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Margaret Thatcher used to boast: The lady’s not for turning. (Literary aside: This was a nod—not that Lady T knew: someone wrote the speech for her—to another play in verse, a hit in its day but barely remembered now: The Lady’s Not for Burning (1948) by Christopher Fry.)

Lee Myung Bak is cut from the same cloth—or was. The man nicknamed bulldozer had until now seemed steadfast in his policy on North Korea. This might be likened to a pair of hands.