During his career in Delft, Johannes Vermeer had been respected as an artist, but soon after his death at the end of the Dutch Golden Age he slipped quietly into obscurity, alongside many hundreds of others. A few connoisseurs maintained an interest in his work, but it wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that he was rediscovered. Since then his few remaining paintings have become among the most revered in the European canon.
Vermeer was born in the city of Delft in 1632, where he took over his father’s business as a dealer in paintings. He also trained as a painter, and at the end of 1653 was admitted to the city’s Guild of Saint Luke. The following year Delft was struck by a catastrophic explosion in a gunpowder store, destroying a large section of the city and its occupants.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (c 1654-56), oil on canvas, 158.5 x 141.5 cm, The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland. Wikimedia Commons.
Vermeer’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is his largest surviving painting, and probably one of his earliest, dating from about 1654-56. It’s unusual among them for its religious theme.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Officer and Laughing Girl (c 1657-58), oil on canvas, 50.5 x 46 cm, The Frick Collection, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
By about 1657-58, when he painted Officer and Laughing Girl, he had found form in the compositional approach for which he is most famous. Figures going about their everyday lives are seen in the daylight cast from windows on the left. The map depicted so meticulously has been identified as that made of Holland and West Friesland by Willem Blaeu and Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode. Unfortunately, no other complete copy of that map has survived, but its second edition was published by Blaeu in 1621, and that’s believed to be on display here, as shown in the detail below.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Officer and Laughing Girl (detail) (c 1657), oil on canvas, 50.5 x 46 cm, The Frick Collection, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (c 1658), oil on canvas, 83 × 64.5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.
Some of these paintings feature heavy curtains in the foreground, drawn back to reveal Vermeer’s subject behind. Among those is his Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (c 1658), where its railed curtain gives an air of intimacy, suggesting the viewer is peeping past the curtain and gazing in at real and private life.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Milkmaid (c 1658-59), oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
The Milkmaid, probably from about 1658-59, is perhaps Vermeer’s first true masterpiece, and introduces the optical effects for which he is now best-known.
A milkmaid is pouring milk from a jug, beside a tabletop with bread. In the left foreground the bread and pots rest on a folded Dutch octagonal table, covered with a mid-blue cloth. A wicker basket of bread is nearest the viewer, broken and smaller pieces of different types of bread behind and towards the woman, in the centre. Behind the bread is a dark blue studded mug with pewter lid, and just in front of the woman (to the right of the mug) a brown earthenware ‘Dutch oven’ pot into which the milk is being poured. An ultramarine blue cloth (matching the woman’s apron) rests at the edge of the table.
The woman, seen in three-quarter view, wears working dress: a stiff, white linen cap, a yellow jacket laced at the front, a brilliant ultramarine blue apron, and a dull red skirt underneath. Her right hand holds the handle of a brown earthenware pitcher, which she supports from below with her left hand. Her work sleeves are pushed up to lay both her weathered forearms bare to the elbow. Her strong-featured face and eyes are cast down, watching the milk as it runs into the pot.
More remarkable still is the visible blurring.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Milkmaid (detail) (c 1658-59), oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
Edges and detail are sharpest around her left shoulder and upper arm, and soften as you look away towards her hands and the pitcher. Highlights on that pitcher and the pot below it are also decidedly blurry, suggesting this is intended as a depth of field effect.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Milkmaid (detail) (c 1658-59), oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
Bread and other objects on the table in front of the woman also show controlled use of blurring, most obviously in the highlights on the wicker basket.
At some time around 1660, Vermeer painted a couple of cityscapes that are his only surviving non-figurative paintings.
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), The Little Street (c 1657-1661), oil on canvas, 54.3 x 44 cm, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. WikiArt.
Above is his view of a street and its occupants in The Little Street, and below is his View of Delft waterfront. A third cityscape of a House Standing in Delft has been recorded but is now apparently lost.
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), View of Delft (c 1660-1), oil on canvas, 98.5 x 117.5 cm, Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, Mauritshuis, The Hague. WikiArt.Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Woman Holding a Balance (c 1662-64), oil on canvas, 39.7 x 35.5 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.
His Woman Holding a Balance from around 1662-64 shows a young woman who is pregnant holding an empty balance in front of a collection of pearls and gold. Its focus is noticeably softer than his earlier paintings. The edges of the tabletop in the centre of the canvas and the woman’s left hand are the crispest, and those further from that are softer, as would be consistent with depth of field effects.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (c 1662-64), oil on canvas, 45.7 x 40.6 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
Similar effects are seen in Vermeer’s better-lit Young Woman with a Water Pitcher from the same period. Here the central focus is in the upper chest of the figure, where the edge between the split in her white mantle and the underlying deep ultramarine clothing is crispest, and the reflections on the pitcher and bowl are blurry, again consistent with depth of field. So too is the window, which could indicate motion.
Amazingly, this painting was bought by Henry Gurdon Marquand in 1887 for a mere $800, and became the first of Vermeer’s paintings to enter an American collection.
The focus of the national grooming gangs inquiry "will not change" or be "watered down", Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has insisted.
Writing in the Times newspaper, Mahmoodsaid the wait for the appointment of the inquiry's chairperson will "not be much longer", adding that the government "must get this right".
Her intervention comes after three abuse survivors quit their roles in the inquiry this week over fears that its scope could be widenedbeyond grooming gangs- and concerns about who would chair the inquiry.
In her resignation letter, survivor "Elizabeth" - not her real name - said the process felt like "a cover-up" and had "created a toxic environment for survivors".
