Korea Quotes

I could either buy one missile, or 88,000 cups of coffee. Both would wake me up, but the coffee would also wake up North Korea. I'll go with the coffee. ~ Jarod Kintz

Westernization is an often-used word in Korea, and can be applied to something considered cold, lacking in jeong, and going against traditional Korean values. To suggest that Korean households are now "Westernized," whatever that may mean exactly, would be a gross oversimplification. ~ Daniel Tudor

We have global interests, potential threats from elsewhere, North Korea, Iran, Taiwan Straits and the like. We must be prepared for any future threat. That is why it is important that this be a transition year, 2006. ~ Ike Skelton

I've been round Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China in the last few months and the message that I've been taking is that New Zealand is building an up market dynamic into a connected economy. And that we are not the old-fashioned, ship mutton kind of product the people associate their export in work. ~ Helen Clark

I'll sue!" Ian sputtered. "I'll sue you AND the dog. And the country of South Korea. And ... and ... " "The landscape architect?" Natalie asked. "The landscape architect!" Ian shouted. ~ Peter Lerangis

In North Korea the only laws that truly matter, and for which extreme penalties are imposed if they are broken, touch on loyalty to the Kim dynasty. ~ Hyeonseo Lee

Christianity's growth, especially in the developing world, has been explosive. There are now six times more Anglicans in Nigeria alone than there are in all of the United States. There are more Presbyterians in Ghana than in the United States and Scotland combined. Korea has gone from 1 percent to 40 percent Christian in a hundred years, and experts believe the same thing is going to happen in China. If there are half a billion Chinese Christians fifty years from now, that will change the course of human history.6 ~ Timothy J. Keller

I needed to talk to my dad. My dad who had been to war, who had seen its horrors, who suffered from its nightmares, my dad who was a good man, the best man I'd ever known, who, along with my uncle, I wanted to honor by teaching military kids - my dad, the only one who I would believe if he would just tell me I could be good, too, that I could do right by my students, because for sure they were going to suffer. It's just cause and effect. We're at war. The military fights wars. I teach military kids. I'd never served, but now I could make a difference. I just needed my dad to tell me what to do, to tell me I was good enough to get it done. ~ Tucker Elliot

My civil rights will not be trampled, and I say this not for me but for my children, and all those who yearn to breathe free. Those who make your Apple products at Foxxcon, those who languish in prisons in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Those homosexuals who are stoned to death in the streets of Egypt or Iran, while our so-called civil rights leaders hold coffee klatches with third graders in the White House. ~ Glenn Beck

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine - some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone - but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In the past, I've visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn't ordinarily explore. ~ Pico Iyer

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father's 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele's
gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely
noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands
back then.


So much I never got to ask him.

He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were
smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning's masterpieces, the same design that the American
infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind
him of the father he never really knew.


Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights,
which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out
of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water. ~ Sean Parnell

North Korea was (and remains as of this writing in 2009) the last place on earth where virtually everything is grown on collective farms. The state confiscates the entire harvest and then gives a portion back to the farmer. ~ Barbara Demick

The amphibious landing of U.S. Marines on September 1950 at Inchon, on the west coast of Korea, was one of the most audacious and spectacularly successful amphibious landings in all naval history. ~ Bernard Brodie

North Korea is the country that the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz came from. ~ Lewis Black

But now she couldn't deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea. ~ Barbara Demick

To my amusement, a traffic sign prohibited ox carts from passing by revolutionary sites, out of fear that the oxen would defecate close to these venerated monuments. These strong, resilient, and patient animals weren't merely shuffling goods along roads, but because of the limited mechanization and shortage of fuel they also plowed rice paddy fields. I got the impression that, unlike in China and Vietnam where every year is the year of a different animal, in North Korea every year was the Year of the Oxen. ~ Felix Abt

It is the experience of those who have had to do with the various peoples of the Far East that it is easier to understand the Korean and get close to him than it is to understand either the Japanese or the Chinese. ~ Homer B. Hulbert

Interestingly, the only class that Eric actually enjoyed in Korea was math. He noticed it on his first day of school. Something was very different about how math was taught in Korea. Something that not even Minnesota had figured out. ~ Amanda Ripley

