South Korea

With frosty mugs of Butterbeer raised in a toast, Universal Studios Hollywood officials announced plans Tuesday to bring the wildly popular Wizarding World of Harry Potter to the California theme park. Details were limited but officials did say the California park would see a Hogwarts Castle and visitors would ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, the marquee attraction at the Florida park. Wizarding World will be built within the existing California theme park, but it was unclear if the new land might be located at least partially on the studio's back lot. > Photos: Top 10 Wizarding World of Harry Potter rides and attractions Wizarding World proved an instant hit when it opened in June 2010 at Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure theme park.

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea -- To the South Korean military, this picturesque island is the perfect place to build a naval base: a strategic location guarding the country's southern flank from possible invasion. To its residents, its small-town feel, harbor and coral reefs make it close to perfect just the way it is. The conflict between the two visions has turned into a South Korean David and Goliath story, with Mayor Kang Dong-kyun of the town of Gangjeong leading the majority of its 1,930 people in fighting the giant.

In three years of teaching English in South Korea, Tony Hellmann says he's seen discrimination both in and out of the classroom. He knows teachers, he says, who are harassed for having Korean girlfriends. He's met only three black instructors in his time. And he's been denied service in Korean bars. "I've been told to leave because I'm a foreigner," the 33-year-old Seattle native said.

Billed as the world's tallest water ride, the $26-million Divertical at  Italy's Mirabilandia theme park will combine a shoot-the-chutes flume and a roller coaster track with an offshore powerboat racing theme. PHOTOS: Divertical water coaster at Mirabilandia Debuting in mid- to late June, the Divertical water coaster will feature an innovative elevator lift system that carries the 10-person boats to the top of the 197-foot-tall ride. From there, riders will descend a 45-degree water flume at speeds topping 65 mph. After a tidal wave-like splash, the train will continue along a coaster track over air-time hills and hairpin turns before dropping into a second splashdown pool.

An Internet blogger nicknamed Minerva was acquitted by a Seoul court Monday on charges that he spread malicious rumors about the South Korean economy that cost the government billions of dollars. Park Dae-sung was released after the court's ruling that he did not violate telecommunications laws with his popular weblogs, which regularly pontificated on South Korea's ailing economy, castigated policymakers and forecast dire scenarios that many investors took to heart.

Kang Il-chul rides in the back of a van packed with gossiping old women. The 82-year-old girlishly covers her mouth to whisper a secret. "We argue a lot about the food," she says, wrinkling her nose. "To tell you the truth, some of these old ladies are grouchy." There are eight of them, sharing a hillside home on the outskirts of Seoul, sparring over everything from territory to room temperature. Some wear makeup and stylish hats; others are happy in robes and slippers.

Robot Land, a $600-million theme park celebrating famous science fiction cyborgs and motion picture androids, is expected to open in South Korea in 2013. > Photos: Robot Land theme park rides and attractions Located about an hour west of Seoul in the coastal city of Incheon, Robot Land would feature 11 rides, seven attractions and eight shows on 190 acres. Dubbed the world's first robot theme park, the oft-delayed Robot Land would compete for visitors with the world's 10th busiest theme park ( Everland )

World Cup 2010: SOUTH KOREA FIFA ranking: 49 Overall World Cup record: 4-13-7 Coach: Huh Jung-Moo Best performance: Fourth place, 2002 Overview: No Asian team has been to the World Cup more often than South Korea, which is making its eighth appearance this summer. But the South Koreans have made it out of the first round only once, in 2002. Coach Huh Jung-Moo, a former national team star who is retiring after this World Cup, will be counting heavily on Manchester United striker Park Ji-Sung and playmaker Park Chu-Young.

The Olympic Games will be heading back to South Korea after a 30-year hiatus. The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday it has selected Pyeongchang, South Korea, as the host of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. IOC President Jacques Rogge said the city received a majority of votes after just one round of voting among its 95 members. It marks the first time a city has won an Olympic bid in the first round of voting since 1995 when Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Winter Games.

When German-born fashion journalist Vera Hohleiter poked fun in print at the smell of kimchi and the short skirts of South Korean women, the cyber response was swift and nasty. Incensed Seoul Internet users flooded her blog with insults, calling her a racist and a Nazi, and demanded that she leave their country immediately. "For weeks, I went everywhere by taxi," said Hohleiter, 30, whose perceived transgressions were contained in a 2008 book, "Sleepless in Seoul," her memoir about a foreign woman hopelessly in love with a young Korean man. "I just didn't want to be confronted with this growing public anger."

