Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com The trilateral summit last weekend was long on promises but short on hard-and-fast commitments and planning. Yes, the fact that leaders of Korea, China and Japan could meet at all was remarkable considering Japan’s ongoing occupation of the Senkaku Islands, Diaoyu to the Chinese, in the East China […]
Special to WorldTribune.com South Korea and Japan have agreed to push for a resolution to a long-time dispute that weakens both nations’ critical alliance with the United States and has damaged ties between the two nations for decades. Japan and South Korea are key U.S. allies in a joint geopolitical posture that counters expansionist communist […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com It’s the season for summits with heavy overtones for Northeast Asia. After President Park Geun-Hye met President Barack Obama in Washington and President Xi Jinping in Beijing, after Xi met Obama in Washington, after President Putin saw Obama at the United Nations and Xi in Beijing, after Prime […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com SEOUL — Another round of visits for South Koreans to see their long-lost relatives in North Korea brings both hope and sadness. Anyone selected for a family visit has to know, after seeing a brother, sister, cousin or some other relative who may be hardly remembered, that it’s […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com President Obama might be considering the motto on which Woodrow Wilson ran for president in 1916 as his enduring legacy: “He kept us out of war.” That is, if he can forget that Wilson, after election to his second term, reversed course and sent American soldiers to Europe, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com SEOUL — The Trans-Pacific Partnership carries implications far beyond the commercial benefits that President Obama and others claim would result from it. Arguments pro and con in terms of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the 12 countries that have signed on to TPP are sure to […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com WASHINGTON ― You know how forgotten is the Korean War when you see a documentary about the young correspondents who battled U.S. officialdom in the early years of the Vietnam War and hear comparisons between Vietnam and World War II, Vietnam and Iraq ― and not one word […]
Special to WorldTribune.com The communist North Korean regime in Pyongyang is known for its belligerence and brinkmanship but not for apologizing. So when South Korean President Park Geun-Hye demanded an apology over the weekend over landmines in the demilitarized zone that wounded South Korean soldiers, hostilities seemed close at hand. However on early Tuesday, local […]
Special to WorldTribune.com North Korea has deployed 70 percent of its submarine force and doubled its artillery strength near the South Korean border since Aug. 21, according to Seoul’s defense ministry. The two Koreas continued talks on Aug. 23 to end tensions that began with North Korea firing a rocket into the South and Seoul […]
Special to WorldTribune.com As North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un declared on Aug. 21 that Pyongyang was in a “quasi-state of war,” U.S. troops were seen mobilizing at a South Korean border town. “The Korean People’s Army (KPA) front-line large combined units entered into a wartime state all at once, fully armed to launch surprise operations, […]