South Korean media hailed one of the country’s climbers yesterday after she claimed to have become the first woman to scale the world’s 14 highest peaks, ignoring controversy surrounding her bid.
All major newspapers ran a front-page photo of Oh Eun-sun holding a national flag at the snow-covered summit of the 8,091m Annapurna in Nepal.
Oh’s claim to be the first female climber to have conquered all the world’s mountains higher than 8,000m is under scrutiny, however.
Last week her ascent last year of Mount Kanchenjunga on the Nepal-Tibet border was thrown into doubt when a leading authority on Himalayan mountaineering said fellow climbers had expressed skepticism about the climb.
In South Korea, there were no such reservations.
“Your successful ascent [of all 8,000m peaks] was a process of human victory that underscores the meaning of challenge,” President Lee Myung-Bak told Oh in a congratulatory message late on Tuesday.
“You are really admirable,” Lee said, adding the successful ascent brought the spirit of challenge back not only to alpinists but to all South Koreans.
The best-selling Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Oh’s feat “proudly shows the spirit of Korean climbers and Korean women’s courage, patience and strength.”
Mountaineering expert Elizabeth Hawley said in Kathmandu that Oh’s ascent of Kanchenjunga would be considered “disputed.” She said fellow mountaineers, including Oh’s chief rival for the record, Edurne Pasaban, had questioned whether she actually made it to the top.
“I’ll be waiting to meet her when she gets back to hear her version of what she has to say about Kanchenjunga,” Hawley said on Tuesday after hearing of Oh’s ascent of Annapurna.
The picture provided by Oh shows her standing on a bare rock, surrounded by snow, but those taken by Pasaban’s team shows them standing only on snow.
“The confirmation came this year while at the base camp at Annapurna when I met with the Sherpas who climbed with her and they confirmed that they did not reach the peak of Annapurna,” Pasaban said. “When she returns to Kathmandu she will have to prove it, she will be questioned and we will see what happens.”
Oh has previously dismissed the doubts as groundless.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS