Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012. Mo, who was born in 1955 into a farmer's family in Gaomi County in Shandong Province, is the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his early years, life was not easy and he experienced hunger（饥饿）. These things have influenced Mo Yan's later writings.

    60-year-old Park Geun-hye(朴槿惠)was elected（选举）the new President of South Korea in December, 2012. She becomes the country's first female head of state and her term will last five years from 2013. "I will become a president who puts people's living before anything else," she told the cheering People in central Seoul as she accepted her win. "I will keep my promises."

    Barack Obama ( born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961), who was elected the 44^thPresident of the United States in 2008, has been elected again to a second term, fighting against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. His father was from Kenya. And his mother was born in Wichits, Kansas.