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in June there would be a national inquiry into grooming gangs covering England and Wales, with a panel of survivors set up to oversee the process.
But three abuse survivors have accused officials of trying to water down the inquiry by broadening its scope to wider issues of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
There is alsofrustration around the length of time it has taken to appoint a chairperson, with some seeing this as a delay tactic because of fears of what might be exposed.
Survivors have raised concerns about the suitability of the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry - including Annie Hudson, a former senior social worker, and Jim Gamble, a former deputy chief constable.
Another survivor, Ellie Reynolds, suggested having "establishment insiders representing the very systems that failed us" as potential chairs was a conflict of interest.
Ms Reynolds, who was abused by a gang of Pakistani brothers in Barrow, told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour: "If they were that serious in appointing a chair that was actually going to succeed in this inquiry they would not have picked a police officer or a social worker.
"It should have been a judge - it should have been somebody that was completely impartial and non-biased."
Watch: Abuse survivor Ellie Reynolds says a judge should lead grooming gangs inquiry
Ms Reynolds said the "final turning point" in her decision to quit was a move to widen the inquiry "in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse".
Elizabeth said she had seen "selective narratives being promoted - ones that appear to serve particular agendas, especially around issues of race and the narrative of widening the scope".
She told the BBC she had wanted a chair who was "legally" trained and "impartial".
Annie Hudson has withdrawn her candidacy for chair, the BBC has been told.
In her article for the Times, Mahmood said it was with "a heavy heart" that she learned some members of the panel had stepped down.
"Should they wish to return, the door will always remain open to them," Mahmood wrote. "But even if they do not, I owe it to them – and the country – to answer some of the concerns that they have raised."
She also said the inquiry will "explicitly examine the ethnicity and religion of offenders".
"I know that some are frustrated that they are still waiting for this inquiry to begin. I understand that frustration. And I feel it myself," Mahmood added.
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips had earlier said it was "untrue" the government was seeking to dilute the focus of the inquiry.
Responding to the resignations of Ms Goddard and Ms Reynolds in the House of Commons, Phillips said she regretted the departure of the two women but added: "My door is always open to them."
She also insisted "not all victims are of the same opinion" and she would continue to engage with all survivors.
Phillips added that the inquiry panel of victims from which Ms Reynolds and Ms Goddard resigned was not managed by the government, but by a grooming gang charity.
But Ms Goddard said the safeguarding minister's denials were a "blatant lie", and later told GB News that she would "consider" returning to the panel, but only if Phillips resigned.
Ms Goddard said there were "many" members of the survivors' panel who were not victims of grooming gangs but different types of child sexual abuse and exploitation, and that only these individuals were pushing for a wider inquiry.
A Home Office spokesperson said the inquiry "will remain laser-focused on grooming gangs", as Baroness Casey had recommended when calling for a national inquiry to be set up.
"In order to meaningfully consult with victims and survivors about the terms of reference, we need to ask them questions and listen to their responses." the spokesperson added.
"That is not expanding the scope - it is ensuring their voices shape the inquiry."
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the government's inquiry was "descending into chaos".
He said that ministers had been "forced" into holding the inquiry in June adding: "Perhaps that is why, months later, the government has said nothing substantive publicly."
The Conservatives have called for the inquiry to be chaired by a senior judge to guarantee impartiality and restore faith in the process.
Phillips rejected that suggestion, arguing that Baroness Casey had said she did not want a traditional judicial-led inquiry.
The minister also stressed the difficulty of finding a chair who was not attached to an institution "that didn't fail these girls over the years, including our courts who took the children away from grooming gang victims, who criminalised some of them".
"There is no institution in our country that hasn't failed," she added.
The UK inflation rate has remained stable at 3.8% in September, which was lower than expectations, official figures show.
Britain's inflation rate was also 3.8% in July and August, according to the Office for National Statistics, which is still much higher than the Bank of England's 2% target.
However, the central bank's economists had forecast inflation to rise to 4% in September.
ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner said: "The largest upward drivers came from petrol prices and airfares, where the fall in prices eased in comparison to last year."
He added: "These were offset by lower prices for a range of recreational and cultural purchases including live events."
The inflation figures for the past three months were the joint-highest recorded since January 2024, when the rate was 4%, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Debris from Russian air strikes damaged buildings in several areas of Kyiv
Intense Russian drone and missile strikes on cities in Ukraine have left at least six people dead, including two children, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Another 21 people were wounded, in another night of attacks that he said proved Moscow had not come under enough pressure for its continued war.
Hours earlier, US President Donald Trump said his plans for an imminent summit in Budapest with Russia's Vladimir Putin had been shelved as he did not want a "wasted meeting".
The Kremlin has rejected calls for a ceasefire along the current front lines made both Trump and European leaders.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's military said it had attacked a Russian chemical plant in the Bryansk border region late on Tuesday with UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.
Calling the strike "a successful hit" that penetrated the Russian air defence system, military officials said the Bryansk plant "produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine".
"As soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further away for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy," Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian capital came under a wave of attacks overnight, the first such strikes since 28 September.
A couple in their 60s were killed when a drone hit their high-rise building in the city, and four people were killed in the wider Kyiv region. Among the victims were a woman, a six-month-old baby and a girl aged 12.
The capital was under a ballistic missile warning for most of the night, and echoed to the sound of explosions. By morning rescue teams fought fires in residential buildings.
Across Ukraine, Russian attacks once again targeted energy infrastructure and emergency power outages were imposed in several areas.
The cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will cost an estimated £1.9bn and be the most economically damaging cyber event in UK history, according to researchers.
Experts at the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) have analysed the continuing fallout from the hack, which halted the car giant's production on 1 September for five weeks and caused widespread delays across JLR's supply chain.
According to the CMC, 5,000 businesses have been affected in total and a full recovery will not be reached until January 2026.
JLR declined to comment on the research but said it is bringing portions of manufacturing back online in a phased approach.
The CMC is an independent, non-profit organisation that analyses and categorises cyber events, which impact the UK financially.
It has classified the JLR incident as a Category 3 event, which is significant. Category 5 is the most severe.
Ciaran Martin, chair of the CMC's technical committee said: "With a cost of nearly £2bn, this incident looks to have been by some distance, the single most financially damaging cyber event ever to hit the UK.
"That should make us all pause and think. Every organisation needs to identify the networks that matter to them, and how to protect them better, and then plan for how they'd cope if the network gets disrupted."
This is the second report published by the CMC, which uses publicly available information, surveys and interviews with industry experts and victims to make its assessments.
Although the National Cyber Security Centre also categorises cyber attacks depending on how severe they are, it does not publish its findings.
The hack began in late August causing an IT shutdown and a halt in global manufacturing operations, including its major UK plants at Solihull, Halewood, and Wolverhampton.
Dealer systems were intermittently unavailable, and suppliers faced cancelled or delayed orders, with uncertainty about future supply.
The CMC said it estimated the damage to be in the range of £1.6bn and £2.1bn but predicts it to be around the £1.9bn figure.
More than half of the cost will be shouldered by JLR itself including loss of earnings and the cost of recovery.
The rest is estimated to be incurred by the 5,000 firms in JLR's supply chain, as well as the local economy including hospitality and other services.
But CMC researchers admit their estimates are based on assumptions about the hack as JLR has not said publicly what type of cyber attack it's dealing with.
A data theft and extortion attack is far easier to recover from, for example, than a ransomware attack which scrambles a victim's computer network.
A wiper attack that infects computer networks and destroys data with no hope of reversal is even more serious.
Shortly after the hack was revealed on JLR, a group of hackers thought to be young, English-speaking and linked to previous high profile hacks claimed to be behind it. But this has not been confirmed.
The CMC also says it has not factored in any potential ransom payment that JLR might have paid to hackers which could be in the tens of millions.
Previously the CMC categorised the wave of retail hacks against M&S, the Co-op and Harrods in the spring as a Category 2 event.
It estimated those cyber attacks would cost between £270m and £440m, which was lower than the £506m cited by M&S and the Co-op.
Gaza health crisis will last 'for generations', says WHO chief
Gaza is experiencing a health "catastrophe" that will last for "generations to come", the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a massive increase in aid is needed to begin to address the complex needs of the Strip's population.
Israel has allowed more medical supplies and other aid to cross into Gaza since a ceasefire with Hamas came into effect on 10 October, but Dr Tedros said levels are below those needed to rebuild the territory's healthcare system.
The agreement has been described by the White House as the first phase of a 20-point peace plan that includes an increase to the amount of aid entering Gaza, and supplies distributed "without interference" from either side.
Dr Tedros told the Today programme he welcomed the ceasefire deal but said the increase in aid that followed has been smaller than expected.
Asked about the situation on the ground, he said Gazans had experienced famine, "overwhelming" injuries, a collapsed healthcare system, and outbreaks of disease fuelled by the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure.
He continued: "On top of that, [there is] restricted access to humanitarian aid. This is a very fatal combination, so that makes [the situation] catastrophic and beyond words."
Asked about long-term health prospects in Gaza, he added: "If you take the famine and combine it with a mental health problem which we see is rampant, then the situation is a crisis for generations to come."
Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said earlier this week that aid groups are "turning the tide on the starvation crisis" but that "far more" was needed.
On Tuesday, the UN's World Food Programme said lorries carrying more than 6,700 tonnes of food had entered since 10 October, but that was still considerably below its 2,000-tonnes-a-day target.
Six hundred aid lorries a day need to be arriving in Gaza but the average is between 200 and 300, Dr Tedros said, as he called on Israeli authorities to "de-link" aid and the wider conflict.
Reuters
People were seen collecting boxes containing World Food Programme aid in central Gaza on Tuesday
On Sunday, Israel temporarily halted aid deliveries after it said two Israeli troops were killed in an attack by Hamas gunmen in Gaza. Hamas said at the time it was not aware of the clashes.
The Israeli military responded with a series of air strikes across the territory, killing dozens of Palestinians.
The aid deliveries resumed the following day after heavy international pressure.
Dr Tedros said aid should not be "weaponised" and called on Israel not to impose conditions on its delivery, including over the return of the remains of dead hostages still in Gaza, which has become a key point of contention during the ceasefire.
Hamas has committed to returning the bodies but so far has transferred only 15 of 28, saying it has not been able to retrieve the rest.
Twenty living Israeli hostages were released by Hamas last week in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.
Dr Tedros told Today: "There should be full access, there should not be any condition, especially after all the living hostages were released, and a good part of the remains are transferred. I did not expect there would be additional restrictions."
Asked about the role the US should play, Dr Tedros said "since the US has brokered the peace deal it has the responsibility of making sure that all sides are respecting" it.
Israel is currently operating two crossings - Kerem Shalom in the south-east, and Kissufim in central Gaza - but it has continued to face calls from aid groups for all the access routes it controls to be restored.
