4/7/2024 0 Comments Dispatch koreaNow new provocations by the North Koreans - torpedoing a South Korean warship last March, killing 46 sailors, and bombarding a South Korean island in November, killing four - have raised the prospect that full-scale military engagement could break out. High-rise buildings lined up in rows in this bird’s eye view of Seoul. That war cost the lives of 36,500 Americans and an estimated 415,000 South Korean soldiers and civilians, but it ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a full peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically in a state of war. We arrived in Seoul on Tuesday as South Korea and its nuclear-armed northern neighbor appear closer to serious military conflict than at any time since the Korean War. “How worried are you by the latest tensions with North Korea?,” I asked a vendor as he rang up my purchase. If the business of Korea - which has transformed itself from a war-torn agricultural backwater to the world’s 12th largest economy in little more than 50 years - is business, then the I-Park mall is its consumer epicenter. There are eight floors of the stuff: from still cameras, video cameras and smartphones to household appliances and the latest in high-tech Korean toilet seats (don’t ask). SEOUL, South Korea | In search of a memory card for our camera, we stumbled into the I-Park mall, a dazzling cornucopia of electronic gear. One of the many camera counters at I-Park mall in Seoul.
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