The Duquet family, pictured with Sehwa Kim, 7-months-old at the time of photo. Photo via Chicago Tribune.

After months of litigation and closed-door meetings, a couple that adopted a baby from South Korea illegally must give up the child.

Christopher and Jinshil Duquet from Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, adopted 9-month-old Sehwa Kim from a private agency shortly after she was born. The biological mother, who currently resides in a homeless shelter for unwed mothers, gave Sehwa up willingly, according to the Chicago Tribune.

When Christopher and Jinshil, who was born in South Korea and immigrated as a child, attempted to enter the U.S. with Sehwa, they were stopped at airport border control. The new parents lacked the necessary paperwork to legalize and approve the adoption. A dispute between the couple and the South Korean government immediately ensued. Continue Reading »

North Korean Leader Vows ‘High-Profile’ Retaliation Over New U.N. Sanctions
New York Times

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has ordered his top military and party officials to take “substantial and high-profile important state measures” to retaliate against American-led United Nations sanctions on the country, the North’s official media reported Sunday.

North Korea did not clarify what those measures might be, but it referred to a series of earlier statements in which Mr. Kim’s government has threatened to launch more long-range rockets and conduct a third nuclear test to build an ability to “target” the United States.

Absence of N.K. leader’s uncle sparks speculation over internal power game
Yonhap News

The absence of Jang Song-thaek, uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at a key national security meeting may be a sign of a renewed power game inside the reclusive communist nation’s leadership, a U.S. expert said Sunday.

Jang, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, did not attend the meeting of top North Korean officials handling security and foreign affairs, in which Kim ordered “substantial and high-profile important state measures,” according to Pyongyang’s official media.

Kim recently convened the meeting, viewed as North Korea’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council, to discuss the impact of new U.N. sanctions imposed on his regime for the Dec. 12 rocket launch and Pyongyang’s response. The North’s media stopped short of specifying the date and venue for the meeting.

South Korea’s new leader, Park Geun-hye, was pushed onto political stage by tragedy
Washington Post

The first major tragedy in Park Geun-hye’s life was a shooting that took place at the National Theater in downtown Seoul nearly 40 years ago. She didn’t even witness it. She was studying in Grenoble, France, at the foot of the Alps, when she got a worried call from the South Korean Embassy. The official didn’t give any specifics.

“The person only said that something had happened to my mother,” Park wrote in her 2007 memoir, “and that I needed to return home.”

The details that Park would soon learn redirected her life suddenly and irreversibly, ending her hopes of becoming a professor, flinging her for the first time into the public spotlight, and setting her on a course that would lead to the nation’s top office, the presidency, a job into which she’ll be sworn next month.

South Korea files motion in Cook County to stop adoption
Chicago Tribune

An Evanston couple accused of circumventing South Korea’s adoption procedures have temporary care of a baby girl while they continue to fight for her permanent custody in state and federal courts.

On Thursday, the South Korean government filed a motion to intervene in adoption proceedings that were initiated by Jinshil and Christopher Duquet in Cook County Circuit Court, said Donald Schiller, a lawyer representing South Korea.

“Korea wants to protect its citizen,” Schiller said. “There is no more vulnerable citizen than an infant child that has been illegally taken out of the country. The U.S. wouldn’t stand for it if it happened here, and Korea is not going to stand for it.”

Police search for suspect in attacks on Asian-Americans
Fox News New York

The NYPD has identified the man they believe is responsible for a series of brutal attacks on Asian Americans in Manhattan.

“(In) the eight robberies and assaults, all of the victims were Asian. All were struck- nose broken, teeth broken; money and cell phones were taken,” NYPD Cmsr. Ray Kelly told Good Day New York on Monday.

Kelly showed viewers a photo of Jason Commisso. The suspect has a long rap sheet including more than 30 arrests, said Kelly.

Commisso allegedly targeted Asian-Americans in East Harlem and parts of the Upper East Side since January 17th.

Michelle Rhee just getting started on shaping California education policy
Sacramento Bee

Michelle Rhee put the nation’s education establishment on alert two years ago when she announced she would form an advocacy group focused on thwarting the power of teachers unions in state and local politics.

The former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor already had a national reputation as a change agent, unafraid of angering teachers and principals in her drive to improve schools serving the neediest children.

Rhee, now married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, set up StudentsFirst’s headquarters in California’s capital and chose the Golden State as one of 17 she would target.