Dr Tedros said "all available crossings" were needed to get enough aid into Gaza, and called on Israel to allow aid groups previously been denied registration back into the territory, saying: "You can't have a scaled up response without those who can deliver on the ground."
Reuters
Major aid groups have called for the number of lorries carrying aid supplies into Gaza to be increased more quickly
He also said supplies intended be used to restore Gaza's health system have been confiscated at the border because Israeli authorities say they could have a military use.
"If you are going to build a field hospital, you need the canvas and the pillars [for tents]," he continued. "So if the pillars are removed, because of an excuse that they could be dual-use, then you can't have a tent."
Thousands of Palestinians are waiting for weekly medical evacuation flights, Dr Tedros said, though none have taken off for two weeks due to religious holidays in Israel. He said 700 people have previously died while waiting for medical evacuation and called on the number of flights to be increased.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.
At least 68,229 have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN has previously estimated it will cost $70bn (£52bn) to reconstruct Gaza. Dr Tedros said around 10% of that figure would need to be spent on its badly damaged health system.
He continued: "We have been saying for a long time that peace is the best medicine.
"The ceasefire we have is a very fragile one and some people have died even after the ceasefire because it was broken a couple of times.
"What is very sad is many people were cheering in the streets because they were very happy there was a peace deal. Imagine, [some of] those same people are dead after they were told the war is over."
Burcu Yesilyurt says she had "no clue" it was illegal to dispose of liquid in a road gully
A woman says she was "shocked" when she was fined £150 for tipping the remnants of her coffee down a road gully in west London.
Burcu Yesilyurt, who lives in Kew, said she thought she was acting "responsibly" when she poured out a small amount of coffee from her reusable cup down the drain rather than risk spilling it on the bus she was about to catch to work.
Richmond-upon-Thames Council said its officers "acted professionally and objectively" and that the fine was issued in line with its policies.
Ms Yesilyurt said: "I noticed my bus was approaching, so I just poured the leftover bit. It wasn't much, it was just a tiny little bit.
"As soon as I turned around, I noticed three men, enforcement officers, chasing me, and they stopped me immediately."
Ms Yesilyurt said she thought they were going to speak with her about an issue with the bus when she was stopped on 10 October, and had "no clue" pouring liquid into a road gully was illegal.
"It was quite a shock," she said.
Ms Yesilyurt said she had asked the enforcements officers if there were any signs or information warning people of the law but received no response.
Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 makes it an offence to deposit or dispose of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water, including pouring liquids into street drains.
Getty Images
The council says it is "committed to protecting Richmond's waterways"
Ms Yesilyurt was fined £150 which can be reduced to £100 if paid within 14 days.
She said the encounter with the officers was "quite intimidating" and she was left feeling "shaky" as she went into work.
A Richmond Council spokesperson said that body-worn camera footage had been reviewed and they did "not agree that officers behaved aggressively".
"Footage confirms the officers acted professionally and were sensitive to the circumstances," they added.
Last month, Irene and Lily went to South Korea to report on a twinset of robotics conferences. Here are a few notes from their travels.
On Korean Beauty
Irene:
Hallyu — the “Korean Wave” of pop culture that began spreading internationally in the 2000s — taught my generation of Asian Americans/Canadians how to style ourselves. We grew up with few relatable points of reference in mainstream Western culture, as our physical features rarely aligned with American beauty standards. K-pop built an alternative, affordable framework during our coming-of-age, and it was impossible to miss its influence even if you (like me) never consumed much of the music or TV dramas.
Goryeo (the royal dynasty that ruled the Korean Peninsula from 918 to 1392) began sending women by the hundreds as tributary gifts to the Chinese empire during the Tang dynasty. The Middle Kingdom, from then on, routinely scoured the Peninsula for beauties. The third Ming emperor, Yongle, was recorded to have favored a concubine surnamed Kwon from Joseon (the dynasty that followed Goryeo). After Kwon died at the age of 20 in 1410, the Yongle Emperor sentenced perhaps thousands of women from his harem to death on suspicion of poisoning Kwon, according to one Korean chronicle.
Japan’s colonial rule forced between 50,000 and 200,000 Korean girls and women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” for the army. After the Second World War, another vast sex trade sprang up around American-led army bases across South Korea, with girls and women trafficked by their own government to provide “morale” to UN troops and bring in millions of foreign money for the economy.
Beauty remains one of Korea’s most prominent exports. Multilingual advertisements for plastic surgery sprawl throughout Seoul’s affluent Gangnam neighborhood. There is seemingly an Olive Young on every street corner and endless high-end options in shining department stores. The industry works hard to conceal the dark historical context behind Korea’s coerced preoccupation with female beauty, while continuing to push what sociologist Rosalind Gill calls the “surveillant gaze”: symbolic images of measuring tapes, cameras, and microscopes that incite women to constantly monitor and regulate themselves. K-pop labels routinely debut girls as young as fourteen to appeal to teens, both locally and internationally. Appearance-based discrimination is endemic; journalist Elise Hu writes in Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital that for Korean women in the 21st century, looking pretty is “the price of entry in the labor market.”
Lily:
I’m a size small in America, a medium in Taiwan, and a large in South Korea.
For a country with such a famous beauty industry, the selection of lip colors and finishes is extremely limited. Nearly every Korean lip product is sheer, glossy, and pink, formulated to stain your lips for a longer-lasting effect. Eyeshadow palettes lack pigment and are similarly uninspired. While American makeup brands market their products as tools of self-expression, cosmetic advertisements in Korea use words like “perfection” 완벽 and “improvement” 개선 to draw consumers’ attention.
