No. 3

October, 2018

APNNS NEWSICONIP 2018 Venue - Angkor Wat, Cambodia

APNNS NEWSNo.3 (October 2018)

APNNS NEWSNo. 3 (October 2018)

CONTENTS
1. President’s Message ................................................................................................. 1
2. Message from the President-elect ........................................................................... 2
3. Society Structure: Board of Governors ................................................................. 4
3.1 APNNS President and EXCO (2018) .................................................................................. 5
3.2 Elected Governors 2018–19 ................................................................................................ 6
3.3 Country/Region Governors 2018–19 .................................................................................. 7

4. Society Membership................................................................................................. 9
4.1 Information and Update ...................................................................................................... 9
4.2 How to Join APNNS ......................................................................................................... 10

5. Call for Bids – ICONIP 2020 and/or 2021 ........................................................... 11
6. ICONIP 2018 Information .................................................................................... 13
6.1 Call for Participation ......................................................................................................... 13
6.2 Organizing Committee ...................................................................................................... 14
6.3 Sightseeing ........................................................................................................................ 16
6.4 History............................................................................................................................... 17

APNNS NEWSNo.3 (October 2018)

1. President’s Message

Derong Liu, President

Let me start with introducing the APNNS 2018 Executive Committee (EXCO). VP
Administration is Prof. Jun Zhang of South China University of Technology. VP
Finance is Prof. Seiichi Ozawa of Kobe University. VP Membership is Prof. Kevin
Wong of Murdoch University. VP Conference is Prof. Minho Lee of Kyungpook
National University. The President-elect is Prof. Nikola Kasabov of Auckland
University of Technology. Finally, the Past President is Soo-Young Lee of KAIST.
Our planning for the year of 2018 started in Guangzhou during ICONIP 2017. We had
a lot of discussions regarding how to serve our members. Plans for starting anelectronic magazine, starting a winter/summer school series, and introducing
outstanding PhD dissertation award were all considered.
The society‟s flagship event is ICONIP – International Conference on Neural
Information Processing. It has been around for 24 years now. It is now mature and hasentered its adulthood. We need to maintain the high standard and quality of ICONIPs,
and at the same time take the lead in future technologies.
We currently have APNNS Outstanding Achievement Award, APNNS Excellent
Service Award, and APNNS Young Researcher Award to recognize members with
distinguished achievements and service records. Please consider to nominate yourdeserving colleagues for APNNS awards.
I hope you enjoy being of members of APNNS and encourage your colleagues andfriends to join the society as well. We also accept student members in addition toregular members.
I look forward to seeing you all in Siem Reap, Cambodia, at ICONIP 2018.

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2. Message from the President-elect
APNNS – A long term development in the future

Nikola Kasabov, APNNS President-electI see APNNS, not only continuing the strong traditions in science, education andindustry applications of neural networks and intelligent systems, established by the
Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA) 25 years ago, but moving forward
to a next level, with a stronger impact on the societies, the education and industry
sectors across the Asia-Pacific area and internationally.
This is especially in time when neural networks (NN) and deep-learning machines
have already become the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence (AI). NN and AI
alone are predicted to contribute by 2030 from 10% to 26% of the GDP of each of
the countries which embrace them. And APNNS can help all countries in the
Asia-Pacific region to embrace NN and AI for their own benefit, growth andwellbeing of their societies.
APNNS has leadership provided by the previous and the current Presidents and thesociety will continue with this tradition. My view is that in both short term andlonger terms in the future, APNNS will target and will achieve the following goals:
1) Become truly Inclusive, Interdisciplinary and International society.
2) Become a world leader in the development of new NN and AI methods,
systems, and technologies.
3) Increase the membership to 6,000 members by end of 2022.
4) Enable a strong interaction between members by establishing a quarterly on–line magazine, where members can share news, projects, job and scholarshipannouncements.
5) Start an Asia-Pacific joint project across all member countries/regions on„Brain and neural networks‟.
6) Continue the successful ICONIP conferences and turn them to a majorinternational event in the field.
7) Attract young researchers and high school students through special events
during ICONIP conferences.
8) Maintain the spirit of friendship, democracy, collaboration and mutual respect
across all member countries/regions and individual members.

