification or North Korean nuclear weapons. But now we have reached a point — between President Xi and myself — where we can talk extensively about North Korea and about peaceful unification as well. President Xi firmly adheres to the position that he will not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea. From the Chinese perspective, on the one hand they say that it wouldn’t be wise to rattle the situation too much. On the other hand, [they also believe] that if we let the ongoing enhancement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons continue, eventually we will face a situation that will be beyond our control. **So China doesn’t want to cut off all the energy it sends to North Korea? China could bring about a collapse that way?** Yes, that would be a fair assessment. **Would you welcome a collapse? Or not welcome one?** My hope is to see a peaceful resolution . . . without seeing a collapse scenario. **It sounds difficult to do anything with North Korea, much as you and others have tried. If it is as dangerous as you say, what is the next alternative? Shutting off banking flows?** We are engaged in a wide range of discussions with the United States on how to deal with this situation. If we are to see a peaceful resolution, the North Koreans also have to step up. As you say in English, it takes two to tango. **Do you see any cracks in the regime in North Korea?** Recently, a senior North Korean defected and confessed to us that because of the ongoing and widespread executions that include even his inner circle, they are afraid for their lives. That is what prompted him to flee. **Was he part of the inner circle?** No, he wouldn’t qualify as an inner-circle person. He was part of the cadre of the party. **You recently attended the testing ofa South Korean missile that can reach all parts of North Korea.** The North Koreans continue to enhance the sophistication of their nuclear capabilities and also develop a wide range of missiles. So it is incumbent upon us to fashion a response. In the future, this missile will be a key element to our Korean Air and Missile Defense System. **The U.S. reportedly favors deploying Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), the Army’s anti-ballistic-missile system, to South Korea. What will you say if the U.S. requests this deployment here?** We would look at this together with the U.S., taking into consideration a variety of elements, including whether it serves our national security interest. **China has asked South Korea not to permit the deployment of THAAD. So China pressures you not to do it while the U.S. pressures you to do it. Do you feel squeezed?** When it comes to security, it shouldn’t be about yes or no depending on the position of certain countries. The first priority should be how can we best safeguard the Korean people. **You have had tremendous success in improving South Korea’s relationship with China. You have visited China, and President Xi Jinping has visited your country. How do you see China’sbehavior in the South China Sea, where it has expanded its claims quite aggressively?** China is Korea’s largest trading partner, and China has a huge role to play in upholding peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. . . . As for the South China Sea, the security and freedom of navigation are very important for South Korea. We are watching with concern the developments in that area. We hope that the situation does not deteriorate. **How do you see President Vladimir Putin of Russia?** It is important for Korea to maintain stable relations with Russia, because they are a member of the six-party talks with North Korea, and they have been steadfast in their opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons. **Your mother was killed when you were in your early 20s, and then your father, former Korean president Park Chung-hee, was assassinated a few years later. How did you have the strength to survive that and to go into politics yourself?** Because of such tragedy and difficulties, people say, “How could you even think about going near the world of politics?” As a child, I grew up embedded with the virtue of serving this country. When the foreign exchange crisis struck in 1997, I felt it necessary to do what I could to place our country on a strong footing, and that’s what prompted me to enter the realm of politics. As long as I feel the country is moving in the right direction — that the country is stable — I can rest. But in the absence of that belief, I cannot find rest. I myself have been the victim of a terrorist attack and almost lost my life. I lost my parents — they suffered tragic deaths. I went through so many ordeals. In the course of enduring those challenges, I learned what is important is the essence. Whereas others may be chasing after the froth, the ostensible appearance, those experiences taught me to see through the froth and seek to grasp the essence. **_Twitter: @LallyWeymouth_ ** Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Why South Korea’s media are furious with Vladimir Putin

A number of media outlets in South Korea are fuming at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has apparently proved a bit of a hassle for his Korean counterparts during his ongoing visit to the country. Most egregiously, Putin arrived a full half-hour late for a meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. It matters, for two primary reasons, that the South Korean media are showing open anger at Putin for the perceived slight. First, it's not going to help public opinion in the country concerning Moscow, at a time when Putin's Russia is trying to extend its diplomatic and economic influence in Northeast Asia. Second, it's possible that the stories may reflect a degree of unhappiness with Putin on the part of the Seoul government. Read between the lines of this story in Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea's most influential daily newspapers, and you can see strong hints that government sources are complaining:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The story goes on and on like that, chronicling, with surprising detail, the Putin camp's every slight toward their South Korean counterparts. Meanwhile, Putin did manage to show up for a ceremony awarding him an honorary black belt in tae kwon do, which tells you something about his personal priorities.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A column in the Korea Times went many steps further, angrily chastising Putin for having insulted Park and South Korea generally. It detailed more slights, quoting a "source" who described diplomatic insults perpetrated on this and prior trips. A Korean university professor quoted in the story predicted it would set back the two countries' relationship.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Showing up late is considered rude and insulting in any context, but it's particularly egregious in presidential diplomacy. Cultivating positive personal ties with your fellow heads of state is sort of low-hanging fruit; it's pretty easy to do, and the consequences can be quite severe if you mess it up. (See, for example, President Obama damaging U.S.-German ties by personally offending Chancellor Angela Merkel with an NSA tap on her cellphone.) There's pretty good evidence that Putin's lateness in South Korea was no accident: The Russian president has a long and well-catalogued history of upsetting foreign leaders by making them wait around for him.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University For Putin to risk angering South Korea's president just to grab a half-hour for himself seems like a very poor cost-benefit calculation by the Russian leader. He has much more to lose than to gain. But it makes more sense if we hypothesize that Putin either doesn't understand this -- doesn't see how much he's setting back his country's diplomacy, in other words -- or he just doesn't care. Either way, it suggests that Putin's Russia is not very good at developing soft power -- an area where its track record is perhaps even worse than China's. Don't hold out too much hope for Russia's plan to develop an "Iron Silk Road Express," its name for expanding trade with the two Koreas and its latest big political-economic outreach mission, previous versions of which have fallen apart.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Keep this in mind as you read about Moscow's push to displace U.S. influence in the Middle East.