We found this book in Seoul’s Starfield Library, which was overflowing with influencers.
Korean sunscreen, however, is excellent, as are the face masks and jelly foundation cushions (provided you can find one in your shade). The products are very affordable compared to American cosmetics. I browsed many Olive Young stores that were packed with shoppers, yet the single aisle dedicated to American and European brands was always totally desolate.
An example of a Korean foundation cushion. Idols and cartoon characters are prominently featured in cosmetic advertising/packaging. Source.
Dark, matte, opaque lip colors like this are very rare in Korea. Source.
Similarly, people seem to prefer beige or pink nail polish. I got a set of dark red gel nails done during my trip, and while the service was very fast with lots of attention paid to cuticle care, the final product was unfortunately lacking due to the technician’s lack of experience shaping stiletto (pointed) nails.
People don’t wear much color here either, and instead opt overwhelmingly for beige, white, black, brown, or muted shades of blue.
A storefront in Hongdae.
On Korean Food
Korea excels at making coffee taste good, and Korean people love coffee so much that we saw people sitting in cafes drinking coffee at 9 o’clock at night. In a similar vein, this country doesn’t rise particularly early — most businesses (including many coffee shops/cafes) don’t open until 10 or 11 am. Survey data indicates that South Koreans are highly sleep-deprived compared to other developed nations.
October is the peak month for gejang, raw crab seasoned with soy sauce. I was skeptical at first, but the crab we ate was incredibly fresh with a delicate and complex flavor.
Gejang with a side of raw shrimp.
One of my favorite dishes was North Korean-style cold noodles 물냉면, which are made of buckwheat and would fall apart if served hot. They come with julienned apples and a boiled egg, and are served in a refreshing broth with a bit of vinegar.
America supplied the ROK with food aid during the Korean War, and as a result, South Korea developed a serious taste for corn. Convenience stores carry cream-filled cornbread, corn-flavored ice cream, corn-flake-filled granola bars, corn chips, and rice balls full of corn and tuna. Teas made from roasted corn and corn silk are also popular beverages. Only 1% of this corn is actually grown in Korea — the vast majority is imported from the US.
Korea also consumes a truly staggering amount of fake sugar — ice cream proudly labeled “low sugar” is packed with stevia. The yogurt drinks and matcha lattes I ordered in cafes were sweetened with stevia by default, as were bottled teas and protein shakes in convenience stores.
Korean convenience stores have wonderful smoothie machines. For 3,000 KRW (US$2.10), you can pick out a cup of frozen fruit and have it blended in front of you. Be sure to purchase your fruit cup before you blend it to avoid violating smoothie procedure.
Chinese people have a joke that when you vacation in Korea, you get constipated due to the lack of green leafy vegetables. This joke ignores Kimchi and salads, of course — but it’s rare to find blanched greens of the sort that are ubiquitous in China and Taiwan.
Irene’s travelogue in Gwangju
I read Anton Hur 허정범’s 2022 short story “Escape from America” on the bus from Seoul to Gwangju. The great translator of contemporary Korean fiction writes his own dystopian tale: in a not-so-distant future, politics force him and his husband to flee America for South Korea, where democracy persists but their marriage is not recognized — a “reverse-Miss Saigon scenario,” the narrator notes sardonically. Fears of martial law, borders, gender wars — it all felt eerily prescient in the first months of new presidential administrations in both Korea and the US.
Korea’s Gwangju Uprising is often forgotten as an early chapter in the waves of pro-democracy movements that shaped postwar Asia. In part, that’s because the news simply didn’t get out. Only one Western reporter — Jürgen Hinzpeter for West Germany’s public broadcaster, whose experience was dramatized in 2017 by the film A Taxi Driver — was on site when troops began violently containing protesters on May 18th, 1980. Korean media was heavily censored at the time, and many outside South Jeolla Province, of which Gwangju was then the capital, did not learn of the killings until much later. The military dictatorship installed an effective blockade of the city for ten days, cutting off roads and phone lines, while local students and workers built a short-lived self-governance commune and organized themselves into citizens’ battalions.
Chun Doo-hwan 전두환, then-lieutenant general of the military and the main orchestrator of the massacre, officially became president three months later in 1980 and remained in power until 1988. For years after the massacre, Gwangju was a forbidden topic. The novelist Han Kang 한강, who became Gwangju’s most famous daughter with her Nobel Literature win in 2024, was in Seoul in 1980 and only found out about the atrocities from her father’s secret album of Hintzpeter’s photographs years later. The official death toll stands at 164 civilians, but many more disappeared or were not identified in time; the actual number of deaths may be in the thousands. An “unknown martyr” grave in the Gwangju May 18 National Cemetery contains the body of a 4-year-old child shot in the neck.
“That afternoon there was a rush of positive identifications, and there ended up being several different shrouding ceremonies going on at the same time, at various places along the corridor. The national anthem rang out like a circular refrain, one verse clashing with another against the constant background of weeping, and you listened with bated breath to the subtle dissonance this created. As though this, finally, might help you understand what the nation really was.”
— Human Acts, Han Kang (trans. Deborah Smith)
The “gwang”/광 in Gwangju corresponds to the Chinese character 光, which means light; Gwangju, then, is the Land of Light. I’ve never been to a city with as many commemorative statues as Gwangju. There is an entire park dedicated to statues in the western part of the main city, the government having commissioned artists to explore and immortalize the city’s history. A walk through the park crescendos with a large metal depiction of three students, their arms reaching forward and their faces bearing solemn expressions in a surprisingly socialist-realist style. Under their bodies is an entrance to an underground chamber, in which the names of all known victims surround another statue, this one of a mother holding the body of an agonizingly young teen — a modern Korean Pietà.