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9) Become the consciousness of the societies for their endeavor for the use of
new technologies for piece and human benefits, preventing the use of AI for
destruction of the humanity.
My previous experience as twice Past President of APNNA and a Past President of
the International Neural Network Society (INNS) makes me confident that APNNS
can achieve its goals in the future.
Professor Nikola Kasabov is Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand,
Fellow of the NZ Institute of IT Professionals NZ, Distinguished Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering and the Scottish Computer Society, UK. He is the Director of theKnowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) at Auckland Universityof Technology. He holds a Chair of Knowledge Engineering at the School of Engineering,Computing and Mathematical Sciences at AUT.
Kasabov has been twice President of the Asia Pacific Neural Network Society (APNNA)(1997 and 2008) and currently a Board member of APNNAS. He was a Past President (2009and 2010) and Board of Governors Member of the International Neural Network Society(INNS). He is a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Evolving Systems and serves as
Associate Editor of Neural Networks, of several IEEE Transactions, Information Sciences,
Applied Soft Computing and other journals.
Kasabov holds MSc and PhD from the TU Sofia, Bulgaria. His main research interests arein the areas of neural networks, computational intelligence, soft computing, bioinformatics,
neuroinformatics. Prof. Kasabov has originated several groundbreaking theores and methods,
such as: evolving connectionits systems; hybrid evolving neuro-fuzzy systems; evolving
spiking neural netrowks; brain-like spatio-temporal machine NeuCube; quantum inspired
evolutionary computaion; methods for brain data modelling; personalised modelling methods.
He has published more than 600 publications that include 12 books, 200 journal papers, 28
patents. His work has been cited widely(https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YTa9Dz4AAAAJ) and has a significant impact on
the development of methods and systems of computaionla intelligence world-wide.
Prof. Kasabov has extensive academic experience at various academic and researchorganisations internationally, including: TU Sofia, Bulgaria; University of Essex UK;
University of Otago NZ; Advisor Professor at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and NTT
University Vietnam; Visiting Professor at ETH/University of Zurich and RGU Scotland,
Honorary Member of the Bulgarian Academic Computer Society and of the Greek Computer
Society.
For his achievements Prof. Kasabov has received numerous awards, including: INNS Ada
Lavelace Meritorious Contribution Award (2018); APNNA „Outstanding Achievements Award‟(2012); INNS Gabor Award for „Outstanding contributions to engineering applications ofneural networks‟ (2011); EU Marie Curie Fellowship (2011-2012); Bayer Science Innovation
Award; APNNA Excellent Service Award; RSNZ Science and Technology Medal; 2015
Auckland University of Technology highest award – the University Medal. He has supervised
to completion 42 PhD students. He has presented more than 60 plenary and invited talks atinternational conferences. More information of Prof. Kasabov can be found on the KEDRI
web site: http://www.kedri.aut.ac.nz.

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3. Society Structure: Board of Governors

Jun Zhang, VP Administration

One of the major achievements of my predecessors is the development of APNNS
Bylaws which defines the governing board structure of our society. To reflect thediversity and also balance in the Asia-Pacific region, the bylaws set specificguidelines to make up of the two-class governing board members with the Elected
Governors and Country/Region Governors. The Elected Governors are elected fromthe general pool of available members. Moreover, the maximum authorized number
shall not be more than 12 and the maximum authorized number of Elected
Governors for each country/region shall not be more than two. Country/Region
Governors shall be recommended by Countries/Regions-at-Large, defined as thecountries/regions whose regular members are more than a certain number as
specified by the Governing Board. The authorized number of Country/Region
Governors for a Country/Region-at-Large shall not be more than one. Lastly, thenumber of Countries/Regions-at-Large may be varied from time to time byresolution of the Board of Governors, provided that the authorized number ofElected Governors and Country/Region Governors in total shall be around 25. With
this structure, APNNS aims to be inclusive and at the same time sensitive to thevarious needs of the representations of its members.
We have also expanded and further clarified the roles of the APNNS Executive
Committee (EXCO), which consists of the President, the President-elect, and fourVice-presidents (VPs), VP of Administration, VP of Finance, VP of Membership,
and VP of Conference to oversee the day-to-day operation of APNNS. The
President and President-elect shall hold office for the term of one year, starting on
January 1 of the year.
It is our hope and belief that with this new structure, APNNS will continue to foster
strong supports from its members of diverse communities to expand and develop
successfully the field of neural networks, computational intelligence, and otherrelated fields in the years to come. (texts adapted from Irwin King, the former VPof Administration)