Envy could destabilize North Korea

_Andrei Lankov is the author of five books on North Korean history and a professor at Kookmin University in South Korea._ Reports of unusual activity have been emerging from North Korea. Farmers were told in early July that going forward the state would take not their entire harvest but only 70 percent, and they would be allowed to keep the rest. The military’s economic role was partially curtailed last month when some military-managed companies were transferred to civilian control. Meanwhile, the nation’s young hereditary dictator attended a concert of American pop music — something unthinkable until recently, as the Western mass culture was, for decades, officially considered an embodiment of decay and immorality. All these actions reflect a dramatic shift from the policies of Kim Jong Il, the longtime dictator who died in December. It appears that Kim’s young heir, Kim Jong Eun, hopes to transform his destitute country into a “developmental dictatorship,” more or less similar to present-day China, where a market economy coexists with an authoritarian political system. These changes should be welcomed, as such a regime, despite its numerous shortcomings, is still preferable to the dictatorship that North Korea has endured for several decades. Unfortunately, Kim Jong Eun has little chance of succeeding. North Korean reformers face dual dangers. First, efforts toward change might be stopped by a conservative backlash. Second, reformers will soon discover the difficulties in containing popular expectations and restiveness. Kim Jong Il was wary of imitating Chinese ways. He feared — with good reason — that reform could be destabilizing. The major challenge is the existence of a rich South Korea whose population speaks the same language and is officially considered part of the same nation. The difference in per capita income between the Korean states, based on United Nations statistics, is at least 15-to-1, the world’s largest gap between countries that share a land border. North Korean authorities have gone to great lengths to keep their public isolated from the outside world, banning Internet access unconditionally for all but the most senior officials and making it a crime to own even a tunable radio. Their major goal has been to hide the scale of economic gap between the Korean states. In recent years, a growing number of North Koreans have begun to suspect that the South is affluent, but only a tiny minority realizes how much richer the South is. If the North undertook reforms to become more of a Chinese-style state, social controls would need to be relaxed. This would create manifold opportunities for North Koreans to access uncensored information, and they would soon learn the extent of the South’s prosperity. Diminishing fear of the state — the unavoidable result of liberalization — will make North Koreans more willing to share these doubts among themselves. North Korea’s leaders face a different dynamic than do China’s leaders. Chinese people are well aware of the prosperity of the modern developed world. For them, the success of, say, the United States, Japan or Germany is a success of foreign countries; it cannot be perceived as some sort of evidence of Communist Party inefficiency. And, critically, China obviously cannot unify with the United States or Japan. But if North Koreans learn the extent of South Korean success, they are likely to see the hardships and deprivations they have endured as proof of the regime’s inefficiency, for which the current ruler’s father and grandfather are largely responsible. The North’s population is also likely to assume that all of its problems could be solved overnight through unification with the rich South. This is a recipe for discontent and even a revolution, somewhat similar to the recent events in Tunisia or the events of 1989 in Romania and East Germany. Alas, a North Korea in the throes of reform would not become immediately more stable but would become less stable than the ossified state of the Kim Jong Il era. It is possible, though unlikely, that the regime would find a balance of fear, economic incentives and propaganda that would allow it to keep the populace under control. An implosion of the North Korean state is likely to be far from peaceful: If a revolution were to arise, the North’s elite, assuming that it stands to lose everything if its country is swallowed by the victorious South, would probably fight it. This means chaos and anarchy in a presumed nuclear state. Such a crisis also has potential to complicate the relations between the United States and China, as the latter would not remain idle when faced with such an eruption on its border. It is good that changes are finally coming to North Korea. But no one should not entertain the simplistic notion that reforms would bring a painless and gradual solution of the North Korean problem. ****

Using science and art, Michael Joo examines the life of the red-crowned crane

The Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, is 160 miles of unoccupied land separating the armed troops of North and South Korea. Despite the violence that these forces threaten, the 2½ -mile-wide stretch of border has become an unexpected sanctuary for one of the world’s most endangered birds: the red-crowned crane. In “Perspectives: Michael Joo” at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Brooklyn-based artist Michael Joo explores the cranes’ life and migration patterns through a space left in limbo by mankind. The exhibit contains only two pieces — a work on canvas and a hanging sculpture — but their large size and placement in the cavernous gallery pavilion give the works a commanding presence. In Korea, cranes of all sorts symbolize longevity and vitality. But according to the International Crane Foundation, there are only about 2,000 red-crowned cranes in the wild, where loss of habitat is a major threat. The bird remains important in Korean culture: When Joo was a boy, he slept under a quilt with cranes stitched onto it. In 2012, Joo participated in a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, during which he spent most of his time talking to ornithologists, and he saw cranes that had been collected in the 19th century, stuffed and fitted oddly into storage containers. “I found them fascinating,” Joo said. “There isn’t a lot of flesh or body there. It’s like when you break a finger. Something’s wrong, and that’s the most disturbing part. It’s not the silhouette you’re accustomed to. The silhouette had morphed.” A scanned image of a crane’s body was the inspiration for Joo’s large work on canvas. He used silver nitrate, a chemical from the early days of photography. The result is a dripping, silvery image that changes depending on the sun’s reflection on it. The sculpture, which hangs above the canvas, was made from brass rods that represent the red crane’s migration to and across the DMZ. Joo, who first saw the flying pattern as data from satellite tracking, noticed how the birds’ path was simplified into straight lines of travel. By suspending the sculpture, he has created movement in those fixed lines as the rods slowly swivel. Rocks that Joo collected in the Korean civilian control zone keep the whole thing in balance. As it slowly revolves, a rock will occasionally cross paths with brass, sounding a low chime. Joo, who has a background in biology and worked briefly in science, said he doesn’t think there is a big schism between science and artistic expression. “I definitely think there are profound relationships,” he said. “Both have inquiry. And while art isn’t driven by skepticism, it’s got an element of questioning.” Taken together, his two pieces pose questions about man’s interaction with nature and the way humans and the natural world move through space and time. These questions revealed themselves in another way about a month before Joo’s installation opened. Joo had lost his childhood crane quilt and was obsessively trying to find it. Then he got a mysterious package. “Strangely enough, I got a package from someone I didn’t know, and it wasn’t a Korean name,” the artist said. “In the box was a quilt that I recognized somewhere in the past, but I couldn’t put a finger on when or where. It’s another crane quilt, with very small symbols. I got it out of the blue. Now I’m trying to track down who sent it, where it came from, why it came to me.” Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,   1050 Independence Ave. SW.   202-633-1000. asia.si.edu. **Dates:** Through July 9. **Prices:** Free.

