Category: Новини

South Korea’s military appears to want to conscript members of the K-pop supergroup BTS for mandatory military duties, as the public remains sharply divided over whether they should be given exemptions.

Lee Ki Sik, commissioner of the Military Manpower Administration, told lawmakers on Friday that it’s “desirable” for BTS members to fulfill their military duties to ensure fairness in the country’s military service.

Earlier this week, Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup made almost identical comments about BTS at a parliamentary committee meeting, and Culture Minister Park Bo Gyoon said his ministry would soon finalize its position on the issue.

Whether the band’s seven members must serve in the army is one of the hottest issues in South Korea because its oldest member, Jin, faces possible enlistment early next year after turning 30 in December.

Under South Korean law, all able-bodied men are required to perform 18-21 months of military service. But the law provides special exemptions for athletes, classical and traditional musicians, and ballet and other dancers who have won top prizes in certain competitions that enhance national prestige.

Without a revision of the law, the government can take steps to grant special exemptions. But past exemptions for people who performed well in non-designated competitions triggered serious debate about the fairness of the system.

Since the draft forces young men to suspend their professional careers or studies, the dodging of military duties or creation of exemptions is a highly sensitive issue.

In one recent survey, about 61% of respondents supported exemptions for entertainers such as BTS, while in another, about 54% said BTS members should serve in the military.

Several amendments of the conscription law that would pave the way for BTS members to be exempted have been introduced in the National Assembly, but haven’t been voted on with lawmakers sharply divided on the matter.

Lee, the defense minister, earlier said he had ordered officials to consider conducting a public survey to help determine whether to grant exemptions to BTS. But the Defense Ministry later said it would not carry out such a survey.

In August, Lee said if BTS members join the military, they would likely be allowed to continue practicing and to join other non-serving BTS members in overseas group tours.

People who are exempted from the draft are released from the military after three weeks of basic training. They are also required to perform 544 hours of volunteer work and continue serving in their professional fields for 34 months.
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Fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two mothers find themselves in an unusual place, Nu Boyana Film Studios, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Eastern Europe’s largest film company, it has participated in the production of over 400 Hollywood films. This moving work, Kyiv-Sofia-Hollywood, follows these two women as they rebuild their lives in a new country and find their way in the film industry. On their journey, they overcome challenges and find success, begging the question of whether they will eventually ever return to their homeland, Ukraine.
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French author Annie Ernaux has won this year’s Nobel Prize for literature.

The Nobel committee said Thursday that Ernaux was chosen for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

Her works include “La Place” (A Man’s Place), about her relationship with her father and “Les annees” (The Years), about French society from World War II to the present day.

The honor includes a $900,000 cash award.

The prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry were awarded earlier this week.  The Nobel Peace Prize is due to be announced Friday and the prize for economics on Monday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A tender and touching letter that author John Steinbeck penned to his teenage son, offering fatherly advice after the young man confided that he was in love for the first time, is going up for auction.

Boston-based RR Auction says the handwritten draft of a letter to his eldest son, Thomas — then 14 — shows the Of Mice and Men author’s empathy: He refused to dismiss it as puppy love.

“While this letter offers an intimate, private glimpse into Steinbeck’s family life, it also expresses his ideas about love with profundity and eloquence,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of the auction house.

In the two-page letter, dated Nov. 10, 1958, the Nobel Literature Prize laureate told his son: “If you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.”

Steinbeck, who won a Pulitzer for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and the Nobel in 1962 for a body of acclaimed work, showed he was no stranger to matters of the heart.

“The object of love is the best, and most beautiful. Try to live up to it,” he wrote. “If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

“Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also,” he said. “It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

“If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away,” the California-born novelist wrote, signing his letter simply: “Love, Father.”

John Steinbeck died in 1968, and Thomas Steinbeck died in 2016.

The text of the letter has been published for worldwide audiences, including in 1989’s Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, by Penguin Books.

Legal wrangling over his estate has dragged on for decades. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision awarding Steinbeck’s stepdaughter $5 million in a family dispute over abandoned plans for movies of some of Steinbeck’s best-known works.

Thomas Steinbeck, a writer in his own right, fiercely defended his father’s work, adapting several of his father’s books for movies and launching legal efforts to protect the copyrights of his father and others.
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