Soft-power offensive

With Kim Jong-il, the Reverend Moon and military coups grabbing headlines, Korea has not always been the kingdom of cool. But since the South Koreans sent their generals back to the barracks and became the world's most internet-wired people, the transformation has taken place - at least south of the demilitarised zone. Now the former Hermit Kingdom wants the world to know about it. ''Korea is well on the way to becoming an advanced country,'' says Choung Byoung-gug, pictured below, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. ''I believe that in the 21st century culture has the power to promote the standing of the nation further.'' Australia is the latest target of South Korea's soft power offensive, with Choung in Sydney yesterday to open a Korean Cultural Office in Elizabeth Street, opposite the War Memorial. It incorporates a reference centre and will host exhibitions and language classes. Girls in national dress sang the folk songs Arirang and Waltzing Matilda, traditional artists performed, the walls blinked and glowed with digital art and The new NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, gave a speech. Choung also found a personal link with a less sunny past: his electorate includes the valley called Kapyong, where 60 years ago Australian and Canadian troops held off a Chinese human wave in one of the Korean War's most epic battles. Earlier Choung, who is 53 and so born well after the Korean armistice, visited the unit involved, the 3rd Battalion RAR, at Holsworthy Barracks and hosted Kapyong veterans and widows at the cultural office. ''They told me 'Our sacrifice is vindicated by your success','' a moved Choung told the opening.

BOLT OF LOGIC

Readers will recall the Melbourne columnist Andrew Bolt is in the dock for racial discrimination. He's being sued in the Federal Court by the activist Pat Eatock, the artist Bindi Cole, the author Anita Heiss, the health worker Leeanne Enoch, the academics Graham Atkinson, Wayne Atkinson and Larissa Behrendt, the lawyer Mark McMillan and the former ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark over two articles and two blog posts published in 2009. They say these jottings imputed that they were exploiting their aboriginality for personal gain, their skin being too light to qualify as Aboriginal. Bolt's legal team has argued he loathes racism and that his articles ought to be protected by the implied constitutional right to free speech. Naturally in such a case the question as to how Bolt himself assesses aboriginality has been a crux - he has testified that appearance is not all he goes by and that he takes into account cultural influences. To which Ron Merkel, QC, yesterday applied the following lancing logic: ''The critical role of culture was recognised by Mr Bolt [in his testimony]. It was unequivocal and not in any sense qualified. Had Mr Bolt followed that line in his articles, I very much doubt we would be here.''

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT HIM

When Barry O'Farrell romped to power, such was the size of his triumph he could be forgiven for thinking that he had been all but elected unopposed. Well, as they might say in Kazakhstan, that's not unopposed, THIS is unopposed. On Sunday the Kazakhstan communist leader, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, was not only voted in with between 90 to 95 per cent of the vote (presumably the other 5 to 10 per cent of votes were ballot errors caused by the involuntary muscle spasms of otherwise loyal voters) but also, according to an Associated Press report, one of the President's three challengers voted for Nazarbayev. ''I am sure that the current President will be the victor, so I am giving him my vote as well,'' the challenger, Mel Eleusizov, an environmental activist, told Interfax news service as he emerged from a polling station. He said his family was voting for Nazarbayev as well. One can only imagine the disputatious Eleusizov dinner table conversation.

STAY IN TOUCH...

WITH A FRENCH BUST

SO MUCH for French joie de vivre. Town officials in Neuville-en-Ferrain in northern France have removed a terracotta bust from the town hall for being too, er, busty. Agence France-Presse reports the mayor decided the sculpture of Marianne - France's symbolic republican heroine - was too distracting. (Pictured is a Marianne bust from Louvigny.) ''It was making people gossip,'' said one town hall employee who asked not to be named. ''Remarks were made, during weddings, for example.'' Mayor Gerard Cordon persuaded councillors to spend €900 ($1200) on a replacement bust, modelled on the French model Laetitia Casta. A quick Google search reveals dozens of photographs of Casta, amply filling a range of lacy smalls. If hers is the more modest figure, the original must have been almost impossible to balance on a pedestal. The artist who made the rejected bust, Catherine Lamacque, said she shaped the statue ''to symbolise the generosity of the republic''. ''The mayor has had it under his nose for several years,'' she said. ''He chose it from among other designs even before I baked it … His decision is absurd. I only hope he will not have it destroyed.''

WITH THE GOSSIP MAGS

IT IS hard to believe but occasionally something interesting happens to an ordinary person. These rare events are never as enthralling as, say, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie taking a stroll with their children, but they are just about tragic, inspiring, funny or bizarre enough to rate a mention in the gossip magazines. New Idea features three such cases. It tells of seven-year-old Mason Saunders, who woke one night to find a metre-long snake in his bed; Jamie-Lee Hockey, a 23-year-old with breasts so large she struggles to tie her own shoelaces; and Michelle Couzner, who gave her life savings to a conman posing as an amorous stranger on a dating website. Grazia tells the story of Tony Hardy and his partner, who battled through the stress, pain and thwarted hopes of IVF. Both magazines proudly label these stories with the words ''real life'' - a tag that has us somewhat bewildered. If these are tales of real life, what are we to think of the rest of the magazines' articles? Is Grazia's cover story about Katy Perry and Russell Brand's embattled marriage a fantasy? What of New Idea's claims that the young Australian actress Bella Heathcote is tearing Pitt and Jolie apart? Surely this, with its quotes from ''a source close to the couple'' and ''a Hollywood insider'', is as real as real life can be?