Author: Reporter

South Koreans reacted with joy and astonishment in October after learning that homegrown writer Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in literature, an unexpected moment that stoked national pride about the country’s growing cultural influence. Han, known for her experimental and often disturbing stories that explore human traumas and violence and incorporate the brutal moments of South Korea’s modern history, is the country’s first writer to win the preeminent award in world literature. Han’s triumph adds to the growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years included the successes of director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite,” the...

Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, the largest private energy company in Ukraine, pulls out a piece of paper with bar charts showing how much new electricity his company has brought online this year in the country versus how much Russian bombs have destroyed. Total electricity goes up, then down, then up, then down — capturing the company’s constant rebuilding each time Russian missile attacks take out a facility, which include wind and solar farms and thermal (coal or gas-fired) generating stations. The Russian strikes are part of a campaign to target energy infrastructure to reduce power in Ukraine as...

Sweden’s strong foraging culture could help determine how much radioactive fallout remains in the Scandinavian country, 38 years after the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority has asked mushroom-pickers to send samples of this season’s harvest for testing. The goal of the measurement project is to map the levels of Cesium-137 in mushrooms and see how much remains after the April 26, 1986 disaster at the Soviet nuclear power plant in what is now Ukraine. Cesium, the key radioactive material released in the fallout, has a half-life of some 30 years. It can build up in the...