Photo and text from
The Japan Times, 5/6/23.
In between talks on security and technology, the leaders of South Korea and Japan plan to unwind over a drink.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is preparing to share a "bomb shot” with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida over a casual dinner Sunday. The concoction, a combination of beer with South Korea’s national spirit soju, is a mainstay in K-dramas and often shared among colleagues and friends in the country to bond.
The meal is part of an official two-day summit in Seoul — the first in 12 years — meant to strengthen ties between the U.S. allies. Seen as a chance to restore shuttle diplomacy, the visit takes place ahead of a trilateral meeting between the U.S., South Korea and Japan during the Group of Seven meeting in Hiroshima later this month.
The relaxed dinner at Yoon’s presidential residence in Seoul will showcase Korean cuisine. Yoon intends to serve charcoal-grilled meat, according to people familiar with the event. Korean rice wine, called Cheongju, will be offered throughout the meal, and high-level officials from Yoon’s ruling People Power Party suggest that bomb shots are "most likely” to follow.
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Last month, South Korea added Japan back to its "white list” of trading partners, and Japan later announced it would do the same.
Source:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/05/06/national/politics-diplomacy/kishida-yoon-summit-dinner/?utm_source=pianoDNU&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=72&tpcc=dnu&pnespid=pe_Vg5oO5qqeo.O5rU.zuKYJuh4ZqDZzylEwR1Iuo0WVLLZhY3qQBVdOnQ5Juilu4zgHNA
From
Japan Today:
U.N. disarmament experts and antinuclear campaigners may have heard about Japanese atomic-bomb survivors, but a pair of documentaries about them designed to connect with ordinary young people were recently completed by directors under 30 from Costa Rica and Japan.
Erika Bagnarello’s ‘‘Flashes of Hope’’ and Takashi Kunimoto’s ‘‘Traveling with Hibakusha: Across Generations’’ both feature, with different approaches, a group of over 100 such survivors, called ‘‘hibakusha’’ in Japanese, who cruised around the world in 2008 in the nongovernmental organization Peace Boat’s first such project for them.
A series of events across Japan to screen the two films and talk with the directors began Wednesday, and at least Bagnarello’s work, designed for English-speaking audiences, will be shown in New York on May 1, two days before the start of a key U.N. conference to enhance the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In interviews prior to the events, both 29-year-olds expressed hope that their roughly hour-long movies will help viewers in Japan and other countries respond to the hibakusha’s message that the tragedies caused by the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never be repeated.
‘‘I feel like the message of the hibakusha is very clear: they want to bring hope to the world, they want to tell their story and make sure that it never happens again. So for me, the film is about hope,’’ said Bagnarello, who was in Tokyo on her first visit since the voyage for the screening.
Kunimoto, whose film shed light on hibakusha of a younger generation than the seasoned activists, said, ‘‘What is really important is that we think by ourselves how we can respond to the stories of hibakusha…I hope to offer a catalyst for that.’‘
Both admitted, however, that they joined the voyage as staff filmmakers initially to travel around the world free of charge.
A freelance director for corporate videos and commercials for the Costa Rican market, Bagnarello had not made a documentary before, and Kunimoto was an amateur video maker earning a salary in an unrelated business until he made it a career after the voyage to make web videos for a radio station.Read the whole story:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/entertainment-arts/view/films-by-young-directors-shed-new-light-on-a-bomb-survivors