North Korea’s lesson in cellphone etiquette

With mass communication comes mass annoyance. That bane of modern life – the overheard cellphone conversation – has now come to North Korea, prompting the authorities there to issue guidelines on how to use the newfangled devices. "As mobile phones are being used increasingly in today's society, there has been a tendency among some people to neglect proper phone etiquette," some North Korean state journalists, taking a break from their usual stories about Kim Jong Un’s amazing feats, wrote recently in a piece titled "Language etiquette in phone conversations" published in a quarterly magazine on North Korean culture. The piece, first reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, stresses the importance of proper manners in mobile phone use – and how to deal with the advent of caller display. "On mobile phones, unlike on landlines, conversations usually take place with knowledge of the other person. However, even in such cases, one must not neglect to introduce oneself or offer greetings," the magazine advises, according to Yonhap. For example, if someone doesn’t introduce themselves, a polite North Korean phone user would still confirm that it really is the phone owner who’s on the other end: "Hello? Is it you, comrade Yeong-cheol?" And forget about those mega-decibel “I’m on the train!” answers. "Speaking loudly or arguing over the phone in public places where many people are gathered is thoughtless and impolite behavior," North Korea’s answer to Miss Manners advises. Cellphones are a relatively new piece of technology in North Korea, where Kim Jong Un’s regime keeps control of the populace by severely restricting their access to information. There’s no Internet service. Outside newspapers? Forget it. DVDs of foreign films? Go for it, if you like gulags. Cellphones were banned until a few years ago, when North Korea allowed the Egyptian phone operator Orascom Telecom to start a cell service called “Koryolink.” About 2.5 million people – coincidentally the same number of people who live in Pyongyang, home of the most loyal political class – are thought to subscribe to the service. That’s 10 percent of the population. North Korea even makes its own cellphones now – or rather, it puts its labels on Chinese phones. Basic phones are the most common, but technophiles can get an Arirang smartphone – but no 3G, of course. If you want real phone access in North Korea, you need a Chinese subscription and to be on the border, in range of Chinese cell towers. Yep, North Korea is so restricted that even China seems like an information paradise.

Air pollution now kills more people than high cholesterol

The Lancet recently unveiled a major overview of global health risks — and one of the most eye-catching papers highlighted just how deadly air pollution has become over the past two decades. In 2010, 3.2 million people died prematurely from outdoor air pollution, mainly in Asia, and mainly from soot and other pollutants from diesel cars and trucks. That means outdoor air pollution is now a bigger health risk than high cholesterol — and, along with obesity, one of the fastest-growing health risks in the world. (Air pollution only killed about 800,000 people worldwide in 1990, although measurements were much cruder back then.) The Lancet study also found that indoor air pollution, largely from smoky coal- or wood-burning cook stoves in countries in Africa, and in India, caused some 3.5 million premature deaths in 2010. That number has tumbled over the past two decades, but it's still high. Efforts to promote cleaner-burning cook stoves in the developing world have been fairly sluggish, although the problem has attracted plenty of global attention in recent years. So will the pollution problem get worse or better in the years to come? A big reason that soot and other pollutants killed 2.1 million people in 2010 is that China and India are growing so quickly. On the whole, that's terrific news. But it means more people can afford to drive cars and trucks in cities like Beijing and Delhi. That means more fine particle pollution that can bury deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. High levels of soot have been linked to everything from asthma to heart attacks to, yes, death. That trend won't stop anytime soon. China currently has one car for every 17.2 people. In the United States, there's one car for every 1.3 people. If China were to catch up with the U.S. car ownership rate, the country would field a billion vehicles all by itself. Still, that doesn't have to mean mass death from pollution. The usual argument is that environmental indicators typically get worse as countries grow. But when countries reach a certain point of development, its citizens will start demanding cleaner air and water and push for stricter pollution controls. This is known as the "environmental Kuznets curve" — though it's still not clear at exactly what point the curve breaks. Yet as Bryan Walsh points out, there are plenty of European cities with much higher rates of car ownership than Delhi and much less pollution. Cleaning up soot is perfectly doable; it just takes a bit of money. (Incidentally, there's a good debate about whether the environmental Kuznets curve applies to trickier environmental problems like global warming. Recently, Bill Blackwater wrote a long essay arguing that it doesn't.) In any case, while the new Lancet report talks a lot about death and all the things that are killing us, there's some good news too. As this map from New Scientist shows, life expectancy has soared since 1970 in most parts of the world — apart from the Caribbean, Lesotho (AIDS) and Belarus (heavy drinking):  So, it's true, cleaning up air pollution is an urgent public health problem. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a good problem to have.

