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 […]
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 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 […]
By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com North Korea’s military has been ordered to shoot anyone crossing the border into China, even if they had reached Chinese soil. The directive was issued by Kim Jong-Il’s son and heir-apparent, Kim Jong-Un, who is seeking to tighten his grip on the populace, activists and media reports from Seoul say. It […]
By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, accompanied by his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un, rushed to military fortresses after he heard about the bloody killing of his colleague dictator Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. The two Kims made a “surprise visit” to the People’s Army Unit No. 985, the North’s official […]
Special to WorldTribune.com from East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea is abbreviating the grooming period for 28-year-old Kim Jong-Un, the youngest son of current leader Kim Jong-Il, a lawmaker said. As part of efforts to shorten the learning curve, Kim Jong-Un practiced controlling the military during his father’s overseas trips, Hwang Jin-Ha from the Grand National […]