Gwangju is not just expressive about its past; it is passionately, thoroughly meticulous. The Jeonil Building, one of the city’s most iconic structures, has been renamed Jeonil 245 after the 245 bullet traces found on its top floors. The directions and depths of each trace conclusively prove that paratroopers shot at people from helicopters, a fact often disputed by those seeking to minimize the extent of cruelty inflicted on Gwangju’s people. Jeonil 245 contains an entire exhibition dedicated to repudiating false claims about Gwangju, including the oft-repeated far-right conspiracy that North Korea instigated the uprising. The nearby 518 Archives is a ten-floor building that houses documents about the events of May 1980. The top floor allows visitors to watch traffic underneath from the exact same windows where Catholic clergymen watched the military brutalize young students marching from Chonnam University. Some of those clergymen would later stage hunger strikes for democracy and clemency for protestors throughout the 1980s. The Old South Jeolla Provincial Hall, where resistance forces staged their last desperate fight, is currently being restored. Every single exhibit I went to was free to enter and had decent-to-excellent English signage.
This is because Gwangju knows its memory can be inconvenient. In the South Korean narrative, Gwangju’s dead are now martyrs who gave their lives for today’s democracy, but that extraordinary achievement does not feel complete. President Yoon Suk-yeol 윤석열, who demanded the death penalty for Chun Doo-hwan while a law student in the 1980s, briefly imposed martial law of his own in December 2024. Korean politics today, haunted by the North-South division, still struggles to move past Red Scare paranoia. On the American side, Washington’s complicity in the Gwangju Massacre is a delicate topic for the US-ROK alliance. President Jimmy Carter’s administration, judging maintenance of the security status quo in the Peninsula to be more important than its people’s democratic aspirations, authorized the use of South Korean troops under the Combined Forces Command against protestors. Declassified documents show that US intelligence judged the protests to be “riots” caused in part by “deep-seated historical, provincial antagonisms” in Jeolla, and feared exploitation by Pyongyang even without any evidence of North Korean instigation. Gwangju became one of the darkest, yet most obscure, chapters of the Carter years; the legacy he left in Asia was barely acknowledged when he passed away at the end of 2024. And finally, across the East China Sea, Gwangju strikes too obvious a parallel with China’s own event that must not be named. Han Kang’s Human Acts has never been translated into Simplified Chinese by any mainland publishing house, so Chinese readers have to resort to pirating the Taiwanese translation.
Efforts by public history institutions and civil society have allowed the year 1980 to persist in Korean popular memory, even before Han Kang’s recent Nobel win. UNESCO officially listed documents of the Gwangju Uprising on the Memory of the World Register in 2011, prompting a wave of public commemoration. In 2013, the K-pop boy band SPEED released a two-part music video set in Gwangju for their song “That’s my fault” 슬픈약속, to popular acclaim. Note how, at the 11:30 timestamp mark, the second video directly quotes the last broadcast made by Gwangju’s citizen militia at the end of the Uprising:
Protest songs from the Gwangju era have also outlived the Uprising. March for Our Beloved (임을 위한 행진곡), the most well-known one, is now a social movement ritual across Asia, having been adapted by activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and mainland China for a variety of causes. Citizens in Seoul once again sung it while protesting Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration in December 2024:
Gwangju today is known as Korea’s progressive hotspot, and there is indeed a Portlandia-esque energy coursing through the city. Hipster cafes, lush green parks, and private museums weave around statues of death and survival across the city’s main arteries. The central square, where protestors gathered again to call for the ousting of Park Geun-hye 박근혜 during the 2017 Candlelight Revolution, doubles as a futuristic plaza for the Asian Culture Center (ACC), which showcases experimental art from across the continent. I visited on a rain-drenched day, and there were still large crowds at the ACC enjoying a pan-Asian food festival and open-air dance film screening. The ACC’s ten-year anniversary exhibition, Manifesto of Spring, sports a headline piece with a brassy premise: in a not-too-distant future, democracy collapses in the West and a political refugee tries to immigrate to “Seoul Land” by participating in a population growth program.
The Land of Light, like the rest of us, is surrounded by the haunted fires of history. It insists on sifting through the ashes.
“Why are we walking in the dark, let’s go over there, where the flowers are blooming.”
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Tourism in Seoul
Lily:
Seoul is an underrated tourist destination. The city is full of beautiful green spaces connected by excellent public transit, and the early October weather was perfect for long strolls through the sloping streets.
Bongeunsa Temple.
“Etiquette is an unchanging form of respect.” Seoul’s metro mascot, an anthropomorphized train named Ddota (또타), reminds you not to run on the escalators or let your children misbehave.
The Korean writing system is a joy to learn, and just a little bit of study can really enrich your experience in Korea. It’s phonetic, and the letters elegantly fit together to form syllable blocks. The shape of the letters is also roughly based on the shape of your mouth when pronouncing each sound (for example, “ㄱ” makes a hard “g” sound, “ㄴ” makes the “n” sound, and “ㅈ” makes the “ch” sound). Irene and I had a great time sounding out menu items, buttons on appliances, and public transport signs, discovering tons of cognates with Chinese in the process. If you add a Korean keyboard to your phone, you can use the letter “ㅗ” to give someone the middle finger over text, and represent crying faces with “ㅠㅠ” and “ㅜㅜ”.