Celebration connects children to Korean heritage
The Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.)

As she’s grown older, Hilary Short has become more and more grateful that her adoptive parents offered her so many opportunities to connect with her Korean heritage — opportunities that not every Korean adoptee she’s encountered has shared.

“It’s hard when you’re adopted and you have two Caucasian parents that don’t really pass that down to you,” said Short, 28, of Brighton. “I think that it keeps you connected, and then maybe you don’t have that identity crisis that some other adoptees have.”

Some of Short’s best memories come from the Korean camps and schools she attended as a youth, and with children of her own now, she wants to make sure that they have the same chance to connect with their roots. So she volunteers with Love the Children of Rochester, a support group for parents who have adopted Korean children. On Saturday, the group held an advance celebration of the Lunar New Year, which is on Feb. 10.

Early Facebook Employees Launch Foundation To Promote Asian American Artists
AllFacebook

After helping Facebook become one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, three of the social network’s early employees now have a more benevolent mission in mind. Phil Fung, Julia Lam, and Franklyn Chien launched the A3 Foundation (Asian American Artists), which is focused on promoting and supporting the talents of Asian Americans in television, film, and online digital media. This week, the A3 Foundation partnered with the Sundance Institute to give their vision a new stage.

Fung was recruited to Facebook while he was a graduate student at Stanford University. He still works for the company as an engineering manager on Facebook’s mobile team. Fung walked out of class one day to find Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg holding a sign that said, “Work for Facebook.” Not long after, Fung got an interview and left school to start working for Facebook.

Lam joined Facebook after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles. She worked on many high-impact developer marketing initiatives such as fbFund, the Facebook Developer Garage program, Facebook Presence, and the f8 Developer Conference. Currently, Lam is the co-founder of Optimistic Labs, a startup integrating social good through mobile, as well as an advisor at her alma mater.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O is proud of her Korean roots
Straits Times (Singapore)

Art-punk trio Yeah Yeah Yeah’s feisty frontwoman Karen O says that growing up as a half-Asian kid in New Jersey made her what she is today.

Born Karen Lee Orzolek in South Korea to a Korean mother and a Polish father, the 34-year-old tells Life! in a telephone interview from Los Angeles: “I felt like an outsider, definitely. But I think I enjoyed being an outsider. In my art, I like doing what other people don’t do and I get inspired by doing the opposite of the trend.”

She is proud of how K-pop is making an impact on the global music industry.

Asian-American Sung Kang, from ‘Fast Five’ to ‘Bullet to the Head’
GMA News (Philippines)

Coming into the project, Kang says that he was excited about the opportunity to work with both Stallone and director Walter Hill. “I pretty much grew up watching Sylvester Stallone movies. One of the first movies my father took me to was ‘Rocky.’ So getting to work with him was a pretty amazing experience, definitely one of those things on my bucket list,” he smiles. “And from the get-go, Walter Hill was so open to ideas; he was such an ally for me as an actor in that respect.”

Crime Stopper: Interview with The Mentalist’s Tim Kang
The Morton Report

When he is not chasing after criminals on The Mentalist, the actor keeps busy working on some projects of his own. “I started a production company last year called One Shoot Films [OSF], and we’re in the process of finishing up our first short film,” enthuses Kang. “It turned out really well and we’ll be entering it into [film] festivals within the next couple of months.

“Next up, I’m planning to shoot a feature film with the production company and work with other production companies and filmmakers to come up with our own content. Our goal is to go back to that quality I spoke of when I did that play with Janos. We want to tell stories that are, of course, entertaining, and at the same time give the work a little more attention that we typically don’t have the time to give it.

Check out KoreAm’s September 2011 cover story on Tim Kang.

Korean film on 1948 Jeju massacre wins main prize at Sundance
Yonhap News

A Korean film about the Jeju Island massacre in Korea in 1948 has won the prize for best foreign film at the U.S. Sundance Film Festival, one of the world’s most authoritative indie film festivals.

“Jiseul,” directed by O Muel claimed the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic world cinema Saturday (on U.S. MST) at the Sundance Awards in Park City, Utah, making it the first Korean film to win a main prize at the festival.

