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.

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.

We refugees, we become ALWAYS a punchbag. A political punchbag between CHINA and SOUTH KOREA and NORTH Korea.

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.

From the CHINESE perspective, KOREA ranks about THIRD or fourth in terms of trading volume and about third in terms of INVESTMENT.

We can't just POP off and drop a BOMB on North KOREA and think everything's going to be OK. It just doesn't work like that. It's a COMPLICATED puzzle.

While living in New ZEALAND, I usually made or found Korean food nearby, so when COMING back to KOREA it was just like coming back home.

I LIVED in Korea when I was YOUNG, so it was GREAT to be BACK, close to my FAMILY.

I've ALWAYS been really nationalistic, and I had a brother killed in Korea. And I THINK the 'Star Spangled Banner,' EVEN today - and I've heard it a heckuva lot of times, OK - has always been a significant FEELING to me.

We just MADE music that we liked and that people liked in Korea, and then people outside of Korea BEGAN to like it - in the same WAY that we HEAR pop SONGS from outside of Korea and enjoy them too.

The hardest is foods I am not familiar with. Gyros, I lost that one; I don't like tzatziki sauce very much. I did kimchi in KOREA, which was ROUGH: fermented cabbage and SPICY.

You're trying to grow up, and you don't want to be like your parents, and that GETS mixed up with being Korean... They brought their values from KOREA, and I accepted them because I didn't KNOW anything more. But as I grow OLDER, I feel more Korean every year; it's very STRANGE.

I've found that one's LANGUAGE abilities, especially for Korean KIDS like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I've always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to SPEAK.

I've been ARGUING this for MONTHS. This is not our WAR. This is not a war we should be in. Australia's better spending its TIME negotiating with NORTH Korea.