A statue of King Sejong, the inventor of the Korean writing system.
Debris from Russian air strikes damaged buildings in several areas of Kyiv
Intense Russian drone and missile strikes on cities in Ukraine have left at least six people dead, including two children, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Another 21 people were wounded, in another night of attacks that he said proved Moscow had not come under enough pressure for its continued war.
Hours earlier, US President Donald Trump said his plans for an imminent summit in Budapest with Russia's Vladimir Putin had been shelved as he did not want a "wasted meeting".
The Kremlin has rejected calls for a ceasefire along the current front lines made both Trump and European leaders.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's military said it had attacked a Russian chemical plant in the Bryansk border region late on Tuesday with UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.
Calling the strike "a successful hit" that penetrated the Russian air defence system, military officials said the Bryansk plant "produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine".
"As soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further away for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy," Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian capital came under a wave of attacks overnight, the first such strikes since 28 September.
A couple in their 60s were killed when a drone hit their high-rise building in the city, and four people were killed in the wider Kyiv region. Among the victims were a woman, a six-month-old baby and a girl aged 12.
The capital was under a ballistic missile warning for most of the night, and echoed to the sound of explosions. By morning rescue teams fought fires in residential buildings.
Across Ukraine, Russian attacks once again targeted energy infrastructure and emergency power outages were imposed in several areas.
Gaza health crisis will last 'for generations', says WHO chief
Gaza is experiencing a health "catastrophe" that will last for "generations to come", the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a massive increase in aid is needed to begin to address the complex needs of the Strip's population.
Israel has allowed more medical supplies and other aid to cross into Gaza since a ceasefire with Hamas came into effect on 10 October, but Dr Tedros said levels are below those needed to rebuild the territory's healthcare system.
The agreement has been described by the White House as the first phase of a 20-point peace plan that includes an increase to the amount of aid entering Gaza, and supplies distributed "without interference" from either side.
Dr Tedros told the Today programme he welcomed the ceasefire deal but said the increase in aid that followed has been smaller than expected.
Asked about the situation on the ground, he said Gazans had experienced famine, "overwhelming" injuries, a collapsed healthcare system, and outbreaks of disease fuelled by the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure.
He continued: "On top of that, [there is] restricted access to humanitarian aid. This is a very fatal combination, so that makes [the situation] catastrophic and beyond words."
Asked about long-term health prospects in Gaza, he added: "If you take the famine and combine it with a mental health problem which we see is rampant, then the situation is a crisis for generations to come."
Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said earlier this week that aid groups are "turning the tide on the starvation crisis" but that "far more" was needed.
On Tuesday, the UN's World Food Programme said lorries carrying more than 6,700 tonnes of food had entered since 10 October, but that was still considerably below its 2,000-tonnes-a-day target.
Six hundred aid lorries a day need to be arriving in Gaza but the average is between 200 and 300, Dr Tedros said, as he called on Israeli authorities to "de-link" aid and the wider conflict.
Reuters
People were seen collecting boxes containing World Food Programme aid in central Gaza on Tuesday
On Sunday, Israel temporarily halted aid deliveries after it said two Israeli troops were killed in an attack by Hamas gunmen in Gaza. Hamas said at the time it was not aware of the clashes.
The Israeli military responded with a series of air strikes across the territory, killing dozens of Palestinians.
The aid deliveries resumed the following day after heavy international pressure.
Dr Tedros said aid should not be "weaponised" and called on Israel not to impose conditions on its delivery, including over the return of the remains of dead hostages still in Gaza, which has become a key point of contention during the ceasefire.
Hamas has committed to returning the bodies but so far has transferred only 15 of 28, saying it has not been able to retrieve the rest.
Twenty living Israeli hostages were released by Hamas last week in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.
Dr Tedros told Today: "There should be full access, there should not be any condition, especially after all the living hostages were released, and a good part of the remains are transferred. I did not expect there would be additional restrictions."
Asked about the role the US should play, Dr Tedros said "since the US has brokered the peace deal it has the responsibility of making sure that all sides are respecting" it.
Israel is currently operating two crossings - Kerem Shalom in the south-east, and Kissufim in central Gaza - but it has continued to face calls from aid groups for all the access routes it controls to be restored.
Dr Tedros said "all available crossings" were needed to get enough aid into Gaza, and called on Israel to allow aid groups previously been denied registration back into the territory, saying: "You can't have a scaled up response without those who can deliver on the ground."
Reuters
Major aid groups have called for the number of lorries carrying aid supplies into Gaza to be increased more quickly
He also said supplies intended be used to restore Gaza's health system have been confiscated at the border because Israeli authorities say they could have a military use.
"If you are going to build a field hospital, you need the canvas and the pillars [for tents]," he continued. "So if the pillars are removed, because of an excuse that they could be dual-use, then you can't have a tent."
Thousands of Palestinians are waiting for weekly medical evacuation flights, Dr Tedros said, though none have taken off for two weeks due to religious holidays in Israel. He said 700 people have previously died while waiting for medical evacuation and called on the number of flights to be increased.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.
At least 68,229 have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN has previously estimated it will cost $70bn (£52bn) to reconstruct Gaza. Dr Tedros said around 10% of that figure would need to be spent on its badly damaged health system.
He continued: "We have been saying for a long time that peace is the best medicine.
"The ceasefire we have is a very fragile one and some people have died even after the ceasefire because it was broken a couple of times.