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3.1 APNNS President and EXCO (2018)

Derong Liu
President
School of Automation
Guangdong University of Technology
Email: derongliu [at] foxmail.com

Nikola Kasabov
President-Elect

Soo-Young Lee
Immediate Past President

KEDRI
Auckland University of Technology
Email: nkasabov [at] aut.ac.nz

Department of Electrical Engineering
KAIST
Email: sylee [at] kaist.ac.kr

Jun ZhangVice-President for Administration
School of Computer Science andEngineering
South China University of Technology
Email: csjun [at]scut.edu.cn

Kevin Wong
Vice-President for Membership
School of Engineering and Information
Technology
Murdoch University
Email: k.wong [at] murdoch.edu.au

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Seiichi Ozawa
Vice-President for Finance
Graduate School of Engineering
Kobe University
Email: ozawasei [at] kobe-u.ac.jp

Minho Lee
Vice-President for Conferences
School of Electronics Engineering
Kyungpook National University
Email: mholee [at] gmail.com

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3.2 Elected Governors 2018–19
Sabri Arik
Department of Computer Engineeing
Istanbul University
Email: ariks [at] istanbul.edu.tr

Tingwen Huang
Faculty of Science
Texas A&M University at Qatar
Email: tingwen.huang [at] qatar.tamu.edu

James Kwok
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Email: jamesk (at) cse (dot) ust (dot) hk

Takashi Omori
College of Engineering
Tamagawa University
Email: omori [at] lab.tamagawa.ac.jp

Paul Pang
Department of Computing
Unitec Institute of Technology
Email: ppang [at] unitec.ac.nz

Zhigang Zeng
School of Automation
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Email: zgzeng [at] hust.edu.cn

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3.3 Country/Region Governors 2018–19

Tom Gedeon (Australia)
School of Computer Science
Australian National University
Email: tom [at] cs.anu.edu.au

Nikola Kasabov (Oceania: New Zealand + Fiji)
KEDRI
Auckland University of Technology
Email: nkasabov [at] aut.ac.nz

Irwin King (Hong Kong)
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Email: king [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk

Weng Kin Lai (Malaysia)
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Tunku Abdul Rahman University College
Email: laiwk [at] acd.tarc.edu.my

Minho Lee (Korea)
School of Electronics Engineering
Kyungpook National University
Email: mholee [at] gmail.com

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Seiichi Ozawa (Japan)
Graduate School of Engineering
Kobe University
Email: ozawasei [at] kobe-u.ac.jp

Kitsuchart Pasupa (Thailand)
Faculty of Information Technology
King Mongkut's Institute of Technology
Email: kitsuchart [at] it.kmitl.ac.thJun Zhang (China)
School of Computer Science and Engineering
South China University of Technology
Email: csjun [at]scut.edu.cn

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4. Society Membership

Kevin Wong, VP Membership

4.1 Information and Update
Asia Pacific Neural Network Society (APNNS) was formally established in
November 2015. Since 2016, the total number of regular and student APNNS
members has grown from 363 to current 556 members. The number of members isstill increasing. APNNS continues to seek more active participation from researchersand professionals in the Asia Pacific region to share, contribute, and to advance thestate of knowledge in the theoretical modelling and analysis of the brain processes
and their applications in technology. APNNS also promotes active interactions among
researchers, scientists, and industry professionals who are working in the areas of
Neural Networks and related fields in the Asia-Pacific region.
Currently our active members are distributed from regions like Australia, China, Hong
Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South
Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and UAE. We also have members fromcountries in other regions of the world.
For a list of current APNNS board of governors, it is available at
http://www.apnns.org/bog.html. There are currently 9 country/region governors
represented on the board of governors. If you have any suggestion and ideas ofgrowing the membership or increase the relevant activities in your country or region,
feel free to drop them a line for further discussions. We encourage greater
participation from any growing region/country located in Asia Pacific. You can visit
http://www.apnns.org/bylaws.html to look at the bylaws outlining the possible
formation of country or region in the board of governors.
The flagship conference organised by APNNS every year is the International
Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP). The ICONIP 2018 will beheld in Siem Reap, Cambodia; and the ICONIP 2019 will be held in Sydney, Australia.
The APNNS annual meeting will also be held during the ICONIP. We encourage allmembers to attend to exchange ideas and further develop the communities in the Asia
Pacific region.
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4.2 How to Join APNNSThe annual APNNS membership fee isRegular: 15 USD

