K-Flicks: Korean filmmakers storm Hollywood

SEOUL, South Korea — If you’re a film buff, you may have heard of a Korean-made summer blockbuster that, strangely, hasn’t reached American shores quite yet. Starring a line-up of famous Western actors, some critics say Snowpiercer — Korea’s most expensive film ever —...

Welcome to posh Pyongyang

SEOUL, South Korea — Ask an informed American about North Korea, and you may hear that it’s a land of suffering where hard laborers toil in prison camps and children survive on tree bark. Its crackpot dictator, Kim Jong Un, runs an army of goose-stepping minions,...

Battle of the dueling war crimes

SEOUL, South Korea — As if tensions in Asia weren’t bad enough, right wingers in Japan and South Korea are now trading insults over which country is worse. But if there’s an upside, the ruckus has kindled discussion of the more dreadful offenses committed by the...

Why one North Korean defector wants to return home

SEOUL, South Korea — Nearly 25,000 North Koreans have fled their homeland to South Korea, escaping the repression and poverty of the world’s most militarized nation. Many make a perilous trek through China, and sometimes to Mongolia and Southeast Asia, where they seek...

Kim Jong who? Meet the cabal that really runs North Korea

Update: In early December, 2013 South Korean intelligence reported that General Jang Sung-taek was removed from power. If true, this would be the Kim Jong Un’s boldest leadership shakeup yet. SEOUL, South Korea — There’s more to North Korea than its pudgy and...