Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The insistence of a pair of brothers on scattering hundreds of thousands of leaflets from balloons fired over North Korea confronts the South with tough questions. Is it worth upsetting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his sister, Kim Yo-Jong, knowing the negative effects the leaflets are […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The Samsung empire’s de facto leader, Jay Y. Lee, is a free man despite the best efforts of Korean government prosecutors to lock him up while he faces yet another trial to keep him from taking over the group as the only son of Lee Kun-Hee, still hospitalized and […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has dodged a bullet, meaning the onslaught of speculation about whether he was dead or alive, ill or just avoiding the coronavirus. It’s amazing how quickly and easily many of us were taken in by the initial report on the Daily NK, based on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The vanishing act of Kim Jong-Un provokes one inevitable question. With all the billions that the U.S. puts into gathering intelligence by all those “agencies,” why can’t any of them come back with the definitive answer on the state of his health? Just think about the multi-tentacle […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The phrase has a certain drama, overtones of life-or-death struggle: “The last plane out of” a city under attack, under siege, on the brink of surrender. In my case, it was “the last plane out of Washington,” or, to be precise, the last non-stop flight from Washington […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk NORFOLK, Virginia — America’s mightiest warships, including the carrier John C. Stennis, line up grey and forbidding here at the world’s largest naval base at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. A few gate-keepers, security people, stand guard on the piers, but otherwise almost no one is visible. It’s […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON — The mere idea of the nation’s capital more or less shutting down would have been beyond imagination if anybody had talked about it seriously two months ago. Even after the outbreak of coronavirus in China had reached Korea and Europe, very few people would really believe the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk In a time of crisis, near-panic, over a disease to which the best medical minds have yet to find a sure cure, total cooperation is essential. The World Health Organization, scientists around the world, anyone who knows anything is duty-bound to try and help. Which brings us to North […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has mounted a broad campaign warning against China’s infiltration of American life from university campuses to American companies, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. At just about every opportunity at which he’s asked to speak or comment, Pompeo accuses the Chinese of exploiting […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk In all the outpouring of high praise for the Korean blockbuster Parasite after its dazzling success at the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, one noteworthy side of the production was largely ignored: the film had the enthusiastic backing of an heiress to the riches of Korea’s biggest commercial dynasty, […]