The nine young women of Girls' Generation sauntered onto the performance stage of "Late Show With David Letterman. " Flanked by a DJ and live drummer, the South Korean pop group wore lacy black mini-dresses and thigh-high leather boots, as if they were hosting a goth cocktail party. It was a rare American network television performance from a South Korean music group. The song they performed on the January show, a slinky bit of minor-key dance-pop called "The Boys," owed an obvious debt to Kelis' catcalling hit "Milkshake.

More than 1.7 million Korean Americans live in the United States, and CJ Entertainment America is seeking to lure a good percentage of them -- as well as the wider art house cinema crowd -- to theaters starting Friday for "My Way," touted as the most expensive South Korean movie of all time. Opening in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, "My Way" tells the story of two rival men, one a poor Korean and the other Japanese royalty, who end up fighting together against the Chinese and the Soviets during World War II. But it is hardly a buddy story; Japan occupied the Korean peninsula for much of the first half of the 20th century, and the film is scathing in its portrayal of the Japanese.

SEOUL - North Korea appears to be preparing for a third nuclear test, digging a new underground tunnel at a site where previous tests were conducted in 2006 and 2009, South Korea's official news agency reported. Photos taken by a U.S. satellite reveal the excavation work at the Punggye-ri site in the country's northeast, the Yonhap agency reported Sunday. The work comes as North Korea also prepares to launch a satellite, called Kwangmyongsong-3, sometime this week to commemorate the centennial of founding father Kim Il Sung's birth.

Most mornings, when the slanted dawn light hits the nearby Tower Palace luxury high-rises, Cho Su-ja can't help but stare, struck by their grandeur. The 72-year-old grandmother lives in a two-room shack with plastic flooring, sandwiched between other shacks built from planks of wood, corrugated tin, castoff door frames and bamboo screens, like a jumble of shipwrecks. But Cho doesn't envy her wealthy neighbors, not one bit. She's proud to be one of the original inhabitants of Guyrong village, a ramshackle shantytown sprawling alongside the exclusive Gangnam area, the highest-priced real estate in South Korea.

The hard-to-predict and often-threatening plans of North Korea shadowed President Obama's nuclear security summit as soon as he arrived in Seoul, injecting a Cold War note to a meeting designed to deal with newer threats of terrorism and the spread of nuclear materials. The opening hours of the trip reprised similar journeys by his last two predecessors, reflecting the Korean peninsula's status as one of the last vestiges of what used to be a worldwide divide. Like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama traveled to the demilitarized zone that separates north and south, donning binoculars at a forward outpost only yards form the armistice line.

  President Obama lands in South Korea this weekend hoping a summit there will highlight his initiative to make the world safer from nuclear terrorism, but the bitterly contested nuclear program just next door may steal the spotlight. Monday's nuclear security summit, a sequel to a forum Obama held in Washington in 2010, is a step toward the White House goal of securing "all vulnerable nuclear material around the world" by the middle of 2014. Although some experts are skeptical about how much progress has actually been made, Obama administration officials plan to use the trip as a platform for the president's broader nuclear agenda, which seeks nonproliferation and a reduction in atomic arsenals through increased diplomatic engagement.

It already seems like 2013 is shaping up as a great year for ride enthusiasts around the world, as a number of new theme parks are planned for Asia and several major attractions are in the works for Europe. > Photos: Best new international theme park rides for 2013 Consider this a tentative and fluid list of new attractions on tap at international parks (outside the United States). A number of oft-delayed projects have been given new 2013 opening dates that could get postponed again, while several recently announced theme parks may never advance past the planning stages.

In South Korea, image and perception are paramount -- especially when it comes to how the conservative Lee Myung-bak administration is dealing with the global financial crisis. In an apparent effort to restore confidence among international investors, officials here are waging a not-so-subtle propaganda campaign against foreign journalists and economic experts who publish articles or reports that are contrary to authorities' view of events.

1. Poland, a major food exporter, removed from the market half a million pounds of food, including pickles and bread, because of fears it contained industrial salt, used for de-icing roads. 2. A performance this month of North Korea's Unhasu Orchestra in Paris, arranged by the principal conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, may signal a slight thaw in relations with the West. 3. Five men were flogged six times each in the Aceh province of Indonesia after their conviction on gambling charges.

Samsung Electronics Co. has filed another lawsuit against Apple Inc. in South Korea as the epic patent wars between the two companies continue. The latest suit, filed by Samsung in Seoul, asserts that the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 infringed on three of Samsung's patents relating to display data, user interface and short text messages, Reuters reported. Samsung and Apple have waged patent wars in the courts of 10 countries in more than 30 lawsuits, according to Reuters. Apple was the first to throw down the gauntlet, in April, when it alleged that Samsung "slavishly" copied its iPhone and iPad models.