Back in the USA and tracking the news on Interstate 40: North Korea? Where?

Back in the USA and tracking the news on Interstate 40: North Korea? Where?

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas ― North Korea’s top gun will have to try harder if he expects his threats of another nuclear test will win serious consideration in a U.S. presidential election year. Driving through the American heartland, you hear hardly a thing about the latest threats from Pyongyang. […]

How to answer the ‘unprecedented’, increasingly overheated North Korean rhetoric?

How to answer the ‘unprecedented’, increasingly overheated North Korean rhetoric?

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Ho hum, here we go again. That seems to be the response to the latest rhetorical blasts from Pyongyang as U.S. and South Korean forces dive into their annual war games. A “preemptive nuclear strike”? Destruction of “bases of aggression”? Incineration of Seoul in “a sea of fire […]

Moment of truth: Tim Cook’s interests vs revealing San Bernardino plot

Moment of truth: Tim Cook’s interests vs revealing San Bernardino plot

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com They used to say the walls have ears. That was in a bygone era when eavesdroppers strained through ceilings and doors, peepholes and cracks to catch the incriminating words of enemy agents, political foes and adulterous spouses. Plenty of old-time movies revolve around scenes such as these. We […]

Conflict resolution 101: Here’s how the U.S. should talk with the North Koreans

Conflict resolution 101: Here’s how the U.S. should talk with the North Koreans

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Listen to people talking about the panacea of “dialogue” and “a peace treaty” with North Korea. They make it seem so simple. We need to talk, they say. We’ll never come to terms with North Korea if we don’t talk. One advocate of dialogue put it this way […]

Burma and North Korea? No comparison

Burma and North Korea? No comparison

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Comparisons between North Korea and Burma (also known as Myanmar) over the years have suggested that the two nations share some of the same problems. However, even in the worst periods of military dictatorship, Burma never bore any similarity to North Korea. The contrast extends from urban market […]

North Korea triggers a U.S. missile defense showdown among major powers

North Korea triggers a U.S. missile defense showdown among major powers

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com North Korean rocket launches and nuclear tests risk getting boring. The pattern is familiar: expressions of outrage, loud condemnation ― then nothing. Has the latest one-two punch of nuclear test and rocket launch changed a thing? The easy answer is not really ― but think again. The lines […]

Healing history’s bitter Japan-Philippines wounds

Healing history’s bitter Japan-Philippines wounds

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com MANILA ― No city suffered more in World War II than this sprawling metropolis of more than 10 million people. No enemy was more cruel, more hostile, more destructive than the Japanese after defeating U.S. forces in the Philippines at the outset of the war in the Pacific. […]

Conflicting U.S. views on conflict resolution with N. Korea: What if there is no solution?

Conflicting U.S. views on conflict resolution with N. Korea: What if there is no solution?

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to Korea as the country was making the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, did not take kindly to my column [A former U.S. diplomat’s inexplicable defense of Kim Jong-Un] in which I quoted him, accurately, as praising Kim Jong-Un “for improving the […]

A former U.S. diplomat’s inexplicable defense of Kim Jong-Un

A former U.S. diplomat’s inexplicable defense of Kim Jong-Un

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to Korea, makes an astounding statement in a piece published after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. Striking “a very positive note,” he praises “the performance of Kim Jong-Un in improving the North Korean economy and downplaying nuclear threats and nuclear weapons development.” It […]

Writer calls for bright light, untainted by politics, on comfort women issue

Writer calls for bright light, untainted by politics,  on comfort women issue

Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com WASHINGTON ― Park Yu-Ha, under fire in Korea for writing “Comfort Women of the Empire,” offers what she believes may be a way to reach an understanding with Japan on the whole controversy. Why not, she suggested in a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Center, form a […]