Student: 10 USD

To apply for the APNNS membership, please send an email tomembership@apnns.org with the following information.
______________________________
To: membership@apnns.org
Subject: Membership Application
Name (LAST/First):
Affiliation:
Email Address:
Country or Region of your Institute:Membership Class: Regular or Student.
______________________________
Then, we will send you an invoice that is payable through PayPal. Your membershipwill be activated upon the receipt of payment. A student must send the copy of student
ID card or a student certificate with the signature of a school dean.
 JNNS Members
The members of Japanese Neural Network Society will have a special arrangement of
the APNNS membership fee by JNNS. Please contact the JNNS office .
http://www.jnns.org/
 Affiliation Change and Further Information
For your affiliation change and further inquiry, please contact us atmembership@apnns.org .

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5. Call for Bids – ICONIP 2020 and/or 2021

Minho Lee, VP Conference

26th and/or 27th International Conference on Neural Information Processing
The International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) hereby
invites proposals to host the conference in the Asia-Pacific region in October,
November or December, 2020 and/or 2021. We seek draft proposals from prospective
bidders in the Asia-Pacific region. The APNNS (Asia-Pacific Neural Network Society)
GB members will select the General Chair by voting.
Bid Highlights: Draft proposals include information on the following: Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., convention center, hotel oruniversity; accommodation; dining options).
 Proposed dates. Religious and local national holidays should be avoided, as muchas possible.
 Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration
handling; describing any experience the team has had in organizing previous
conferences and the number of participants at those conferences).
 Meeting venues (space for sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos,
small meetings and registration).
 High-speed, all-ports-open, easy-to-use internet access.
 Audiovisual equipment.
 Catering, including breaks, receptions, poster sessions, banquet and entertainment(traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet).
 Local sponsorships.
 Local expenses estimates spreadsheet (using template provided, link above).

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Important Dates: End of November, 2018: Final draft due day for bidders.
 Middle of December 2018 (APNNS GB meeting): Bid selected by voting.

The selected location for ICONIP2020 and/or 2021 will be announced at the
ICONIP2018 conference (Siem Reap, December 13 – December 16, 2018).
For any queries please contact Minho Lee, the Vice President (VP) for conference.
Please send your draft proposals (ppt slides and/or document) to email:mholee@gmail.com

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6. ICONIP 2018 Information

Jun Wang, General Chair of ICONIP 2018

6.1 Call for Participation

International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) is the flagshipconference and the largest technical event of Asia-Pacific Neural Network Society(APNNS). It covers a wide range of topics in the field of neural networks from
artificial neural computation to biological neural network modeling. It aims to provide
a high-level international forum for scientists, engineers, and educators all over theworld to discuss and present the state of the art of research and applications in neuralnetworks and related fields.
ICONIP 2018 is to be held in Siem Reap, Cambodia during December 13–16, 2018.
December 13, 2018, Thursday (whole day) will be the day of ICONIP 2018
registration. The conference starts on Friday, December 14. The conference banquet
will be in evening of Saturday, December 15. The last day of the conference is Sunday,
December 16. Siem Reap is the capital city of Siem Reap Province in northwestern
Cambodia. It is an ideal conference destination with a large number of hotels, resorts,
restaurants, and shops, and it is a gateway to Angkor Wat, which is one of the mostimportant archaeological sites in South-East Asia, the largest religious monument in
the world, and listed by UNESCO as a cultural heritage.
ICONIP 2018 received 575 submissions from 51 countries and regions worldwide andonly 400 papers were accepted. Three most popular topics in submission were “deeplearning”, “supervised learning” and “image and signal processing”. Based on these
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statistics, it can be expected that the technical program will cover a wide range ofsubjects that address the hottest topics in the neural network field. In addition, theconference will also feature plenary talks given by world renowned scholars andworkshops/tutorials delivered by experienced speakers. Following the tradition of
ICONIP series, Best Paper Award and Best Student Paper Award will be selectedbased on the paper‟s quality and the conference presentation.
Apart from the technical program, participants are also cordially invited to attend
various social events that will include reception, lunches, and banquet. In addition,
participants are also encouraged to explore the beautiful city of Siem Reap and thehistorical site of Angkor Wat which have many attractions and things to see and to do.
We look forward to seeing you all at ICONIP2018 in Siem Reap!