In Hollywood, as in the NBA, Asian-Americans Are Still Rare
Slate.com

Asian-Americans were tagged years ago as the “new Jews” because of their disproportionate degree of academic success and their prominence in the medical profession. But one area of American life where Asian-Americans have not successfully followed in the footsteps of their Jewish peers is the film industry. As Neal Gabler memorably documented in An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Jewish immigrants largely created the American film industry, by starting studios like Universal, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount.

Whereas, not all that long ago, Hua Hsu described Wayne Wang’s 1982 film Chan Is Missing as “still the pinnacle of Asian-American filmmaking.” Attending Sundance this year I saw nothing likely to unseat it.

But there was, at least, Linsanity, a documentary that is itself about a sort of Asian-American exception.

Hines Ward to appear as zombie on ‘Walking Dead’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“It was an amazing experience,” said Mr. Ward, who will be a zombie extra when AMC’s hit series “The Walking Dead” returns to haunt Sunday nights Feb. 10. “Just being in makeup preparing me for my role was cool. I actually scared myself when I looked in the mirror for the first time after.”

IronE Singleton, the actor who played the character T-Dog — played being the operative word, as poor T-Dog went out in a blaze of glory a few months back, saving one of his friends in a zombie attack — attended the University of Georgia on academic and football scholarships.

Hines Ward honored with Dapper Dan Lifetime Achievement Award
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It would at first glance seem odd to honor Hines Ward with the Dapper Dan Lifetime Achievement Award when much of his life is ahead of him.

Ward is 36 and just one year into what Chuck Noll would call his life’s work. Yet his first life was so filled with achievement that it deserves some recognition.

Where do we start? Most prolific receiver in Steelers history, Super Bowl MVP, two-time Super Bowl champ, top eight in receptions in NFL history, three-time Steelers MVP, first Korean-American Super Bowl winner, a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and “Dancing With The Stars” champion, among others.

Two adoptees return for Special Olympics, hoping to meet biological parents
Yonhap News

The upcoming Special Olympics World Winter Games in PyeongChang, a South Korean alpine town, will be a homecoming of sorts for two American athletes.

Henry Meece, who will take part in snowboarding, and Tae Hemsath, who will compete in snowshoeing, are both South Korean adoptees representing their adopted home from Jan. 29-Feb. 5 at the sporting competition for athletes with intellectual disabilities.

This is the first trip to South Korea for both since they left the country years ago. Meece, 23, was adopted when he was six months old and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Hemsath, 37, grew up in New York after getting adopted in 1978.

Beverly’s Pak the Toughest Mudder of them all for a second straight year
The Salem News (Mass.)

Junyong Pak proved that winning the World’s Toughest Mudder championship last year was no fluke by going out and doing in again. The 34-year-old Beverly resident won the 24-hour nonstop endurance event last month at Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J.

Any tough mudder competition is not for the faint of heart. It requires mental and physical toughness along with stamina, strength and fitness under extremely challenging conditions. The 100-mile course over 30 military-style obstacles at Englishtown was designed by British Special Forces to test even the most superbly conditioned athlete.

When he won the inaugural event a year ago, Pak took home $10,000, but this time the prize money was increased to $15,000.

South Korea helps young emigrate, Singapore wants them back
Asahi Shimbun (Japan)

Times are hard for young job seekers in South Korea. So hard, in fact, that the government is now helping them find work overseas.

The real unemployment rate among South Korea’s twentysomethings is 20 percent, so the government is searching abroad for 30,000 internships and 50,000 jobs for its beleaguered youth.

French Deputy Minister to Visit Land of Her Birth
Chosun Ilbo

France’s Korean-born deputy minister for small business and digital economy will visit Korea in March for the first time since she was adopted by a French family 40 years ago.

Born in August 1973, Fleur Pellerin was found on the streets of Seoul when she was three or four days old and sent to an orphanage. She was adopted six months later.

U.S. delegation seeks to calm spats between Japan, South Korea
Reuters

The United States sent its top Asian diplomacy and security officials to South Korea and Japan to calm tensions between two U.S. allies whose squabbling has frustrated efforts to deal with a troublesome North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.

The high-powered delegation from the White House, Pentagon and State Department departed on Monday and will be visiting the region shortly after the election of a new nationalist-leaning Japanese government in December and before Seoul inaugurates a new president in February.

UN Chief Acts on Labor Camps
Wall Street Journal

For the human rights groups that work hard to bring international attention to the abuses at North Korea’s network of vast prison camps, Monday’s call for an international inquiry into the camps by the United Nations’ human rights chief marked a breakthrough moment.

