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For months the young emperor to the north has been threatening to turn this thriving metropolis into a "sea of fire." But it's not easy to ruffle the jaunty vibe of 75-year-old Kim Chong-shik as he strolls among young couples and shoppers along the boutiques of the Gangnam District.

Living well, it's said, is the best revenge.All kinds of replica designer handbags in our online store sells at Wholesale price, welcome to buy top quality replica handbags in our online store!!! "I never imagined it would be like this," he says, grinning, not far from a playfully misplaced sign on a coffeehouse: Beverly Hills City Limits.

The retired civil servant, who remembers the Korean War and its miserable aftermath, cuts a dapper figure against a springtime cold snap, a green silk scarf peeking out from his handsome wool overcoat.

Why so stylish? "Because I live here!"

Ten million people live in Seoul, the heart of a huge sprawl that is home to half of the Republic of Korea's 49 million people. It is a hard-charging, high-pressure, high-tech hub of the 21st-century global economy – and sits in the cross hairs of an enemy who seems unaware the cold war ended a generation ago. North Korean missile installations are just 30 miles away – and now the threats are nuclear.

Yet not long ago, the dream of a single Korea – reconciled in peace like Germany, not through war like Vietnam – seemed like a destiny within reach. As recently as two months ago, Koreans from the south were still crossing the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to go to work alongside 50,000 northerners at the Kaesong industrial park, a legacy of the South's old "Sunshine Policy" of reconciliation. The Kaesong facility opened four years after athletes from both Koreas marched into the 2000 Sydney Olympics under a flag depicting a united peninsula. That same year South Korea's president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And Koreans have long embraced the idea that they are of "one blood." A January 2011 survey by the Korean Broadcasting System found that 71.6 percent of South Koreans favored reunification,View Michael Kors Handbags Outlet 2013 Collection. Buy Cheap Michael Kors Handbags Outlet at Michael kors handbags outlet online store. and nearly as many said they would be willing to pay taxes to support it.

But the ardor for reunification has cooled with a new round of tensions this year. Pyongyang's threats appear to have decimated the southerners' goodwill: In just six months there was a precipitous drop in the number of South Koreans who consider northerners a "neighbor" or "one of us," from 64.2 percent as late as November 2012 to 37.3 percent in late April, and a spike to 46 percent considering northerners as strangers at best, if not enemies.

North Korea's new weaponry and "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-un's bombast – including recent nuclear and missile tests – raise fears that a single Korea might happen in the worst way possible, through horrible violence.

Thoughts of a path to unity make Kim Chong-shik's smile disappear: "I worry about it a lot. We've gone in opposite directions. The differences are so great. It would be very difficult."

South Korea has never been so prosperous, so gregarious, so hip – so much so that it seems as if the nation sneaked up on the world.With avant-garde design, best quality materials and the most subtle quality, replica hublot watches is the best alternative for expensive watches.

As "the American century" fades, and the 21st century is said to "belong to China," it may make more sense to speak of "the Asian century" – and now is South Korea's moment. And in that moment, it shines in such stark contrast to the sad state of North Korea – so impoverished its people literally stand a few inches shorter than their southern cousins. The peninsula's bipolar condition is reflected most aptly in its leading personalities. The stocky K-pop party rocker Psy spreads "Gangnam Style" to the world while the North's pudgy supreme leader, like his father and grandfather before him, spreads menace, Pyongyang style.

The nuclear saber-rattling may have prompted the United States in March to add B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers to its annual military exercises with South Korea, but there are few outward signs of distress among South Koreans themselves. Seoul's stock market took it all in stride, and 50,000 Psy fans jammed a Seoul stadium for a mid-April concert that premièred his new song and video "Gentleman," in which Psy does not seem gentlemanly at all. Nobody expects him or any act, anywhere, to soon top the 1.5 billion-plus YouTube viewings of "Gangnam Style."

Psy's global success has made him a national hero. He is, in a sense, a flamboyant, fun-loving, globe-trotting version of the "industrial warriors" hailed by South Korean politicians for transforming this small nation into an economic powerhouse. While the Korean Wave exports K-pop and TV and film dramas far and wide, the rest of South Korea Inc. keeps cranking out computer chips, smart phones, TVs, autos, oil tankers, and container ships, while also building skyscrapers, highways, and shopping malls at home and abroad. In the first quarter of 2013, as Pyongyang started to act up,Welcome to Michael Kors Handbags Outlet online now. South Korea's gross domestic product jumped markedly over recent quarters. Samsung Electronics recorded a 42 percent spike in profits in its sixth straight quarter of growth as it pulls away from Apple in the smart-phone market.

South Koreans, clearly, aren't easily distracted. At Hyundai Motor Group headquarters, Doh Bo-eun, a mild-mannered economist and father of teenage girls, explains that it's pointless to dwell on Pyongyang when his duty is to study how the European Union's troubles may affect auto exports.

Over at the entertainment firm CJ E&M – Psy's label – music division president Ahn Joon likens North Korea's threats to a mild illness, and says he worries more about ways to keep K-pop popping. That's why the colorfully coiffed Wonder Boyz put in marathon rehearsals at a Gangnam studio, working to make it big before they must report for compulsory military duty.

Until recently, South Korea only seemed to make news when North Korea caused trouble. Today's confrontation may portend more than the lethal violence of 2010, when 46 South Korean sailors were killed in the sinking of the naval vessel Cheonan, and later two marines and two civilians were killed in the shelling of the Yeonpyeong Islands. (North Korea denies being responsible for the sinking; an international investigation concludes it was.) At that time,Guarantee High quality replica watches supply, Thousands of luxury designer cheap replica watches that compliments your Style. South Korea's cooler heads prevailed, opting for a measured military retaliation against North Korean gun positions and vowing harsher payback for further attacks. The vow continues under newly elected Park Geun-hye, the nation's first female president and the daughter of a former military dictator credited with laying the foundation for South Korea's success and creating its Ministry of Unification. Yet even after the sinking of the Cheonan, Ms. Park's predecessor, President Lee Myung-bak, was optimistic enough to propose a "reunification tax" to prepare the country for its likely destiny.