South Korea

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.

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.

Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth. During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Their destination: Hiroshima. Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.

He entered the national stage as Mr. Clean, a tireless crusader in a country rife with high-level corruption.

Nam Hyung Kim wants to make one thing clear from the start. "We don't hate Japan," the South Korean journalist insists. But just the fact Kim feels the need to clarify that point suggests that, well, maybe there is more to the two countries' baseball rivalry than just baseball. Not that the games haven't been compelling. Last summer South Korea had to get by Japan twice to win its first Olympic baseball gold.

The "Do Not Cross" line here between North and South Korea has a prosaic feel to it: a concrete speed bump. The almost imperceptible hump, sitting between two blue buildings that straddle the 38th parallel, would look at home on a suburban street. Likewise, the swath of grass and concrete of the Joint Security Area resembles a college campus -- uncommonly quiet and devoid of students -- more than a hyper-guarded demilitarized zone. But hyper-guarded it is.

It's hardly the triumphant return to the United States that South Korean pop superstar Rain had hoped for. The popular singer-actor, dubbed the "Justin Timberlake of Asia," arrived in Hawaii on Monday facing two lawsuits stemming from the cancellation of dates on his 2006-07 North American Rain's Coming tour. Rain's legal troubles follow his attempts to break into the U.S. market and build the kind of loyal fan base here that has eluded other Asian performers.

In the end, it was just a simple box of cookies, an innocent gift to a hardworking teacher from an appreciative parent. But investigators had suspected otherwise. So they recently barged into a classroom in suburban Seoul to open the package in front of the baffled instructor and her students.

He was a self-styled Internet prophet, an economic pundit who went by the name of Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom. In weblogs posted last year that drew a cult-like following, he pontificated on South Korea's ailing economy, castigated policymakers and forecast dire scenarios that many investors took to heart. He was a genius, they said, a mysterious inside trader with a Matt Drudge-like acumen for scoops that uncannily predicted the global economic crisis.

Jerry Royster isn't sure whether to laugh or cry: The umps just don't speak his language. Every time he races out of the dugout to argue a play, he has to bring along an interpreter. Last year, the former Dodgers infielder took the helm of this city's wildly popular Lotte Giants, becoming Korea's first foreign manager. From opening day, he was a stranger in a strange baseball land.