More-visible human rights violations in countries such as Syria tend to hog media attention, despite the significantly larger scale of the problem in North Korea. Political interest in North Korea is usually concentrated on the threat it represents to neighboring countries rather than to its own people.

Setback for Evanston couple fighting to adopt South Korean baby
Chicago Tribune

An Evanston couple fighting to adopt a South Korean baby whom they’ve raised since shortly after her birth was dealt a setback Monday when a federal judge returned authority over the child to U.S. officials, a step toward the child’s possible deportation.

U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur made it clear that he trusted that officials would make decisions in the baby’s best interest, scolding federal immigration lawyers for “a level of insensitivity and sometimes even callousness” in the past.

Shadur said it is up to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to decide whether 7-month-old Sehwa Kim should remain with Jinshil and Christopher Duquet, of Evanston, while immigration officials decide whether she should be deported, and if so, when.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MARIJUANA IN NORTH KOREA
NK News

You might be surprised by what we’re about to say: the most tight-lipped, conservative and controlling country in the world is also a weed-smoker’s paradise. Despite the North Korean government’s deadly serious stance on the use and distribution of hard drugs like crystal meth (which has its own inauspicious legacy in the North), marijuana is reportedly neither classified illegal or in any way policed. The herb of the bohemian and free is not even considered a drug. As a result, it’s the discerning North Korean gentleman’s roll-up of choice, suggesting that for weed smokers at least, North Korea might just be paradise after all.

NK NEWS receives regular reports from visitors returning from North Korea, who tell us of marijuana plants growing freely along the roadsides, from northern port town Chongjin, right down to the streets of Pyongyang, where it is smoked freely and its sweet scent often catches your nostrils unannounced.

Ahn Cheol-soo to Return to Politics ‘When Ready’
Chosun Ilbo

Software tycoon Ahn Cheol-soo will return to Korea “when he is ready” to continue in politics, his former campaign chief Song Ho-chang said Monday. Song met Ahn in San Francisco last week.

Ahn left for the U.S. after surrendering his promising presidential candidacy at the 11th hour, apparently because he was distressed by politicking in the opposition camp.

He “is spending time resting with his family while contemplating his personal path and political issues,” Song added.

Super Junior Wins At South Korea’s Grammys, Edges Out Fellow Nominee PSY
Huffington Post

Boy band Super Junior has won top album honors at South Korea’s equivalent of the Grammys for the second consecutive year.

“Sexy, Free & Single,” Super Junior’s sixth studio album, captured the Disk Daesang title at the 2013 Golden Disk Awards ceremony Tuesday night at Malaysia’s Sepang International Circuit.

Super Junior edged out nominees including “Gangnam Style” rap sensation PSY and fellow boy groups SHINee and Exo.

Girls’ Generation Hope to Ape Psy’s Success with New Song
Chosun Ilbo

Girls’ Generation’s latest song “I Got a Boy,” which was released at the beginning of the year, is already proving a hit. As the music video is being viewed on YouTube at a faster pace than “Gangnam Style,” some expect the song to ape the success of Psy’s viral hit.

“Gangnam Style” ranks as the most viewed video in the history of YouTube, attracting 10 million hits 19 days after the video was released and 20 million hits within 26 days. “I Got a Boy” garnered 10 million views in just three days of its release and over double this number within six days. As of Monday afternoon, the video has received 29 million views.

Girls’ Generation Land Ten New Songs on K-Pop Hot 100
Billboard.com

To celebrate their comeback track, “I Got a Boy,” the girls had a television special where they performed new album tracks. If topping the K-Pop Hot 100 with “I Got A Boy” (which has over 28 million views on YouTube) wasn’t indication of how much Korea missed SNSD, every one of their new album tracks charted within the Top 80.

Whatever happened to the Korean Wave?
Global Post

Now that Psy has retired “Gangnam Style,” is the K-pop craze losing steam around the world?

Q&A with arts director Emil Kang
The Daily Tar Heel (Univ. of North Carolina)

Carolina Performing Arts, led by Emil Kang, executive director for the arts at UNC, is halfway through its season celebrating the centennial anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s controversial ballet “The Rite of Spring.”

Brea Olinda’s Kim leads point-guard list
OCVarsity.com (Calif.)

