LOS ANGELES—On an early Sunday morning in downtown Los Angeles, young women in slinky dresses stumble out of nightclubs. Several hours later, other young women in sundresses walk to church, Bibles in hand.

For more than 70 years, a sign capitalizing “Jesus Saves” has been flashing its evangelical message. But for a good chunk of those decades, they were two silent words without a home. Churches have been trickling out of downtown since the mid-1950s, joining their congregants on an exodus out into the suburbs. 

Adam Johnson’s novel The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012) traces the twisted yet fantastical life of a young North Korean nobody called Pak Jun Do (a Korean play off “John Doe”). It received positive reviews (including one from WORLD), but also stirred discussions about how much of its content is true. Few critics disagree that Johnson’s book makes an entertaining read, but should a book about North Korea entertain at all?

LOS ANGELES—Every Sunday at Christ Covenant Church in Koreatown, the pungent smell of kimchi—Korean fermented cabbage—clashes with the toasty fragrance of steamed rice. Kids run screaming with laughter down the corridor, ignoring the shushes of disapproving elders, as adults pile their plates high with kimchi and toasted seaweed.

LOS ANGELES—She sits in the middle of her Los Angeles restaurant, piling a big spoonful of kimchi, tofu, and pork filling into a damp dumpling skin. Her fingers work deftly, folding the thin sheet into neat corner pleats. Press, pinch, fold over. Repeat. The tray quickly fills up with plump, flour-dusted parcels.

“They’re a blend of North and South,” Kim Jung Yi said of her dumplings, her nimble fingers never stopping. “I try to tailor to Southern tastes by including one or two ingredients they like, but the recipe is Northern.”

LOS ANGELES—The drizzly rain splatters over the hooded heads of customers who line out the door of Beverly Hills Juice, a closet-sized juice bar in Beverly Hills.

About five customers manage to squeeze into the shop while one employee revs bananas and vegan “ice cream” into a Banana Manna Cacao shake. The other employee, a petite lady with huge plastic pink glasses, stuffs bunches of green strands into a gadget that churns out frothy wheatgrass juice.

Many of us are used to thinking there’s a right way and a wrong way in politics and that we should take advantage of every opportunity to make our points—but what do we do when people are fighting for the same thing but have decidedly different strategies growing out of different worldviews?

South Korea is mired in contradictions when it comes to abortion. Abortion there is illegal, and has been since 1953 for all cases except rape, incest, or severe genetic disorder—and last year South Korea’s highest court upheld the ban. But for six decades abortions have been common and cheap, costing only about $200.