In North Korea, Chinese tourists take a trip down memory lane

DANDONG, China — The Chinese tourists were hesitant for a second, perhaps startled by their North Korean guide’s perfect use of Chinese curse words, perhaps surprised by the sentiment. “F--- the Japanese devils! F--- their mothers!” Mr. Lee, the guide, shouted out to a busload of visitors making a day trip across the Yalu River into Sinuiju, North Korea. Recovering from their initial surprise, most of the middle-aged Chinese visitors joined in. “F--- the Japanese devils! F--- their mothers!” they cheered back, with whistles and clapping, in an expletive-filled echo. It was a bonding moment between the neighbors. The excursion into North Korea, from this border town in northeastern China, took a group of 51 Chinese tourists, by turns curious and nostalgic, into the land of the Kims. Their small green bus, which carried them over the river and back in time, was for Chinese visitors only. The people on the bus did not want to be fully identified, because it could go badly for them, but here is their account: “It’s like going back to elementary school,” said Lin, a professor from Fujian. And that was not criticism. First stop: a central square in Sinuiju, with its new bronze statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the first two generations of the world’s only communist dynasty. The tourists were told to get gaudy bunches of flowers — at $3 a pop, that was $150 for North Korea — to place at the feet of the two Kims. They had not even left the square before the flower vendors began clearing away the flowers and placing them back in their plastic baskets for the next wave of tourists. “They should at least wait until we leave,” said Gu, a middle-aged businesswoman from Shenzhen. “They need to work on their skills.” Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have become strained in recent years, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has repeatedly defied and snubbed Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, who is three decades his senior and many multiples his power. But even as economic and political ties wobble, tourism has become an important source of foreign revenue for North Korea, and it is more easily extracted from Chinese tourists, who tend to be obedient and sympathetic, than, say, Americans, who have proved less so. __Many Chinese come for what might be described as “communostalgia” — a chance to reminisce about the good old days of iron-fisted central planning. With Sinuiju not having a lot of what would be called, in any other country, tourist attractions, the next stop was a museum at which the guide talked, crying, about the time Kim Il Sung visited. The unfazed Chinese tourists quietly waited for it to end. Luckily, they soon found themselves in the museum gift shop, where cases displayed creams and lotions made in the local cosmetics factory — another of Sinuiju’s attractions. “This stuff is so cheap! And it’s natural and pure. North Korea isn’t polluted like China,” Gu said. She bought a dozen gift sets. That was $550 more for North Korea. Back on the bus, Mr. Lee, a slickly dressed 27-year-old, started his anti-Japanese tirade, simultaneously shocking and uniting his audience. But he did allow that not all Japanese people are bad. __Then Mr. Lee led the group into a restaurant designed for tourists. After a lunch of fried fish, kimchi, glass noodles and pork with potato, North Korean women in bright traditional dress began singing old Red Army songs, transporting the older Chinese tourists back to their youths. Gu and her friends had tears in their eyes. “These are songs we sang when we were growing up,” one said. Pretty young North Korean women took middle-aged Chinese men with beer bellies by the hand and dragged them onstage to sing together, while the guides snapped photos. The North Korean tour guides were perhaps better proponents of Chinese nationalism than the officials Xi has dispatched to try to whip up domestic fervor. After another gift shop, the final stop on the tour was a kindergarten, where 5-year-olds welcomed the tourists in Korean and Chinese. The most popular performance featured five boys dressed as North Korean soldiers going through field exercises. Then out came two dressed as Japanese soldiers, with rats’ tails, and then one as a senior American officer, with a wolf’s tail. The Chinese tourists lapped it up. “Young kids in China these days are too spoiled, too materialistic,” said Qi, a man from Liaoning province. “We should have more nationalist education in our schools. Look at North Korea. They know how to educate kids!” At the end of the performance, one of the guides announced that the teachers would happily accept any gifts for the children. Some tourists offered pencils, cookies and sausages they had brought from China. On the bus, others felt bad they had nothing to give. Not to worry. Mr. Lee had a plan. The children had trained for a whole year for this performance, he said. “They have eaten bitterness,” he said, using a Chinese phrase for enduring hardship. Passengers began handing over Chinese notes worth $7.50 or $15. When they arrived at the tourist center on the border, it was time to hand over something else. This time, it was their cameras, which had to be checked for photos deemed undesirable. As the North Koreans were censoring the photos, the guides came out with flashy individualized folders featuring pictures of each tourist at the sites they had visited. There were photos of them singing with North Korean women at lunch, pictures from the museum and snapshots of a “chance” encounter in a park with a couple on their wedding day. The tourists were surprised at all of the trouble the North Koreans had gone to, and so quickly. Many did not have photos of themselves. And it was good to help the poor, starving North Koreans, wasn’t it? More than half of the tourists handed over $30 for their folder — exorbitant at local prices. “They’re very smart,” Lin said. “While our photos were being deleted, they were selling us pictures. From the first step we took in this land, they had planned out exactly how to get our money.” Congcong Zhang in Sinuiju, North Korea, contributed to this report.

In latest threat, N. Korea warns diplomats on safety

In the latest in an extended series of threats and provocations, North Korea has suggested that foreign countries evacuate their embassies in Pyongyang because of what it claims is the danger of imminent war: _The British Foreign Office said its embassy “received a communication from the North Korean government this morning saying that the North Korean government would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organizations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10.”_ The North’s behavior has begun to set South Koreans, who usually ignore the regime’s rhetoric, ill at ease, as Chico Harlan reports from Seoul: _Coffee shops here are still packed, and pop music pulses from storefronts, but South Koreans’ concerns are palpable in quieter moments. Their phones buzz with news updates on the North’s latest moves — its declaration of war; its announcement of plans to restart key nuclear facilities; its barricade of a joint industrial complex near the border. Children ask their parents what would happen if fighting broke out and where they would go for safety._ _On Thursday, the fear spread to South Korea’s stock market, which suffered its biggest daily fall of the year. The South’s defense minister, Kim Kwan- jin, said the North had moved an intermediate-range missile to its eastern coast, perhaps for testing or drills._ The North Korean missile arsenal has a limited range, according to a map Max Fisher discusses at WorldViews. He writes that the redeployed missile, the KN-08, has not been tested: _The most bullish analysis of the KN-08’s potential threat that I’ve seen this week, published in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, speculated that North Korea had only moved them to the coast so that, in the event of a test launch, they would be less likely to fall onto North Korean soil._ Still, he worries that if South Korea, nervous about the safety of its citizens, attacks preemptively, war could be inevitable. Meanwhile, the United States and other countries are taking the North’s threats seriously. The Pentagon said yesterday it was deploying a missile defense system to Guam: _The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) is a land-based system designed to destroy incoming short- , medium- and intermediate-range missiles by crashing into them in the air. Only two batteries of the system, produced by Lockheed Martin, are currently deployed, both at Fort Bliss, Tex.   _ _A Pentagon statement said the system should arrive in Guam “in the coming weeks as a precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat.”_ Find reviews of books about North Korea here. For more on recent events, continue reading here.

In China’s war on bad air, government decision to release data gives fresh hope

BEIJING — China’s Communist state is hardly known for its transparency. So when environmental groups appealed to the government last year to disclose official data on air pollution, they were not expecting much. “Way beyond our expectations, the government actually said yes,” said Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. “I am quite amazed.” Since Jan. 1, the central government has required 15,000 factories — including influential state-run enterprises — to publicly report details on their air emissions and water discharges in real time, an unprecedented degree of disclosure that is shedding light on the who, what, when and where of China’s devastating environmental problems. The reporting requirement is part of a striking turnaround by China’s government, which is also publishing data on the sootiest cities and trying to limit the use of coal. The country’s appalling air is blamed for more than a million premature deaths a year, for producing acid rain that damages the nation’s agriculture, for driving away tourists and even for encouraging the brightest students to study abroad. Perhaps just as important, Beijing’s bad air has been making its Communist leaders lose face. Cleaning up China’s bad air will take years, even in the best of circumstances. The economy is dependent on coal, and there are many powerful interests involved. But activists say the new steps could at least represent the beginning of change. Linda Greer of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington says the reporting requirement for factories is the “biggest thing” China has done to address its pollution problems, and the most likely to produce results. “It brings them from the back of the pack globally, in terms of public information disclosure, to the front of the pack,” Greer added by telephone. “Inevitably it will strengthen the hand of regulators when they have bad air pollution days, to look at real-time data.” The seeds of the new transparency were sown by the U.S. Embassy when it began monitoring and publishing data on the fine particles in Beijing’s air that cause the most harm to human health — those that measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Today, the air-quality readings by the U.S. Embassy and consulates around the country are a major topic on China’s microblogs and are widely watched through a smartphone app. The Chinese government initially pushed back against such disclosure, requesting in 2009 that the United States stop making public the data. But in 2012, Chinese authorities ordered cities to publish their own data on PM2.5 pollution levels; today, 179 cities issue real-time figures, while the Ministry of Environmental Protection has begun ranking the worst offenders. Those rankings have been dynamite. Everyone knew that heavy industry around Beijing was responsible for much of the capital’s bad air, but few people fully appreciated the scale of the problem. The ministry’s rankings showed that seven of the 10 most polluted cities in China in 2013 were in Hebei province, which surrounds the capital and is the center of the nation’s steel industry, as well as being a major glass, coke and cement producer. The data made one conclusion inescapable: Beijing’s pollution would never be tackled unless Hebei’s heavy industry was either cleaned up or shut down. The data disclosure was part of a new resolve in China’s government to confront its environmental problems, which have increasingly been the subject of protests. In September, the Chinese government unveiled a $280 billion plan to improve air quality, including limiting coal use and banning high-polluting vehicles. Under the plan, the Beijing-Tianjan-Hebei area is required to cut concentrations of PM2.5 fine particles by 25 percent by 2017. Of course, China has set and missed environmental targets before. And a real cleanup would involve significant social and economic costs, especially for Hebei. In 2012, the province produced more crude steel than the entire European Union and twice as much as the United States, according to the economics research firm Dragonomics. Its steel plants are not only massive polluters, but also massive tax and employment generators. No one in government wants a sea of unemployed factory workers at Beijing’s doorstep. Nevertheless, as part of a plan to cut overcapacity in heavy industry and limit pollution, China declared in October that it would reduce steel production by 10 percent, or 80 million tons, by 2017, with the bulk of the adjustment forced on Hebei. At provincial party congress meetings in January, cleaning up the nation’s air seemed to garner as much attention as preserving its economic growth. Beijing’s mayor promised to cut coal use as part of an “all-out effort” to curb air pollution, while Hebei’s governor threatened to sack party secretaries and industry managers if production of steel, glass and cement was even one ton above target. But it is the focus on individual factories that really gives environmentalists such as Ma reason for optimism. Although several provinces have yet to comply with the government’s edict to publish data, figures from Hebei are available and show factories brazenly flaunting limits on emissions. Ma is working with experts to design a phone app that could vividly expose the offenders, with factories meeting emissions targets showing up as blue and those breaking the law coded red. “What we aim to do, through public pressure, is help the environment protection bureau to enforce the law,” he said. In the United States, the Toxics Release Inventory, created in 1986, was one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s most successful programs, Greer said. China’s real-time disclosure program is bigger than anything the EPA has done, she said. On a recent day in Hebei, a thick carpet of gray smog blanketed the province and the smell of sulphur hung in the air. Near one factory outside the city of Tangshan, a worker on a bicycle angrily confronted journalists trying to photograph smoke and steam billowing into the air. “Recently journalists have been complaining about pollution, and all the factory owners have come under pressure,” he said. “We are very afraid they will lay us off. Each worker has a family to raise. We have no land, or other industry. Everything we have depends on steel factories.” But in the village of Wushizhuang, near the Zhengda steel works, locals were as angry as anyone about the pollution that was harming their lungs and ruining their crops — even though many had relatives employed in the surrounding factories. One man said the apples and pears in his orchard grew so black with grime that they could never be sold, while another wiped thick black dust off a car that he said had been washed the day before. Transparency obviously still has its limits in China — the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the provincial government in Hebei declined requests for an interview. But the new information may drive action. Greer said that officials could focus on forcing factories that were egregiously violating pollution limits to use control devices. “Making them run their pollution control devices is a lot easier than closing them down,” she said. “First, I would see what happens if they all ran those devices. We might see a meaningful reduction.”

Hope resigns to reality: S. Koreans now just want their loved ones recovered from ferry

JINDO, South Korea — Twenty parents of missing high school students gathered behind a television truck Sunday afternoon and talked about a subject that, for days, they hadn’t been willing to broach. “Realistically,” one parent told the group, “we need to acknowledge that we have no hope of finding our children alive.” Nobody disagreed. Instead, they discussed the logistics of recovery, of finding a way to pull their teenage children from the water as quickly as possible. That, they agreed, should be the new focus of a government search unfolding about 10 miles off the coast. The parents took turns talking. There were bags under their eyes. Their voices never rose. A few puffed cigarettes. They’d been asked by the South Korean coast guard to offer opinions about the next stage of the search, and here they discussed in detail ways to lift the submerged ferry out of the Yellow Sea, if only as a way to end an impossibly bleak wait. “People have lost hope very quickly,” Yoo Kyeong-geun, the father of an 11th-grader on the ferry, said after the meeting. “Until yesterday, nobody could even talk about dragging the ship out of the water” — a jarring step that would endanger any survivors — “but now a lot of people say it. It’s just so we can see our kids’ faces one last time before their bodies become more damaged underwater.” After the ferry with 476 people aboard capsized Wednesday, relatives who rushed to this rural port town — a staging area for the recovery effort — were frantic, so furious about the pace of the rescue operation that they doused the prime minister with water. By Sunday, those relatives had grown hushed, and at Jindo’s port, bodies were brought to shore in twos and threes. The Sewol had been sailing from Incheon to Jeju when it tilted and sank off the southwestern coast of the Korean Peninsula. So far, 174 passengers have been rescued — all in the first few hours of the disaster. South Korean officials on Sunday released an extended transcript of communication between the stricken vessel and maritime operators, shedding light on some of the confusion aboard before the ship lost contact. Within 19 minutes of placing a distress call, a Sewol crew member said three times, when asked about passengers aboard, that it was difficult to move around the dramatically tilted vessel. “The ship is tipped over too much,” the crew member said at one point. “It’s impossible to evacuate.” Some survivors say an evacuation order was never given, and those who heeded crew advice to stay in place were most likely trapped aboard after the ferry overturned. The relatives of those who didn’t make it out are now waiting. Some loved ones of those still missing — numbering about 240 — are camped out at a gymnasium 30 minutes away. But many spend their days at the port, where a tent city with volunteers, free food and cots has sprouted. The tents span a quarter-mile — the Red Cross here, mobile food trucks there. Another tent has only a whiteboard, labeled at the top “List of Names.” Dozens of people at a time stand around the list of victims, photographing it, staring at it, sometimes sniffling. When bodies are found offshore by divers, an official walks over to the list with a pen. On Sunday, the list began with 36 names. By sunset, there were 58, and by Monday morning, 64. Some had been identified by their height and appearance, others not at all. No. 48 was Guk Seung-hyeon, one of the 325 high school students heading on a four-day trip. No. 49 was a man, 5-foot-7, wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt. In the first four days of the search, bodies were found slowly, only when currents washed them out of the ferry and into the Yellow Sea. But late Saturday, divers punctured a hole in the vessel, opening up the first passageway to some of the chambers. After that, police vessels began pulling up to Jindo’s port every hour or two with bodies. No. 50 arrived at 2:10 p.m., along with Nos. 51 and 52, sending many of the relatives in the tent city scrambling to the docks. Dozens of police officers stood at attention in rows, and six officers carried each of the covered bodies toward yet another tent, marked “Identification.” An official gathered relatives of the missing and described some of the identifying characteristics of the latest three found dead. A New Balance T-shirt. Track pants. Most heard the description and walked away. Several hours later, Yoo and the other parents were discussing ways to speed up the search. They talked about stationing a barge in the area that divers could use to rest and to put on equipment. They also talked about hoisting the ship from the sea floor — a process that will require several massive marine cranes and a floating dock. “Do you even know how long it takes to pull a ship out of the water?” one father said. “I’ve heard 20 days.” Yoo said that depending strictly on divers seemed to him a method “30 or 40 years old.” Yoo’s daughter, Yoo Ye-eun, attended Danwon High School in Ansan, a city just south of Seoul. “I’ll stay here until it’s all over,” Yoo said. “Until I leave here with my daughter.”

