In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you've become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that's the height of intelligence.
Alice Walker
As the name of the agency suggests, 'Department of Defense,' the defense refers to the United States of America - not the defense of South Korea, not the defense of Ukraine, not the defense of Syria or Germany.
Ann Coulter
North Korea's whole idea is to create a crisis to solve a crisis. They're so poor and they're so desperate that they realize that this bombastic rhetoric can drive the South Korean stock market down and get the U.S. in a tizzy. And it's a game they've been playing for many, many years.
Barbara Demick
A South Korean teenager, 18-year-old male, is about five inches taller than his North Korean counterpart. And there are many soldiers who are only about 4'6". The height requirement is supposed to be 4'9". That's the size of my 12-year-old son.
If Iran and North Korea, by some horrible, devilish, nightmarish scenario, got together and went to war at the same time, one against Saudi Arabia and one against South Korea, I don't know what we would do about that. I don't know that we could stop them short of using nuclear weapons.
Ben Stein
If South Korea is going to survive, and keep the peace on the peninsula, its citizens need to start conveying support for their state.
Brian Reynolds Myers
People tend to overlook the fact that North Korea's economy collapsed at about the same time as South Koreans lost faith in their own state. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time when South Koreans were questioning the very legitimacy of their republic.
Since the Korean War, U.S. and South Korea have established an enduring friendship with shared interests, such as denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, combating aggression abroad and developing our economies.
Charles B. Rangel
I served four years in the Air Force in South Korea, and my brother, Aaron, served in the Army there, too, on the DMZ.
Chuck Norris
I want to make Seoul the front line of the new South Korea. Seoul is sleeping, and I want to wake it up.
Chung Mong-joon
When I tell people I'm from South Korea, almost 10 out of 10 say something like, 'Koreans have great skin!' And it's true.
Claudia Kim
When I was almost two years old, my grandmother flew from Hongcheon, South Korea, to Flushing, Queens, to take care of me.
Crystal Hana Kim
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
South Korea is a vigorous democracy, with strong judicial institutions and a commitment to the rule of law.
David Lidington
We've been worried for some time that one of the ways that North Korea can retaliate against further escalation of tensions is via cyber, and particularly attacks against our financial sector. This is something they have really perfected as an art against South Korea.
Dmitri Alperovitch
My favorite thing about South Korea is the people - they are so kind and helpful.
Elana Meyers
As mayor, I've traveled to China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Mexico to meet with heads of state and business leaders to promote trade with L.A. companies and through L.A.'s seaports and airports - because that generates L.A. jobs.
Eric Garcetti
The United States depends on South Korea and Japan to help promote American values in East Asia.
Evan Bayh
When I was growing up in South Korea in the '70s and early '80s, the country was too poor to buy original records. Everything was bootlegged.
Ha-Joon Chang
It was good to launch the economy in the '50s. Japan did this; China did this; even South Korea did this. All the East Asians did this - import substitution. I think all countries followed import substitution in the '50s and in the '60s, but I think by the '70s, countries were getting out of that first phase of the strategy.
Jairam Ramesh
I think South Korea was one of the best shows I've ever done in my whole life. The people there were crazy. It was literally Beatlemania.
Unlike the Afghans and Iraqis, the South Korean people solidly supported the American military presence, which was part of a United Nations operation.
I've often found myself looking fondly at the Valentine's cultures in other countries. South Korea, for instance - where women must give chocolate to men.
My parents were South Korean immigrants who came to America in the early 80s for the hope of a better life for their children.
South Korea has very few natural resources. The country isn't stocked with oil, much natural gas, or even many minerals. What it does have is an enormous quantity of sheet masks, BB creams, essences, and face masks packaged to look like tomatoes.
When I started working in human rights, Eastern Europe was communist, South Africa was under apartheid and South Korea had military rule. All the changes have come about not because of the militaries or government but because small groups of people spoke out against what was unfair and unjust.
If America would withdraw from South Korea, there could be a power struggle between such as China and Japan.
So South Korean ability is very much limited to handle North Korean, you know, difficulties. So we don't want to see an immediate collapse of the North Korea regime.
You know, North Korea situation is far worse than East Germany, and South Korea is weaker than West Germany.
South Koreans who have seen and praised the mass games should remember the hardship of tearful children. Teachers drive them hard with curses and orders to repeat and repeat. When the children return home in the evening, they can hardly walk.
In 2013, Samsung accounted for about 20 percent of South Korea's total business profits. Samsung Electronics, just one of scores of subsidiaries, accounts for close to 15 percent of the total shares in the South Korean stock market. But you don't need to know these figures to get a feel for Samsung's hold on the country.
Handwritten political posters - often composed in an artless and unadorned style, usually just words on plain white paper - were ubiquitous in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s and were one of the few outlets available for expressing political views. Most posters were anonymous and put up under the cover of night.
A military career offers the stability many South Korean women crave.
From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s - the era of military dictatorship when South Korea was rebuilding itself from a postwar economic basket case to a humming, modern nation - military schools were the track of choice for ambitious young men.
Just like any other company, Samsung can fail, and if that happens, how will the South Korean economy overcome the shock? If we don't decrease our over-reliance on the chaebols and prepare to let smaller, dynamic start-ups fill the gaps in their place, it won't.
South Korea first allowed women into the military in 1950 during the Korean War. Back then, female soldiers mainly held administrative and support positions. Women began to take on combat roles in the 1990s when the three military academies, exclusive to men, began accepting women.
In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea's, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that.
For all the popularity of spiritual advisers in South Korea, it still shocks to see the leaders of huge public companies relying on fortune-tellers. A shaman may advise a struggling executive to move a building's front entrance, tapping the widespread pungsu belief that your luck depends on the direction of your house.
I feel very sorry for the one or two North Korean defectors who were caught by Chinese police while entering South Korean or foreign embassies in Beijing, but their arrest drew the whole attention of the world.
I don't think the current regime of South Korea will deal actively with the issue of North Korean defectors.
My favourite place in South Korea is Jeju Island: it's a tropical paradise with sandy beaches, turquoise waters, and the magnificent Geomunoreum lava tube system of underground caves.
Breathing in South Korea, even though the life here is not easy, makes me so happy. I feel that sitting in a coffee shop, having a cup of tea, and looking out of the window at the blue sky - this is happiness. Truly happiness.
I defected to South Korea in search of freedom of speech and movement. I had longed to put my feet on this soil, even in my dreams.
It was very shocking for me to read newspapers that openly criticised the government in South Korea. That is impossible in North Korea and almost impossible in China. I was really impressed, and I became addicted to reading the news and watching the media so I could learn about the world. North Koreans would be stunned if they experienced this.
Even after arriving in South Korea, it's dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.
We refugees, we become always a punchbag. A political punchbag between China and South Korea and North Korea.
When I was little, I thought my country was the best on the planet. And I grew up singing a song called 'Nothing To Envy.' And I was very proud. In school, we spent a lot of time studying the history of Kim Il-Sung, but we never learned much about the outside world, except that America, South Korea, Japan are the enemies.
My family lived under communism their entire lives. When they arrived in South Korea, they didn't even know how to use the bank system and ATM or the subway, nothing.
Here in South Korea, I'm continuing to learn English in order to boost my prospects. When North Korean defectors try to get a job to stabilize their lives, their lack of English is a handicap. It was the same story while I was living in China. It took an enormous amount of time and enthusiasm to learn Chinese.
I believe I'll see the reunification of North and South Korea in my lifetime and that defectors should play a role in rebuilding the country. In the long run, I want to return to North Korea, because that's where I belong.