1. Anna Kim, Brea Olinda: The Long Beach State-bound senior attacks the basket with ferocity, has a great pull-up jumper, and she has great court awareness. She is the main reason why the Ladycats are still the team to beat in the Century League.

K-pop culture building on success of Gangnam style
Al Jazeera via YouTube

Vote effort targets Asian American groups
Los Angeles Times

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center has launched a get-out-the-vote effort for the Nov. 6 elections. The group is adding a special push for Prop. 30, the governor’s tax measure.

Ad agency InterTrend uses Web to connect with Asians
Los Angeles Times

Looking to capture young, tech-savvy Asian Americans, a Long Beach advertising agency turned East for inspiration.

The firm, InterTrend Communications, came up with a Web series that blended elements of South Korean soap operaswith a novel Japanese storytelling device that employed online social networks. The series, sponsored by AT&T Inc., quickly notched nearly 10 million views on YouTube and generated 4,700 suggestions from fans about how the story should unfold.

Korean-Australian woman finds she was falsely adopted
SBS via World News Australia

An Australian woman has found she was the subject of a falsified adoption in South Korea, where her biological mother was told her baby was stillborn.

South Korean host bars – for women
BBC News

South Korea’s rapid economic development has meant some startling changes within its conservative social structure, including the rise of so-called host bars, where wealthy women pay the equivalent of thousands of dollars for male company.

Steven Yeun: Prison is ‘claustrophobic’ on ‘Walking Dead’
Today.com

“It’s claustrophobic,” star Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn, told The Clicker of this season’s setting, which was teased in the finale. “Last year, we were really happy with the fact that outside, the outdoors (at the farm) was really another character that helped us do these themes because we were miserable. We looked miserable, but in a good way. This season, we were thinking, ‘Oh man, once we go on stages, we’re gonna really have to act out certain things.’ But man, they did a great job and (the prison is) just as terrible as outside.”

‘Go On’ star John Cho: Matthew Perry is my comedy hero
Today.com

Playing opposite your admitted “comedy hero” could be daunting for most actors, but “Go On’s” John Cho — who co-stars with that hero, Matthew Perry — is taking it all in stride.

Grading the Charts … IN K-POP!
Grantland

1. Seo In Kook & Jeong Eun Ji, “All for You”
David Cho: So here’s the way this one works. There’s this drama (read: soap opera; for more info click here) that’s about Korea in 1997 called “Responding: 1997″ that has randomly become super-popular despite not being on a major network. This song is one that’s sung by two of the actors, who — and bear with me, as I’ve never seen more than 90 seconds of this show — are involved in a love triangle.

Molly Lambert: Any idea why it’s so popular?

Cho: Popular songs fall into one of two categories: songs that are actually popular as songs, and songs that are associated with Korean TV shows and become insanely popular because all of the country watches a handful of the same shows, which makes a popular show that much more popular.

Brian Joo to star in Broadway-style musical “Loving the Silent Tears”
allkpop

Korean American singers Brian Joo and Heather Park are collaborating with a team of Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Emmy winners as stars in the new US-produced Broadway-style musical, Loving the Silent Tears, to be held on October 27 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Brian & Heather will represent Korea in this new star-studded musical and they will co-star with Grammy winners Jon Secada, Jody Watley, Black Uhuru, along with Tony-winning Broadway stars.

Why the Rise of Asia In Fashion Isn’t As Beautiful As It Seems
Wall Street Journal

And yet, even as the industry celebrated the continued “rise of the Asian American designer” (as proclaimed in 2010 by the New York Times, and repeated faithfully every year since) and the concurrent “rise of the Asian American supermodel” (as proclaimed in 2010 by Vogue), and repeated faithfully every year since), it’s clear that fashion hasn’t quite resolved its endemic racial issues.

The Cakes at Seoul’s Hello Kitty Cafe Are So Cute, You’ll Feel Bad Mutilating the Face of the World’s Most Beloved Cat
Rocket News

The expressionless white cat’s overwhelming popularity has spread throughout the world, prompting the creation of the Hello Kitty Cafe franchise in South Korea with locations in Seoul, Incheon, and Sinchon. One of our reporters, enamored by the cuteness that Japan’s most famous cat exudes, decided to pay a visit to Hello Kitty Cafe’s Seoul location.

From Miraculous Birth to ‘Axis of Evil’: Dictator Kim Jong Il’s Timeline
Bloomberg

North Korea ends 12 days of official mourning today for Kim Jong Il, the dictator eulogized by his nation’s state media as “Dear Leader.”