Handover of U.S. command of South Korean troops still under debate

PANMUNJOM, South Korea — Sixty years after the end of the Korean War, the United States and South Korea still can’t agree on who should take charge if another war breaks out with the communist neighbor to the north. For years, Washington has been trying to persuade the South Korean military to take operational control of its own forces in wartime, ending a six-decade-long arrangement under which U.S. commanders have retained that authority over South Korean troops. Although supportive in principle, a succession of governments in Seoul have repeatedly delayed the command transfer, reinforcing doubts about whether the South Korean military is capable of operating without U.S. leadership. Previous deals that would have transferred wartime command of South Korean troops to Seoul in 2009 and 2012 fell by the wayside. Now the latest timetable — to transfer control to the South Korean military by December 2015 — has become infected with doubt as South Korean leaders have expressed anxieties again about their ability to command their troops in the face of threats from an increasingly unpredictable North Korea. South Korean officials began a public campaign this summer for a delay beyond 2015 but haven’t specified a new date. U.S. officials have not agreed to any changes. Some have said they are becoming frustrated with South Korea’s reluctance to take charge of its own defense. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Seoul for three days of talks. But he told reporters traveling with him that he doubted that the thorny issue could be resolved during his visit. “We’re constantly reevaluating each of our roles,” Hagel said. “That does not at all subtract from, or in any way weaken, our commitment.” In a reminder of how a sudden outbreak of war remains a constant threat here, Hagel toured the demilitarized zone, the 2.5-mile-wide buffer that divides North and South Korea and is the most heavily guarded border in the world. There are 28,500 U.S. troops permanently stationed in South Korea. That’s a fraction of the size of the South Korean military, which has 640,000 personnel. The South Korean government, however, considers the U.S. military presence a crucial deterrent, and some South Korean officials worry that a lessening of the U.S. role could embolden North Korea. North Korea’s recent hostile rhetoric and military brinkmanship have added to those concerns. In February, North Korea conducted a nuclear test, two months after testing a long-range ballistic missile that could strike the western United States. Memories are also fresh here of a March 2010 incident in which North Korea torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors. The question of who would take command of joint U.S.-South Korean forces during another Korean conflict is an unresolved hangover from the Cold War. South Korea has wielded command of its troops during peacetime since 1994 and has steadily upgraded its military capabilities. But the U.S. armed forces remain better equipped to deal with the threat of nuclear, ballistic missile or cyber attacks. In May, South Korea first floated the possibility of keeping its forces under U.S. wartime command beyond 2015. Since then, Seoul has become more vocal. In August, Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin raised the issue with Hagel during a meeting in Brunei. Afterward, Kim told the South Korean parliament that there was “a consensus” in his government that sticking with the December 2015 deadline was no longer “appropriate,” according to the state-run Yonhap news agency. But he acknowledged that the Americans didn’t necessarily agree. Hagel is scheduled to meet Monday with Kim and President Park Geun-hye. Although the Obama administration is eager for South Korea to take permanent command of its own forces, U.S. officials don’t want to leave the impression that handing over control might weaken the U.S. commitment to the region. The Pentagon has said it has no plans to scale back its troop presence in Korea. U.S. forces on the peninsula would remain under American command. In Washington, however, some members of Congress have grown tired of South Korea’s reluctance to take charge of its own defense, especially at a time of U.S. budget constraints. “I believe it’s important that we see to it that the primary responsibility for defending South Korea during a time of war lies with South Korea,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said July 30 during a confirmation for the incoming commander of U.S. forces in Korea, Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti. “It is a sovereign nation, and sovereign nations should be responsible for their own national defense in time of war.” During his confirmation hearing, Scaparrotti said that he agreed with the December 2015 timetable and that he would “do everything possible to ensure that we stay on track.” But he left some wiggle room. In written responses to the Senate panel, Scaparrotti said the transfer of wartime command would be “conditions driven” and had to be “executed in a manner that does not accept any unnecessary risk to the national security” of South Korea.

Chinese state media open up about Beijing smog

ADD AIR pollution to the list of challenges that China’s new leadership must address to satisfy its increasingly restless citizenry. Over the weekend, Beijing and more than 30 other cities were enveloped by a thick haze. Measurements of hazardous particles spiked to unprecedented levels — and so did complaints on the country’s social media. On Monday, the government’s principal propaganda organs essentially surrendered to public sentiment, breaking their silence and publishing a host of articles and editorials calling the pollution “choking, dirty and poisonous,” among other things. The state organs were only stating the obvious. According to readings by the U.S. Embassy, the air quality in central Beijing on Saturday, based on a measure of hazardous particulates, stood at 755 on a scale of 0 to 500. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a level above 300 is “hazardous;” according to the World Health Organization, a reading of 500 means the particulate level is 20 times that considered safe. By way of comparison, the level in Washington on Wednesday peaked at 39. Still, the relative openness of the official media was a change from past practice. Up until a year ago, the U.S. Embassy, which began reporting air pollution levels in 2008, was the only public source of such information — and Chinese authorities repeatedly demanded that the embassy stop releasing the numbers, most recently last June. The State Department’s creditable refusal to comply helped raise awareness of the pollution problem and eventually prompted authorities to begin releasing their own numbers. The Chinese government is not ignoring the pollution problem. Having spent billions in an attempt to clear the skies over Beijing before the 2008 Olympics, authorities are now spending billions more to replace the capital’s coal-fired power stations — a major source of the pollution — with cleaner gas-fired plants by 2015. They are also trying to push older cars and trucks off the city’s clogged streets. Nevertheless, the high readings recorded in recent days underline that the continuing push for rapid economic growth is creating problems — from pollution to growing inequality and massive official corruption — that are fueling discontent, especially among the country’s growing urban middle class. Last week, China’s microblogs pulsed with outrage over the censorship of a weekly newspaper that attempted to publish an editorial supporting adherence to the constitution. Now they are echoing with complaints over the pollution emergency and the policies that caused it. China’s outgoing cohort of leaders, led by Hu Jintao, responded to the discontent by trying to suppress it. But it’s becoming clear that that strategy will not work for their successors, under Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi’s regime will have to face the underlying problems or risk a crisis in Beijing much greater than any spike in air pollution. **Read more from Opinions:** The Post’s View: Chinese press for more civil liberties Jackson Diehl: Anxiety in China about the road ahead David Ignatius: China’s new hatchet man The Post’s View: China’s Communist inheritors — a ticket to wealth

