The Japanese topped Cuba in the inaugural Classic in 2006, then South Korea three years later.

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No less important, American military officers helped make abortion the population control tool of choice in those Asian countries where they wielded influence, first in Japan in the late 1940s and 1950s, then South Korea in the 1960s.

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Japan, then South Korea, then China.

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Hosts China then beat South Korea 3-0 in Guangzhou on Sunday to win the Sudirman Cup for a seventh time.

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It is ironic, then, that South Korea's traffic setup was adopted from the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System, an ITS forefather pushed by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration in the early 1990s.

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And then there is South Korea.

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The 16-team tournament continues on Monday, as Group C kicks off with outsiders India playing Asia's top-ranked team Australia and then two-time champions South Korea taking on Bahrain.

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Then, Japan's government was slower than South Korea's to set up an emergency relief operation.

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South Korea's Kospi opened higher but then gave up its gains by midday.

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The backslapping that took place last year, with visits by South Korea's president and America's then secretary of state, now seems rather distant.

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Delegates from the UK, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ireland, China and Japan then participated in a series of collaborative workshops, which gave an opportunity to share ideas about using film for regeneration.

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That risk would amount to something only if deeper trouble in South Korea caused Japanese banks to fold, if Japan's authorities then failed to contain that crisis in their own monetary system, and (assuming the highest degree of contagion) if Western central banks then failed to protect theirs.

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The bank argues that when, in 1995-98, the yen fell sharply against the dollar (and hence the Korean won, which was then pegged to the dollar), Japan did not grab any market share away from South Korea.

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For a while, it appeared that South Korea was making a go of it when it came to stem cells and cloning, but then it turned out that one of its leading researchers, Hwang Woo Suk, had faked results.

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