Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The people who write for the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang must be having fun. How else can you account for some of the great turns of phrase that show up in the English-language versions of their harangues? It wasn’t enough that the KCNA quoted an otherwise […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has access to about $4-5 billion in slush funds stashed away in hundreds of overseas bank accounts in Austria, China, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland, according to a news report here. South Korea and the U.S. authorities have been tracking […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com North Korea’s ceaseless provocations against South Korea throughout the Lee Myung-Bak government for the past five years are a carefully designed maneuver to force his successor to opt for appeasement, a government official here said. In a great departure from his progressive predecessors who offered unconditional aid to […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Following is a transcript of the inaugural address of South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-Hye: My fellow Koreans and seven million fellow compatriots overseas, As I take office as the 18th-term President of the Republic of Korea, I stand before you today determined to open a new era of hope. I […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The spectacle of the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh did more to lay bare the problems, conflicts and paradoxes of relations among the region’s wildly different and widely scattered nations than to resolve them. The fact that at least three of the leaders at this year’s ASEAN summit […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com What are the experts thinking when they talk in learned tones, replete with facts and stats, about issues and conditions for North-South Korean reunification, the pitfalls and problems, but omit passing mention of one of the most awful obstacles? At a conference this week bearing the portentous title, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Even as the world awaits new foreign-policy initiatives expected after leadership changes at the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress this fall, Beijing has significantly fine-tuned its policy toward the Asia-Pacific arena. A leitmotif of the far more aggressive foreign and military policies crafted by President and military […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Geostrategy-Direct.com Seoul has approved an ambitious missile upgrade plan for additional 500-600 cruise and ballistic missiles during the next five years, according to a May 22 report in the Chosun Ilbo. “Given the mounting threat of provocations from the North since Kim Jong-Un took power, the [ROK] Defense Ministry reported to President […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — The sequence is simple: One more sick American cow, and the government here is in big trouble. The government here gets into trouble, and the North Korean regime can exploit the differences and make good on its dire threats, e.g., the one about “special actions” lasting […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — China is mending fences with North Korea after signing off on “condemnation” of North Korea’s failed missile launch while the North ratchets up the decibel level of invective against South Korea and the United States. The confluence of revived warmth between North Korea and China and […]