John J. Metzler NEW YORK — It’s once again time to peer into the foggy crystal ball and try to decipher the future political trends and events. Indeed, after the roller-coaster year of 2011, it’s hard to imagine that 2012 could hold some equally disquieting social, political and economic turmoil. But few predicted the sweeping […]
Special to WorldTribune.com EAST-ASIA-INTEL.com Wednesday, June 16, 2004 South Korea’s Pyeonghwa (Peace) Motors Corporation plans to stage an inter-Korean golf game next month in the North’s capital city of Pyongyang, company officials say. “We have agreed with North Korean authorities to hold a friendly golf competition between the two Koreas from July 30 to Aug. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com North Korea has quickly moved to cement its new leader’s position amid skepticism that an untested, inexperienced son in his late 20s could take the helm, beating out older and powerful military generals who presumably want to share power. Kim Jong-Un, the third son of Kim Jong-Il who […]
Sol W. Sanders A new era of increasing instability is opening in East Asia. The death of North Korean leader Kim Il-Jong is only adding another, if explosive, element to an already volatile equation: China enters a period of substantially slower economic growth, if not a crash, on the eve next autumn of a takeover […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com The future of the post-Kim Jong-Il North Korea lies in the hands of the military, the only force capable of shoring up stability in the abjectly poor Stalinist regime. And it is a testimony of the sagacity of the Chinese Communist Party administration’s Korean specialists that Beijing started […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com North Korea’s military discipline has been significantly eroding and soldier loyalty to the regime weakening largely due to protracted economic troubles, according to South Korean think thanks, citing confidential military documents from the North. The declining military discipline had prompted the late ruler Kim Jong-Il to regularly issue […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — The death of bouffant-coiffed, platform-heel wearing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il on Saturday ushers in a new era of rampant speculation, pontification and no doubt obfuscation about what’s really going on inside the Hermit Kingdom. The fact is that Kim Jong-Il late last week appeared just […]
Wesley Pruden History loves irony, as Prof. Gingrich could (and no doubt will) tell us. Two men renowned for their deeds die more or less on the same day on opposite sides of the world. The bad guy gets the big headline, the good guy makes the front page one last time as a footnote […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — No matter which way South Korea looks, the government faces tough new/old issues with the two enormous powers that have subjected the Korean Peninsula to pain and suffering over the centuries. First, this week, the problem was with China after the skipper of a Chinese fishing […]
PYONGYANG, North Korea — Kim Jong-Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69. In a “special broadcast” Monday from the North Korean capital, state media said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a “great mental and physical strain” on Dec. 17 during a “high intensity field […]