Not many countries establish a prize for peace. The Seoul Peace Prize has its roots in the 1988 Summer Olympics when this country opened its doors to people and athletes from more than 160 countries. Korea did so in part because it believes in the power of sports for peace and development. ~ Ban Ki-moon

There are literally Internet rescue camps in China and Korea to deal with children that are addicted. Internet disorder is maybe going to count as a psychiatric disorder in a couple of years. ~ Pico Iyer

If you think that American Capitalism is the most dangerous Institution in the World, it just goes to show, that you haven't partied like there is no tomorrow with the fun loving posse of The Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, The Taliban, or ISIS. They all party off the hook! ~ James Hauenstein

I spoke to a million in one service, in Korea, in Seoul. And that was the largest audience I ever have had. ~ Billy Graham

Using the Japan-U.S. alliance as a basis, it is important that we maintain and develop cooperative relations with our neighboring countries such as China, South Korea, and Russia. ~ Junichiro Koizumi

[Donald Trump] suggestions that the United States should leave the Pacific and let Japan, South Korea, or whoever else wants to develop nuclear weapons. These are incredibly dangerous ideas that need to be confronted. ~ Hillary Clinton

I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every moment
and who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence for
such a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not just
impossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. This
would perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal - except that the believer claims to know,
not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually
known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and
considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can
tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these
terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than
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Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, let
alone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Tens of thousands of North Korean women have been sold to Chinese men. By some estimates, three quarters of the roughly 100,000 North Korean refugees living in China are women and more than half of them live in arranged unions with Chinese men. ~ Barbara Demick

The King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing. ~ Jared Diamond

If you happen to live in Korea, you might always suffer from anger towards people in power, because of political and social problems. I felt gloomy under this social dictatorship. Looking back, I feel like I never saw a sunrise in Seoul. ~ Kim Hyesoon

I am extremely sorry for the remarks made during the recent Women in Science lunch at the world conference of science journalists in Seoul, Korea. ~ Tim Hunt

I wrote a piece from North Korea called Visit to a Small Planet which is a line I stole from a play of Gore Vidal's, because it did seem to me as if I had left this planet completely to go on this visit to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and it was as if coming back from another spatial body altogether. ~ Christopher Hitchens

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born. ~ Christopher Hitchens

North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy. ~ William J. Clinton

We ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail. ~ Rachel Maddow

I once believed man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps, was not. ~ Kang Chol-Hwan

North Koreans have two stories running in their heads at all times, like trains on parallel tracks. One is what you are taught to believe; the other is what you see with your own eyes. It wasn't until I escaped to South Korea and read a translation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that I found a word for this peculiar condition: doublethink. This is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time - and somehow not go crazy. This "doublethink" is how you can shout slogans denouncing capitalism in the morning, then browse through the market in the afternoon to buy smuggled South Korean cosmetics. It ~ Yeonmi Park

Just to take a couple steps back historically, Korea, as you can see, is located among what we call big countries. And historically we've always been the victim of numerous invasions and whatnot. ~ Lee Myung-bak

Hollywood has a longer pre-production period and they juggle shooting schedules more carefully for each cast. In Korea, we shoot day and night without much break. ~ Lee Byung-hun

My wife, well she has extensive experience, because before becoming the first lady, she was the wife of the CEO of a large conglomerate. So I have very high hopes that she will carry out her job successfully as first lady of the Republic of Korea. ~ Lee Myung-bak

The boy in war is, to an extent found in almost no other form of work, inextricably bound up with the men and materials of his labor. ... He is a fragment of American earth wedged into an open hillside in Korea and reworked by its unbearable sun and rain. ... He is a light brown vessel of red Australian blood that will soon be opened and emptied across the rocks and ridges of Gallipoli from which he can never again become distinguishable. ~ Elaine Scarry

For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. That's just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat. ~ Frances Cha

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome. ~ Bill Gates

Korea is an open society and we will make sure that there is no restriction on foreign investment in Korea. ~ Lee Myung-bak

In the United States, under 3 percent of municipal food waste - so that's the food scraps that goes into people's garbage cans - actually gets recycled. If you go to a place like South Korea, the exact reverse is the case. It's about 3 percent that doesn't get recycled. ~ Tristram Stuart

Whether it is North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, well show that poor countries are poor for the same reason that Egypt is poor. Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities. ~ Daron Acemoglu

