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winterolympicssports2018-blog · 6 years

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S. Korean city seeks to invite N. Koreans to national sports event

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S. Korean city seeks to invite N. Koreans to national sports event

IKSAN, South Korea, April 17 (Yonhap) — A South Korean city said Tuesday it plans to invite a North Korean team to a national sports event it will host this fall to further boost the relationship between the two Koreas.

The central city of Iksan in North Jeolla Province will host the 99th National Sports Festival from Oct. 12 to 18 featuring some 20,000 athletes representing 14 cities and provinces in South Korea. The city is located some 200 kilometers south of Seoul.

“Through the PyeongChang Olympics, we’ve experienced that sports and cultural exchanges can put an end to military, cold war tensions,” Mayor Jung Hun-yul said at a press conference. “If a North Korean team participates in the sports festival, this incredible change can go further.”

The North’s participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February set the stage for a new detente between the Koreas, leading to an agreement on a third-ever cross-border summit planned for April 27.

Jung said the city has already talked with the sports ministry, unification ministry and the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee for North Korea’s participation, and all of them expressed their willingness to help.

“I think North Korea’s participation is possible with the people’s support and the government’s will,” he said. “To make it happen, we’ll closely cooperate with related parties.”

Jung’s comment comes at a time when the two Koreas are preparing for a historic summit on April 27.

“I think the relationship between the two Koreas depends on how the North acts,” he said. “I heard from the government that one month is enough to invite North Koreans if Pyongyang decides to send a team.”

Jung added that, if North Koreans join the sports festival, the inter-Korean cooperation fund can be used, and Iksan is also willing to cover some of the expenses.

This photo provided by the Iksan city government shows Iksan Mayor Jung Hun-yul speaking to reporters at Iksan City Hall in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, on April 17, 2018. (Yonhap)

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megadarkbouquettidalwavethings · 6 years

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White House expects North Korea summit to happen despite Pyongyang’s silence

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – The White House said on Monday it fully expects an unprecedented meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to take place, if North Korea sticks to its promises, even though Pyongyang has yet to comment publicly on the possibility of a summit.

A South Korean delegation that visited North Korea last week said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed a wish to meet Trump and South Korea’s president to discuss denuclearisation. North Korean media has reported the South Korean visit, but no details of the talks.

Asked if the North Korean silence meant there was a chance the meeting between Trump and Kim would not take place, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said:

“We fully expect that it will. The offer was made and we’ve accepted. North Korea made several promises and we hope that they would stick to those promises and if so the meeting will go on as planned.

“We are continuing to prepare on a number of levels,” she told a regular briefing.Earlier, South Korea said North Korea’s silence on summits with both the United States and South Korea was probably due to caution in preparing for the meetings, while U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington expected to hear directly from Pyongyang.

“We have not seen nor received an official response from the North Korean regime regarding the North Korea-U.S. summit,” said Baik Tae-hyun, spokesman for South Korea’s Unification ministry.

“I feel they’re approaching this matter with caution and they need time to organise their stance.”

Tillerson said several steps would be necessary to agree the location and scope of the talks.

“It’s very early stages. We’ve not heard anything directly back from North Korea but we expect to hear something directly from them,” he said during a visit to Nigeria.

Tillerson, who has cut short his first trip to Africa as secretary of state to return to Washington on Tuesday, a day ahead of schedule, did not elaborate.

In an unexpected move last week, Trump agreed to hold a first-ever meeting with Kim, which South Korea said would take place by the end of May after a North-South summit in April.

News of possible talks has been a dramatic turnaround from fears of war over North Korea’s development of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States.

Trump made the announcement after the head of a South Korean delegation that met Kim last week said the North Korean leader had committed to denuclearisation and pledged to refrain from nuclear and missile tests.

Asked in a Fox News interview due to air on Monday evening whether there was a real possibility of North Korea denuclearizing, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said:“We’ll see, as the president often says.”

But Pence called Kim’s offers to cease missile and nuclear testing while not objecting to U.S.-South Korean military exercises“a remarkable step forward” and a result of Trump’s tough approach.

“He’s marshalled unprecedented economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime in North Korea and this breakthrough – and we hope it is a breakthrough – is a result of the strong leadership the president has provided on the world stage,” Pence said.

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets members of the special delegation of South Korea’s President in this photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 6, 2018. KCNA/via Reuters/File Photo

Kim and South Korean president Moon Jae-in will meet at the truce village of Panmunjom straddling the Korean border, but a venue for the North Korea-U.S. summit has yet to be decided.

CHINA URGES PATIENCE

U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster briefed U.N. Security Council envoys in New York on Monday.

“We all agreed that we’re optimistic about this opportunity but we’re determined, we’re determined to keep up the campaign of maximum pressure until we see words matched with deeds and a real progress toward denuclearization,” McMaster said.

South Korean U.N. Ambassador Cho Tae-yul, who also attended the McMaster briefing, described the plans for talks with North Korea as a“once in a lifetime opportunity.”

The South Korean officials who met Kim travelled to Washington last week to relay his message and visited China on Monday to brief President Xi Jinping, who urged patience.

South Korea’s National Security Office chief, Chung Eui-yong, who led the delegation to Pyongyang, will head to Russia on Tuesday, while spy agency chief Suh Hoon met Japan’s foreign minister in Tokyo, where he is to speak with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday.

In Beijing on Monday, Xi told Chung there was an important opportunity for talks.

“At the same time, all sides must exercise patience and be attentive, and show political wisdom, to appropriately face and dispel any problems and interference to resuming the talks process,” state media cited Xi as saying.

Xi said China looked forward to smooth talks between the two Koreas and between the United States and North Korea and substantive progress in the denuclearisation process and normalisation of ties.

Tensions eased as the Koreas held talks against the backdrop of the Winter Olympics in South Korea last month but Japan has expressed scepticism and warned that“talks for the sake of talks” would be unacceptable.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said after talks with Suh Hoon that Tokyo and Seoul agreed that maximum pressure must be maintained on North Korea until it takes concrete action to address concerns about its weapons programmes.

Kono declined to say what that action should be, but South Korea’s presidential Blue House quoted him as saying that the breakthrough on talks with North Korea was a near“miracle”.

In Geneva, the U.N. investigator on North Korea told the world body’s Human Rights Council that any progress in the nuclear and security dialogue must be accompanied by talks on human rights violations, including political prison camps.

“Let me urge the DPRK to consolidate this rapprochement with a parallel opening to human rights review,” said Tomas Ojea Quintana, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea’s state media has lauded the thaw in relations with South Korea. It has continued to warn the United States and Japan against war-mongering but its rhetoric has been tame compared with threats exchanged at the height of tensions last year.

Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Michael Martina, Ben Blanchard and Lusha Zhang in BEIJING, Paul Cersten in ABUJA, Michelle Nichols in NEW YORK and David Brunnstrom and Eric Beech in WASHINGTON; Editing by Robert Birsel and James Dalgleish

The post White House expects North Korea summit to happen despite Pyongyang’s silence appeared first on Sports News, Transfers, Scores | Watch Live Sport.

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andrearivera13-blog · 7 years

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Ten Interesting Fiction Novels

1) The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.” (Amazon.com)

2) When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park

Sun-hee and her older brother, Tae-yul, live in Korea with their parents. Because Korea is under Japanese occupation, the children study Japanese and speak it at school. Their own language, their flag, the folktales Uncle tells them—even their names—are all part of the Korean culture that is now forbidden. When World War II comes to Korea, Sun-hee is surprised that the Japanese expect their Korean subjects to fight on their side. But the greatest shock of all comes when Tae-yul enlists in the Japanese army in an attempt to protect Uncle, who is suspected of aiding the Korean resistance. Sun-hee stays behind, entrusted with the life-and-death secrets of a family at war. (Amazon.com)

3) Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea by Sungju Lee, Susan Elizabeth McClelland

Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his “brothers”; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist. (Amazon.com)

4) Without You, There is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim

5) Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America by Joseph Kim

A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage Inside the hidden and mysterious world of North Korea, Joseph Kim lived a young boy’s normal life until he was five. Then disaster struck: the first wave of the Great Famine, a long, terrible ordeal that killed millions, including his father, and sent others, like his mother and only sister, on desperate escape routes into China. (Amazon.com)

6) Hello, I Love You: A Novel by Katie M. Stout

Grace Wilde is running—from the multi-million dollar mansion her record producer father bought, the famous older brother who's topped the country music charts five years in a row, and the mother who blames her for her brother's breakdown. Grace escapes to the farthest place from home she can think of, a boarding school in Korea, hoping for a fresh start. She wants nothing to do with music, but when her roommate Sophie's twin brother Jason turns out to be the newest Korean pop music superstar, Grace is thrust back into the world of fame. She can't stand Jason, whose celebrity status is only outmatched by his oversized ego, but they form a tenuous alliance for the sake of her friendship with Sophie. As the months go by and Grace adjusts to her new life in Korea, even she can't deny the sparks flying between her and the KPOP idol. Soon, Grace realizes that her feelings for Jason threaten her promise to herself that she'll leave behind the music industry that destroyed her family. But can Grace ignore her attraction to Jason and her undeniable pull of the music she was born to write? Sweet, fun, and romantic, Katie M. Stout's Hello, I Love You explores what it means to experience first love and discover who you really are in the process. (Amazon.com)

7) The Boy Who Escaped Paradise by J. M. Lee

An astonishing story of the mysteries, truths, and deceptions that follow the odyssey of Ahn Gilmo, a young math savant, as he escapes from the most isolated country in the world and searches for the only family he has left An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gilmo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas, and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. Angela, a CIA operative, is assigned to gain his trust and access his unique thought-process. The enigmatic Gilmo used to have a quiet life back in Pyongyang. But when his father, a preeminent doctor is discovered to be a secret Christian, he is subsequently incarcerated along with Gilmo, in a political prison overseen by a harsh, cruel warden. There, Gilmo meets the spirited Yeong-ae, who becomes his only friend. When Yeong-ae manages to escape, Gilmo flees to track her down. He uses his peculiar gifts to navigate betrayal and the criminal underworld of east Asia—a world wholly alien to everything he's ever known. In The Boy Who Escaped Paradise, celebrated author J. M. Lee delves into a hidden world filled with vivid characters trapped by ideology, greed, and despair. Gilmo's saga forces the reader to question the line between good and evil, truth and falsehood, captivity and freedom. (Amazon.com)

8) The Frozen Hours: A Novel of the Korean War by Jeff Shaara

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The master of military historical fiction turns his discerning eye to the Korean War in this riveting new novel, which tells the dramatic story of the Americans and the Chinese who squared off in one of the deadliest campaigns in the annals of combat: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as Frozen Chosin. June 1950. The North Korean army invades South Korea, intent on uniting the country under Communist rule. In response, the United States mobilizes a force to defend the overmatched South Korean troops, and together they drive the North Koreans back to their border with China. But several hundred thousand Chinese troops have entered Korea, laying massive traps for the Allies. (Amazon.com)

9) North Korean Memoirs: The Life of an American Agent Who Defected to North Korea by Mark Treston

Journey into the life of a renegade American who decided to defect to the most reclusive and oppressive nation in modern history: North Korea. An American idealist defects to North Korea in the 1970's only to discover the true horrors of this Stalinist state. What happens next would shock even those familiar with authoritarian regimes. The author, an American Foreign Service worker in china, meets a man by the name of "David". David entrusts the author with his diary and makes the author promise him that the diary will be shown to the world as "evidence of what North Korea is really like". Following this encounter, the author never sees David again. The author discovers that within the pages of this diary lies an incredible story of defection, survival, and an eventual escape by the man he knows only as "David". After staying up and reading the entire diary, the author is convinced that David's story must be told to the world. The diary details David's life from his fairly comfortable upbringings, through his rebellious youth, and into his extraordinary decision to defect to North Korea. At first, David enjoys an elevated status in North Korea as a "hero" and a "patriot" of the socialist cause. During two decades as an English professor at the most prestigious North Korean University, David experiences love, seduction, betrayal, and violence. (Amazon.com)

10) My Last Empress by Da Chen

A sweeping story of passion and obsession, set against the upheavals of nineteenth-century imperial China, by the New York Times bestselling author Da ChenWhen Samuel Pickens’s great love tragically loses her life, Samuel travels the globe, Annabelle always on his mind. Eventually, he comes face-to-face with the mirror image of his obsession in the last place he would expect and must discover her secrets and decide how far he will go for a woman he loves. Da Chen immerses the reader in the world of the Chinese imperial palace, filled with ghosts and grief, where bewitching concubines, treacherous eunuchs, and fierce warlords battle for supremacy. Chen takes us deeply into an epic saga of nineteenth-century China, where one man searches for his destiny and a forbidden love. (Amazon.com)

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idontskincare · 4 years

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So what do I think of the Pyongyang Yul Essence Toner? 🌊 I am in LOVE with this toner, and it has possibly earned its place as my morning toner for the foreseeable future. The toners I had been using in the morning before this were a little to astringent for me, but this one absolutely glides onto the skin and absorbs really quickly. It left my skin so soft and feeling much more moisturized and hydrated than it has been in the morning in a long time. (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_dMIAgn0wE/?igshid=1hm6ls9uk3a4w

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