"What is very sad is many people were cheering in the streets because they were very happy there was a peace deal. Imagine, [some of] those same people are dead after they were told the war is over."
Sixty-three people have died after several vehicles crashed on a highway in Uganda, police said on Wednesday.
Two buses travelling in opposite directions "met head on" while trying to overtake two other vehicles on the Kampala-Gulu Highway at 00:15 local time (21:15 GMT), according to the Uganda Police Force.
One of the buses swerved in an attempt to avoid a crash, but in the process caused a "head on and side collision" that led to a "chain reaction" in which other vehicles lost control and overturned.
As well as the fatalities, passengers of the vehicles involved, and several others, were injured, police said, and an investigation has been launched.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
Ten months after rebels toppled the long-entrenched Assad regime, little-checked bloodshed has led many Syrians to abandon hope that the years of brutality may be over.
Sealing off the entrance to the Louvre on Sunday. The thieves left the museum by climbing back down the ladder, then made their getaway with two other accomplices who were waiting on motor scooters.
Republicans have recruited a Sununu to run for Senate in New Hampshire after all.
Former Sen. John E. Sununu said Wednesday that he is running to reclaim the seat he held for a single term before Democrat Jeanne Shaheen ousted him in 2008. Shaheen is retiring next year.
“Maybe you’re surprised to hear that I’m running for the Senate again. I’m a bit surprised myself. Why would anyone subject themselves to everything going on there right now?” Sununu said in a launch video posted online Wednesday morning. “Well, somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done.”
The scion of a prominent GOP political dynasty, Sununu, 61, likely gives Republicans their best chance of flipping the seat after his brother, former Gov. Chris Sununu, rejected the party’s recruitment efforts for another cycle.
John E. Sununu brings access to his family’s fundraising machine and boasts close relationships with members of Senate GOP leadership, including Majority Leader John Thune. National and state Republicans consider him a strong candidate. Early polls put him ahead in the GOP primary and show him as the most competitive Republican against the Democratic front-runner, Rep. Chris Pappas.
Sununu has been in talks with the White House about his campaign and will soon meet with President Donald Trump about it, POLITICO first reported. Trump’s endorsement would be critical in the GOP primary, even though the state’s broader electorate thrice rejected him for president.
But Sununu’s path to securing Trump’s nod — and the GOP nomination — is not clear.
Sununu has long opposed Trump, serving as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president in 2024. He penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a “loser” ahead of New Hampshire’s presidential primary last year (Trump went on to win by 11 points). He later derided Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “completely inappropriate” through his position with the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan group focused on restoring public trust in election security.
And Sununu faces another former senator, Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts before moving to New Hampshire and mounting an unsuccessful bid to unseat Shaheen in 2014. Brown was the president’s first-term ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa and is now seeking his own political comeback by positioning himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate in the race. Another GOP candidate, state Sen. Dan Innis, has already dropped his bid and backed Sununu. He’s called on Brown to do the same, but the former ambassador is battling on.
“Anyone who thinks that a never Trump, corporate lobbyist who hasn’t won an election in a quarter century will resonate with today’s GOP primary voters is living in a different universe,” Brown said in a statement.
Sununu, who is also the son of former Gov. and White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, served three terms in the House before defeating then-Gov. Shaheen to win his Senate seat in 2002.
He pledged in his launch video to focus on the economy and “making our lives more affordable.” He also called to “protect Medicare” and “really tackle our health care costs” as expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies take center stage in the government shutdown now spilling into a third week. WMUR was first to report on his official campaign launch.
Sununu starts with a polling advantage in the GOP primary. A University of New Hampshire survey from late September had him leading Brown 42 percent to 19 percent, with 28 percent undecided.
Early surveys also show him within striking distance of Pappas. The Democrat leads Sununu 49 percent to 43 percent in the UNH poll’s hypothetical general-election matchup; Pappas leads Brown by a wider margin of 52 percent to 37 percent. A survey from GOP-aligned co/efficient had Pappas leading Sununu by 3 percentage points and Brown by 10 points.
Alex Latcham, Senate Leadership Fund’s executive director, said in a statement that Sununu’s candidacy “instantly expands the Senate map and puts the Granite State in play for Republicans.”
His candidacy has also generated instant excitement in the Granite State. A group of prominent New Hampshire GOP donors and business leaders — including Phil Taub, Joe Faro, Al Letizio Jr., Nick Vailas and Kelly Cohen — will host a fundraiser for Sununu in Bedford on Nov. 3, POLITICO has learned first.
Still, Sununu could face challenges in his attempted comeback. While his family’s brand remains strong in New Hampshire, Sununu largely faded from elective politics after his 2008 defeat, ceding the spotlight to his younger brother. His post-congressional work on corporate boards has drawn him early fire from his opponents on both sides of the aisle. The state Democratic Party already has a website attacking Sununu for “selling out to corporations.” Pappas hammered Sununu for “cashing in … working for special interests” in a statement Wednesday responding to his launch.
And his past opposition to Trump could prove difficult to reconcile with the MAGA base, even though it could win him support among independents who can pull ballots in the GOP primary.
Sununu downplayed Trump’s importance in the Senate race in a WMUR interview last month, saying the contest “is going to be about New Hampshire.”
But Brown is working to weaponize Sununu’s repeated rejections of the president, even as he faces his own MAGA image problem after saying in 2021 that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The president has placed proponents of his false claims into government jobs while dismantling systems built to secure voting, raising fears that he aims to seize authority over elections ahead of next year’s midterms.
Heather Honey, a prominent election denial activist, was appointed deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security in August.
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