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 Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korean leaders have been living in fear of coming under Chinese control but had no option but to rely on the economic giant for much-needed hard currency, documents and sources said. According to the 2007 inter-Korean summit transcript disclosed by South Korea’s spy agency, then North Korean […]
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 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 — 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 — Call it a matter of conflicting — or colliding — messages. South Korean conservatives have forced a free-trade agreement with the United States through a fractious National Assembly. A U.S. Congress “supercommittee” has demonstrated the weakness of the American system of governance by abject, humiliating failure […]