Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Not one week into the New Year, the North Koreans jolted global concerns as well as the Richter scale with a nuclear weapons test. While the underground blast shook the remote Punggye-ri region near the Russian border, the political reverberations of the bomb have been […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com American ambassadors to South Korea pursue a fine line between defense of the U.S.-Korean alliance and pursuit of North-South reconciliation. If they seem hell-bent on military goals, they’re accused of trying to push Korea into a war that nobody wants. And if they appear overly eager for talks, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com The Koreans are using art to upset the Japanese. That’s in the form of statues of innocent young girls ― reminders of the suffering of Korean and other Asian women in the service of Japanese soldiers in World War II. They’ve got these statues in New Jersey, California […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com The zeal with which the Korean government pursued the case of Tatsuya Kato, charged with criminal libel, bears disturbing parallels to the records of other countries that prosecute critics. The charge of libel is a favorite weapon of authorities in Singapore and Malaysia, to name two notorious practitioners […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com WASHINGTON ― First he was talking about kicking out all 12 million “illegal immigrants” in the U.S., and now he wants to exclude Muslims from the right to enter the U.S. You have to wonder from Donald Trump’s remarks whether he’s lost touch with the concept of the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com SEOUL — Freedom will ring on the streets of Seoul Saturday, when demonstrators denounce the government for numerous transgressions beginning with the scheme to impose state-edited, state-published school textbooks in place of those by independent scholars. People by now are so accustomed to the sounds of protests reverberating […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — In a stern and sweeping rebuke to North Korea’s human rights abuses, a UN Committee has slammed the repressive communist regime in an annual report on “The Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” In a vote of 112 in favor, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com President Park Geun-Hye is pursuing a fight-talk strategy. On Monday, South Korean gunners staged a live-fire exercise in waters well within hearing range of North Korea’s southwestern coast. Next, North and South Korean negotiators were planning to meet at Panmunjom. The contrast between military drills and diplomacy suggests […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com This week’s Asia edition of Time magazine features the cover line, “What It Takes to Forgive a Killer.” Thinking the editors had had time to do a cover on the massacres in Paris, I discovered cloying, patronizing interviews with friends and relatives of the nine African-Americans shot and […]
Special to WorldTribune.com North Korea has executed three women who were accused of making copies of and distributing a South Korean television show. The women, who resided near Hyesan University of the Arts in the northern Ryanggang Province, were arrested for recording a South Korean TV drama which is based on the true story of […]