6.2 Organizing Committee
General Chair
Jun Wang,

City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Advisory Chairs
Akira Hirose,
Soo-Young Lee,
Derong Liu,
Nikhil R. Pal,

University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology,
Daejeon, Korea
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
Indian Statistics Institute, Calcutta, India

Program ChairsLong Cheng,
Andrew C.S. Leung,Seiichi Ozawa,

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

Special Sessions Chairs
Shukai Duan,
Kazushi Ikeda,
Qinglai Wei,
Hiroshi Yamakawa,
Zhi-Hui Zhan,
APNNS NEWSSouthwest University, Chongqing, China
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
DWANGO Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
14

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Tutorial Chairs
Hiroaki Gomi,
Takashi Morie,
Kay Chen Tan,
Dongbin Zhao,

NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Atsugi-shi,
Japan
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, Japan
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China

Publicity Chairs
Zeng-Guang Hou,
Tingwen Huang,
Chia-Feng Juang,
Tomohiro Shibata,

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
Texas A&M University at Qatar, Doha, Qatar
National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, Japan

Publications Chairs
Xinyi Le,
Sitian Qin,
Zheng Yan,
Shaofu Yang,

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Harbin, Institute of Technology – Weihai, Weihai, China
University Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Southeast University, Nanjing, China

Registration Chairs
Shenshen Gu,
Qingshan Liu,
Ka Chun Wong,

Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
Southeast University, Nanjing, China
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Secretariat
Ying Qu,

Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
Email: iconip@cs.cityu.edu.hk

Sponsor/
Organizer:
Technical
co-sponsors:

International Neural Network Society

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15

Japanese Neural Network Society

No.3 (October 2018)6.3 Sightseeing
Siem Reap is the capital
city of Siem Reap
Province in northwestern
Cambodia. It is a popularresort town and a
gateway to the Angkor
region.
Siem Reap has colonial
andChinese-stylearchitecture in the Old
French Quarter, andaround the Old Market.
In the city, there are museums, traditional Apsara dance performances, a Cambodian
cultural village, souvenir and handicraft shops, silk farms, rice-paddies in the
countryside, fishing villages and a bird sanctuary near the Tonle Sap Lake.

Siem Reap today-beingapopulartouristdestination-has a large
numberofhotels,resorts, restaurants andbusinesses
closely
related to tourism. Thisis much owed to its
proximitytothe
Angkor temples, themost popular tourist
attraction in Cambodia.

More information about Angkor can be found at the following sites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siem_Reap
https://wikitravel.org/en/Siem_Reap

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No.3 (October 2018)6.4 History
24th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Guangzhou, China,
2017
23rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kyoto, Japan, 2016
22nd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Istanbul, Turkey,
2015
21st International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kuching, Sarawak,
Malaysia, 2014
20th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Daegu, Korea, 2013
19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Doha, Qatar, 2012
18th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Shanghai, China,
2011
17th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Sydney, Australia,
2010
16th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Bangkok, Thailand,2009
15th IInternational Conference on Neural Information Processing, Auckland, New
Zealand, 2008
14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kitakyushu, Japan,
2007
13th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Hong Kong, 2006
12th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Taipei, 2005
11th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Calcutta, India,
2004
10th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Istanbul, Turkey,
2003
9th IInternational Conference on Neural Information Processing, Singapore, 2002

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8th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Shanghai, China,
2001
7th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Taejon, Korea, 2000
6th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Perth, Australia, 1999
5th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kitakyushu, Japan,
1998
4th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Dunedin, New
Zealand, 1997
3rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Hong Kong, 1996
2nd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Beijing, China, 1995
1st International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Seoul, Korea, 1994

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