While a downpour pounded Seoul on a recent morning, Kwon Byong Hyon had a different sort of storm on his mind.
It was fourteen years earlier, on the day he first landed in Beijing, as Korea’s ambassador to China.
“The first thing that met me was a thick yellow sand storm,” Kwon remembered.
The storm had blotted out the sun, and the air was thick and stinging. The next day, Kwon got a call from his young daughter back in Seoul.
“Daddy, Seoul is covered in a terrible dust storm,” she said. “I can’t stand (it).”