We must work with the Australians, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Filipinos to contain China. And then we must ask for their support and their help with North Korea. Because believe it or not, China is as concerned about Kim Jong-Un as we are. ~ Carly Fiorina

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. ( ... ) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library. ~ Andrei Lankov

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience. ~ Chinua Achebe

Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world. ~ Michael Gove

I don't think my father loved his job with the city, but on the other hand, I'm not sure he ever asked himself major questions like 'Do I like my job? Is this really what I want to spend my life doing? Is it as fulfilling as some of the dreams I had for myself when I was a young man serving in Korea and reading British poetry in my bunk in the barracks at night?' He had a family to support, this was his job, he got up every day and did it, end of story, everything else is just self-indulgent nonsense. That may actually have been the lifetime sum-total of his thinking on the matter. He ~ David Foster Wallace

Turn off the light!

Who?

Not me,

but you! ~ Kim Da-Jeong

I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired. ~ Kim Jong Il

Professional Gaming, or e-Sports as it's now called, is a multi-million dollar industry in Korea. You can even get a bachelor's degree in e-Sports. ~ Anonymous

What else has changes since 1984? Oil's running our, I say Earth's population is eight billion, mass extinction of flora and fauna are commonplace, climate change is foreclosing the Holocene Era. Aparteid's dead, as are the Castros in Cuba as is privacy. The USSR went bankrupt; the Eastern bloc collapsed; Germany reunified; the EU has gone federal; China's a powerhouse- though their air is industrial effluence in a gaseous state - and North Korea is still a gulag run by a coiffed cannibal. p 500 ~ David Mitchell

At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered. ~ Barbara Demick

With regard to North Korea, between myself and President Obama earlier, with regard to the so-called launch of satellite, the missile launch, we shared the view that it undermines the efforts of the various countries concerned to achieve the resolution through dialogue. ~ Yoshihiko Noda

When it comes to trade, when it comes to standing up to countries like North Korea, when it comes to standing up to guys like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is not a conservative. ~ Bret Stephens

Hold on to your hats, Korea is a land of surprises ~ Don Oberdorfer

There is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation. ~ Homer B. Hulbert

When I race in Australia or Korea or Japan I know it will be a big change for me because Ferrari fans are worldwide. ~ Fernando Alonso

In North Korea, you don't own your own home; you are merely awarded the right to live there. ~ Barbara Demick

Darling, I may have to work late, so I might not be here when you get back. I hope you had a great time in North Korea and disabled a lot of nuclear weapons. With all my love, Josh. ~ Ally Carter

Korea can't become a 'first-class' nation unless regulation and 'a sense of power' disappear. The nation's politics is the fourth-class, bureaucratic are the third-class, and business is the second-class. ~ Lee Kun-hee

The Marines in Korea never feared 'friendly fire' or artillery coming from the South Koreans - from their allies - like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted. ~ David Douglas Duncan

I don't think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons. ~ Noam Chomsky

There are things I admire, for example, about South Korea or Singapore. I admire their history, their development and how intensively they have invested in their people and in technology. ~ Paul Kagame

If you're not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong's The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some. ~ Gary Shteyngart

It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me. ~ Tim Hunt

It's actually a character choice for a movie I've been filming in South Korea called Okja. My director had this idea of having my hair be a very vibrant red/pink/watermelon color. We haven't finished filming so I'm kind of riding the wave of the red hair right now in terms of everything else that I have to do with The Last Tycoon press and you know, regular life. I'm really loving it. It's turning into a thing for me. ~ Lily Collins

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE. ~ Drew Magary

It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it. Speaking of the most controversial reactor at Yongbyon, one of the guys said, 'No sweat. She's shut down now.' Nice to know. But then, so is the rest of North Korean society shut down - animation suspended, all dead quiet on the set, endlessly awaiting not action (we hope) or even cameras, but light. ~ Christopher Hitchens

It seems Korean women are enjoying a passive and fragile status, intoxicated by appearance. Not only feminism, but any serious discourse ends up being swept away by popular culture in Korea. ~ Kim Hyesoon

North Korea remains the last bastion of undiluted communism in the world. ~ Barbara Demick

The reason the world is in the spot it's in is because North Korea entered into an agreement and then did not keep up their terms of the agreement. They received aid in return for promising not to develop nuclear weapons. They took the aid, they ran with the aid and then they developed a nuclear weapons anyway. ~ Ari Fleischer

