| ASIA SOCIETY
ASIA SOCIETY
UN Chief: Why Not Have
3 United States in World? Text by Nina Boxer
Photos by Tim Boxer  AN KI-MOON, Secretary General of the United Nations, was one of three honorees at the Asia Society annual dinner in Manhattan. So it was quite appropriate for chairman Richard C. Holbrooke to announce that the society will launch a center in Seoul, Korea, in March 2008. It will be the 11th Asia Society center globally.
Some 650 guests packed the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, helping to raise $1.65 million. "This room is familiar to me," Ki-moon noted. "When I waited to move into the official residence [last January], this was my family dining room. Since moving into the official residence, I’ve had to downsize." In observing that Europe has a European Union, a kind of United States of Europe, and there is a United States of Africa, he called for a United States of Asia. "Then there would be three United States." Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of IAC and chairman of Expedia Inc., presented an award to E. Neville Isdell, chairman and chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company. "I’m a director of Coca-Cola," Diller said. Isdell graciously acknowledged his competitor, Pepsi-Cola, which took a $25,000 table at the dinner. Actually that’s no surprise as the chief executive of PepsiCo, Indra K. Nooyi, is a board member of the Asia Society. Society president Vishakha Desai presented a cultural achievement award to Yoshio Taniguchi, best known in the U.S. for the expansion of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He is currently designing a major building project for the Asia Society Texas Center in Houston, to be completed in fall 2009. | 
