Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com In all the stories I’ve been reading about the Tiananmen massacre 25 years ago, one element seems to have been missing. That’s the comparison between Tiananmen and Gwangju, South Korea. When I got to Beijing in May 1989 and saw these students taking over the square, I was […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com NEW DELHI — The division between India-held and Pakistan-held Kashmir ranks with that between North and South Korea as long-running, bloody and dangerous. The two were divided at about the same time — Kashmir in “partition” of the Indian subcontinent that gave birth to Pakistan as a separate […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Why is it every time we get optimistic about North Korea “opening up” or making concessions or engaging in serious reconciliation, we get so disillusioned? Remember Kim Dae-Jung’s “Sunshine Policy?” The North Koreans repaid him for his generosity by cranking up their nuclear program and exploding their first […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The specter of Park Geun-Hye running for president of the Republic of Korea evokes almost as many memories for those foreigners who were here during the reign of her father as it does for millions of Koreans who share quite differing perspectives. As a journalist in pursuit of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea’s promise to give up or at least suspend its nuclear program clearly forces the end of the seemingly tough policies enunciated by South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak after he took office four years ago. No way can Lee appear as the strong leader who […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — Star power, political pressure and diplomacy may be forcing the Chinese into second thoughts about their much reviled policy of sending North Korean defectors back to uncertain fates in North Korea whenever they catch them. In the face of pleas by well known performers and South […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com WASHINGTON — North Korea stands to be a major winner if Israeli hawks prevail and Israel attacks Iranian nuclear facilities. With Iran said in some quarters to be only months away from emerging as the world’s 10th nuclear weapons power, North Korea reportedly is producing more middle-range missiles […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com WASHINGTON — A former agent for South Korea’s multi-tentacled National Intelligence Service (NIS) has defeated an intensive United States government bid to have him extradited to Seoul and imprisoned for revealing the payoffs to North Korea that led to the historic June 2000 North-South Korean summit and the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea is playing a skillful game of funeral diplomacy and politics that’s dividing South Koreans and leaving everyone to wonder who’s doing what to whom in the corridors of power in Pyongyang. All North Korean strategists have had to do is issue a huge welcome […]