A surprising map of the countries that are most and least welcoming to foreigners

Buried several hundred pages into a new World Economic Forum report on global tourism, past the sections on air travel infrastructure and physician density (by which they mean the number of physicians per capita, not the mass-per- cubic-meter of individual doctors), are some very interesting numbers. The WEF has compiled survey data from 140 countries estimating the attitude of each countries' population toward foreign visitors.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The results, mapped out above, seem significant beyond just tourism. Red countries are less welcoming to foreign visitors, according to the data; blue countries are more welcoming. Click the map (or here) to enlarge the image.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The WEF gathered the data from late 2011 through late 2012 by asking respondents, "How welcome are foreign visitors in your country?" The WEF explains that the survey results are meant to help "measure the extent to which a country and society are open to tourism and foreign visitors." According to the data, the top three most welcoming countries for foreigners are, in order: Iceland, New Zealand and Morocco. Other high-ranking countries include the rich and peaceful of the Western world (Ireland, Canada, Austria), a few tourist havens (Thailand, United Arab Emirates), and, for some reason, big parts of West Africa. The three countries least welcoming to foreigners are, in order: Bolivia, Venezuela and Russia. Other poorly ranked countries include the more troubled states of the greater Middle East (Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia), Eastern Europe and two East Asian states I was very surprised to see so near the bottom: China and South Korea. Part of what makes these data so interesting is that there is no easy "grand unifying theory" that I can see, no single variable that explains the outcomes. It's not wealth or GDP per capita: that would not explain why South Korea ranks so low, or the variance among rich Western states. It's certainly not the number of foreign visitors: the mid-ranking United States and low-ranked China have some of the world's highest rates of foreign tourism. If anything, maybe what's interesting about this map is the degree to which it seems to cut against common American perceptions of the world. Although there are definitely some Middle Eastern states in the red here, the region actually scores pretty well. Tourism-friendly Morocco is no surprise, but you might not have expected to see Yemen ranked above Sweden and Belgium. Western Europe is generally friendly toward foreigners but, perhaps because of the touchy politics around immigration there, ranks alongside much of sub-Saharan Africa. The United States, the land of the Statue of Liberty and "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," ranks 102nd out of 140 countries, well below much of the Middle East. One thing I'm struck by, in trying to puzzle out this map, is the apparent correlation between unfriendliness to foreigners and nationalism. That would maybe help to explain the low ratings for China and South Korea (although there are other possible factors here, including race) and for Russia. It might also help to explain why the United States, Germany and Japan -- three countries with strongly nationalist histories -- rank below other wealthy nations. The nationalism theory makes a bit more sense when we look region-to-region. In Latin America, for example, a region generally friendly to foreigners, three countries stand out: Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. All three have governments that could be fairly described as nationalistic. It also makes some sense in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and Iran rank poorly among countries that generally court foreign tourism. But there are reasons to think my theory might be wrong: it doesn't explain why Denmark, a rich Western European country, is so much redder than its neighbors, for example; nor does it explain the variation in southern Africa. What do you think explains the trends on this map? Weigh in somewhere in the comments or on Twitter/Facebook, and I'll try to pull in any interesting theories. Pocket      *[WSU]: Wayne State University

MERS crisis: Do we need a NATO-type war strategy for potential epidemics?

Health officials in Thailand on Friday confirmed the country's first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in a 75-year-old businessman from Oman. With the death of a MERS patient in Germany and the "superspreading event" in South Korea that has claimed 24 lives, the crisis has prompted calls for a better early warning and response process to stop the spread of infectious diseases that threaten the planet.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico At the top of many researchers' lists are a more structured way to prioritize, fund and work on vaccines for such pathogens. MERS was first discovered in 2012, and while scientists understand its molecular structure, there has been little progress toward a vaccine due to lack of interest from pharmaceutical companies. _[Why MERS spread so far, so fast in South Korea]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "The question is: How long are we going to wait around and just follow these outbreaks before we get serious about making vaccines?" Adrian Hill, a professor and director at the Jenner Institute at Britain's Oxford University, told Reuters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Matthew Frieman, an immunologist at University of Maryland School of Medicine, has been working on such a vaccine since 2013, according to the International Business Times. He said he's still looking for partner to begin clinical trials.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “There's nothing standing in our way from pushing this forward other than the money and the will to do it,” he said to the IBT. During the Ebola crisis, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates described the need for a way for governments to join together in manner similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “It’s instructive to compare our preparations for epidemics with our preparations for another sort of global threat -- war,” Gates wrote in the The New England Journal of Medicine in April.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Ebola’s lessons, painfully learned at great cost in dollars and human lives]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Warning that there is a significant chance that an epidemic of a substantially more infectious disease will occur sometime in the next 20 years, Gates said Ebola is far from the most infectious disease we know. "Although the system is not perfect, NATO countries participate in joint exercises in which they work out logistics such as how fuel and food will be provided, what language they will speak, and what radio frequencies will be used," he wrote. "Few, if any, such measures are in place for response to an epidemic," Gates added. "Because there was so little preparation, the world lost time in the current epidemic trying to answer basic questions about combating Ebola. In the next epidemic, such delays could result in a global disaster." Good news, chocolate lovers: The more you eat the lower your risk of heart disease    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Common heartburn medications linked to greater risk of heart attack    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 5 things about trans fats and the FDA’s proposed phase out    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico DDT's breast cancer legacy: Daughters of those exposed have 4x higher risk of breast cancer    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico