Culture

On September 4, 2011, decorated Korean war veteran and schoolteacher David Gambrell Morris passed away at the age of 82. He was survived by 5 children, 10 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.

He was born on October 7, 1928, in Vian, Oklahoma, and spent his early life in Muskogee. The summer after he finished high school, he went down to Texas to work the oil fields. His Texas excursion was cut short when his sweetheart, Mary, wrote him a letter saying things weren’t going to work out. Unwilling to let the girl he met at Baptist dance night go, he immediately returned to Muskogee and convinced her otherwise. When she asked why, he said her cooking was just too good to pass up. Using the funds from the pawning of his most expensive possession, his trumpet, he eloped with Mary and married her that same day. The night after the ceremony, they each returned to their own family’s houses, undoubtedly full of new plans.

Blind comes at a time when the genre exploration which has taken place in the Korean film industry in the last few years has led to demands that moviemakers reach deeper and further for their subject matter.

The 15^th annual Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (July 14-24) in Korea opened with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, the Bollywood documentary celebrating Indian musicals. The film made its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes out of competition and made the Asian premier at PiFan this past July.

Few natural wonders are more distinctive than Mount Kumgang, that is, Diamond Mountain, in the southeastern corner of North Korea. Looming a few miles above the eastern end of the demilitarized zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since the Korean War, Kumgang is not one mountain but several thousand crags of granitic rock jutting up in spire-like formations of widely differing shapes and sizes.

India’s cup of joy spilled over the streets of Mumbai when Mahendra Singh Dhoni hit his trademark square cut in the finals and India saw its first win of the World Cup in 28 years. It was a box-office hit on home soil. India was en route to chasing down a total of 274 which was the highest ever in a final.

In past decades, as instances of Chinese cultural heritage leaving its shores increased at an alarming rate, so too did the growing concern amongst academicians about this.

The Chinese government saw that it needed to act quickly and effectively to reduce or halt this trend. Hence, after prolonged reviews of existing cultural rules, new stringent guidelines have come into effect. These are applicable to on-site survey and on-site data collection by overseas surveyors. These laws, called Intangible Cultural Heritage, will come into effect from June 1st, 2011.

At the center of almost of every ancient culture are several energy building and energy equalizing exercises, or mediation-cum-exercising routines, that have evolved over several centuries.

India has its Yoga and Tai chi is very popular in China. Qigong is an older generation of sequences of body movements that are graceful but which build inner mental focus as well as balanced abdominal breathing, which creates in the person the proverbial ultimate vital energy, referred to as the Qi.

The Korean economic miracle said as much about Korea’s rise from the devastation of the Korean War as it did about rising pressure for democratic reform.

In Seoul for USA Today, writing about the 1988 Olympics, I had another mission in mind, that of a book about Korea’s leading business empire, one of the “engines” of the miracle. The result was Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung, published in 1994 by M..E. Sharpe in New York and Asia2000 in Hong Kong.

It hardly takes any convincing to any one who matters, that we need a Productive, Practical and Proper (3P) solution for the North Korean Nuclear Stand Off, in order to gain Peace, Progress and Prosperity (3P) on the Korean peninsula.

Mutual trust and cooperation is the core mantra of the 3P formula to solve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.