In contrast, Western historians, and those in South Korea, say the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950. Both sides agree that after the war began, the North Korean Army captured Seoul in three days and pushed as far south as Pusan before American troops arrived to drive back the North Koreans nearly as far north as the border to China. ~ Sheryl WuDunn

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan. ~ Barton Gellman

We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realizing the power of this medium to organize people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world. ~ Sergey Brin

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes. ~ Adam Johnson

[ ... ] The negative turned positive, black misery sublimated into heightened consciousness, suffering into solidarity! ~ Kang Chol-Hwan

Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The idea that you can make love and not war really is pretty neat. That thing in Korea, the thing in Israel - that's all over the world. There must be a new way of thinking. ~ F. Murray Abraham

In North Korea, journalism, the job of telling the stories power and money do not want told, of giving a voice to the voiceless, does not exist. ~ John Sweeney

I have a lot of Japanese fans, but in Korea they seem to go crazy for me. I don't know what it is, but they seem to like my style. ~ Shu Qi

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action. ~ George W. Bush

Teaching isn't rocket science. It's about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don't need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what's best for them. ~ Tucker Elliot

The man's father runs the program for 30 years, steps down, and within a day his son's got the job? What is this, North Korea? ~ R.S. Grey

By the mid-1990s, nearly everything in North Korea was worn out, broken, malfunctioning. The country had seen better days. ~ Barbara Demick

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use. ~ Roger Scruton

OBAMA'S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS critics boiled over during a lengthy trip to Asia in the spring of 2014. In the region, the trip was seen as another carefully designed U.S. effort to counter China. We'd go to Japan, to bring them into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - weaving together twelve Asia Pacific economies into one framework of trade rules, environmental protections, and labor rights. We'd go to South Korea and discuss ways to increase pressure on North Korea. We'd go to Malaysia, something of a swing state in Southeast Asia, which we were bringing closer through TPP. And we'd end in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that was mired in territorial disputes with China over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. ~ Ben Rhodes

To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn't do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress. ~ Noam Chomsky

...travel permits to Pyongyang were notoriously hard to get. In order to keep Pyongyang as a showcase city, the North Korean government restricted visitors. ~ Barbara Demick

This occasion is personally very meaningful and I hope to visit Korea again if I have the chance. ~ Cathy Freeman

Take the following potent and less-is-more-style argument by the rogue economist Ha-Joon Chang. In 1960 Taiwan had a much lower literacy rate than the Philippines and half the income per person; today Taiwan has ten times the income. At the same time, Korea had a much lower literacy rate than Argentina (which had one of the highest in the world) and about one-fifth the income per person; today it has three times as much. Further, over the same period, sub-Saharan Africa saw markedly increasing literacy rates, accompanied with a decrease in their standard of living. We can multiply the examples (Pritchet's study is quite thorough), but I wonder why people don't realize the simple truism, that is, the fooled by randomness effect: mistaking the merely associative for the causal, that is, if rich countries are educated, immediately inferring that education makes a country rich, without even checking. Epiphenomenon here again. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Our rival interrogation team is the Pubyok, named after the "floating wall" defenders that saved Pyongyang from invaders in 1136. There are only a dozen or so left, old men with silver crewcuts who walk in a row like a wall and truly believe they can float, stealthy as ghosts, from one citizen to the next, interrogating them as the wind interrogates the leaves. ~ Adam Johnson

We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There's just one problem - it's in North Korea. ~ Jon Stewart

Proliferation of nuclear weapons to terrorist organisations is far more dangerous than proliferation of nuclear weapons to states, even states like North Korea. ~ John Bruton

They were more like the grown-up dog whose family loved it but had to move to an apartment in Korea (is it Korea?) where people sometimes eat dogs. ~ Ann Brashares

If we are to assume that North Korea becomes a nuclear-power state, of course the danger of having an all-out nuclear war, that possibility is very slim. ~ Lee Myung-bak

He was desperately lonely. He had a hard time connecting with new people. If South Koreans were sympathetic toward him, he found them condescending. Even though he hated the North Korean regime, he found he'd get defensive when South Koreans criticized it. This was a common predicament for defectors. ~ Barbara Demick

(The North Korean army had to lower its height requirement from five feet three in the early 1990s because of the stunting of the younger generation.) ~ Barbara Demick