Free Republic

South Koreans Experience What It's Like To Die -- and Live Again Across South Korea, entrepreneurs are holding controversial forums aimed at teaching clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death. They use mortality as a personal motivator. People lie in caskets at the Coffin Academy, during a controversial seminar that uses death as inspiration for character improvement. Clients pay $25 for a four-hour course that ends with them lying for 10 minutes in a closed coffin. [Pic in URL] John M. Glionna January 4, 2010 Reporting from Daejeon, South Korea - For Jung Joon, the moment of truth...

(AP) A Taliban spokesman reiterated Sunday that the militants soon will free two sick, female South Korean hostages but said the timing of the release hasn't yet been decided. The international Red Cross said it had no information about an upcoming release. A roadside bomb blast, meanwhile, killed three U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan, bringing to five the number of international troops killed over the weekend, officials said. Also Sunday, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf addressed more than 600 Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders at a jirga, or tribal council, aimed at finding ways to stem Afghanistan's rising bloodshed. Musharraf...

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - South Korean officials scrambled Friday to free 21 aid workers held by Afghanistan's Taliban, who said they had been told their key demand for a release of captured fighters would be met. With two other aid workers already shot dead and the rest under threat of death, Afghan provincial officials and the hardline Islamic militia said there were plans for a face-to-face meeting between the Taliban and a South Korean delegation. That was not confirmed by the South Korean government, but Seoul -- backed by relatives of the hostages -- has repeatedly stated its stiff opposition...