Kim died of a heart attack on Dec. 17, brought on by exhaustion as he traveled the country by train offering guidance to his people, according to the official account of his passing.

Below is a timeline of notable events during the life of Kim, showing the contrast between the persona crafted by his state media and the accounts of outsiders and the international press.

Where in the World Is Kim Jong Nam?
Time.com

Reports say Kim Jong Il’s eldest son is now under “Chinese protection” after leaving the island of Macau. But like most things in the Hermit Kingdom, it’s hard to know for sure.

Just how isolated is North Korea? 6 facts to consider
Christian Science Monitor

North Korea’s outlook has earned it the title of the ‘hermit kingdom.’ The country is both cut off from the wider world and intensely focused on its neighbors.

In South Korea, some praise North’s departed “Dear Leader”
Reuters

Despite growth that has propelled South Korea to become the world’s 13th largest economy, a powerhouse that makes computers, mobile telephones and cars, there are some in the capital of Seoul who believe life is better in the impoverished North.

As the world watched Wednesday’s funeral of dictator Kim Jong-il, who presided over famine, a nuclear arms push and military skirmishes with the South, Choi Dong Jin, 48, told Reuters that Kim was “a great and outstanding person” for resisting U.S. imperialism.

Korean American pastor seeks reunification through humanitarian aid
CNN.com

When Chang Soon Lee reflects on his childhood years in North Korea, his joy quickly turns to deep sadness. Like millions of Koreans caught in the middle of the Korean War in the early 1950s, Chang at the age of 15 was forced to flee his native homeland.

His father, a prominent minister who survived World War II, disappeared just days after communist-led forces invaded Pyongyang. “After the (World War II) liberation of Korea, my father often visited churches and preached but one day we waited for him and he never returned home,” says Chang.

By the time an armistice halted the Korean War in 1953, nearly 37,000 U.S. troops had been killed and more than 400,000 North Koreans soldiers were dead, according to the U.S Department of Defense.

Chang eventually emigrated to the United States on a student visa and became a minister, co-founding a ministry for Korean immigrants at Wiltshire United Method Church in Los Angeles, home to the nation’s largest Korean-American population.

But Chang has never forgotten his homeland and he’s returned half a dozen times on humanitarian missions, taking tons of food to orphanages as part of a charity group he established in the United States. “Its a kind of symbolic showing for them that we love you, you are our brothers and sisters, we are tragically separated but we are one and we are concerned about you we are praying,” says Chang.

N.Korean Spy Kills Himself
Chosun Ilbo

A man who claimed to be a North Korean defector has committed suicide after confessing that he was sent to spy on the South.

During questioning the man, who was in his 30s, said he had received orders from Pyongyang to report on a South Korean organization that helps defectors from the North.

The National Intelligence Service said the man had hanged himself in a shower room. The source said North Korean spies held the man’s family hostage and that he felt pressured after his confession.

Adoption of Korean boys leads to full house
Journal Review (Crawfordsville, Ind.)

Paul and Stacey Leonard of Ladoga adopted sons Charlie, 1, and Reuben, 5, from South Korea. The Leonards also have a biological son, Peter, 8.

Injury costs Huskers one-time starting lineman for bowl
NBC Sports

Due to an injury to the regular starter, Nebraska Cornhuskers offensive lineman Seung Hoon Choi will be in the starting lineup when Nebraska takes on South Carolina in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 2.

S. Korean short-track legend gains Russian citizenship to fulfill Sochi dream
Russia Today

Russia’s medal hopes at their first-ever Winter Games in Sochi have been given yet another boost as South Korean short-track legend Ahn Hyun-soo has finally been granted Russian citizenship.

The 26-year-old captured three golds and one bronze at the Turin Olympics back in 2006, becoming the most successful athlete there. He is also a five-time Overall World Champion.

HyunA & 2NE1 make it to Spin.com’s ‘Favorite Pop Tracks of 2011′ list
allkpop

On December 27, the website for music magazine Spin revealed their favorite pop singles of 2011.

Among the various songs by A-list pop icons, two K-pop songs made it to the list. At #3, HyunA‘s “Bubble Pop” beat #4 pop princess Britney Spears‘ “Till the World Ends“, and 2NE1‘s “I Am the Best” took the #8 spot.

JOIN KOREAM