Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The sinking of the Sewol ferry five years ago was one of the greatest tragedies in Korean history. The memory for me, along with many others, is especially poignant since I spent hours in the great school gymnasium where families of the 304 victims, most of them […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk Ban Ki-Moon, now that he’s no longer United Nations secretary-general, can offer frank views that would definitely have had North Korean diplomats screaming bloody murder in the UN headquarters had he expressed them there. Ban, ever bland, polite, genial, the essence of the seasoned diplomat, gave about as reasoned […]
by WorldTribune Staff, March 26, 2019 On March 15, the Incheon City Council angered conservative South Koreans by passing an ordinance that called for compensating families of natives of Wolmi Island who died or had to leave their hometowns due to bombing by U.S. and UN forces during the Incheon landing operation on September 15, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk President Moon Jae-In almost accidentally stepped into a battle that did not have to happen with journalists for foreign news organizations. The ruckus was all about a Korean reporter for Bloomberg who wrote in September that Moon sounded like a spokesman for Kim Jong-Un by singing the praises of […]
by WorldTribune Staff, March 18, 2019 Media outlets and free speech advocates in South Korea are criticizing a move by the government of leftist President Moon Jae-In to introduce a system which could block YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Apple, Netflix, and other online and social network services. South Korean conservatives have complained of government […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The Demilitarized Zone that’s divided North from South Korea since the Korean War evokes images of the Berlin Wall that divided East from West Berlin from 1961 to 1991 but shows no signs of going down after the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean […]
by WorldTribune Staff, March 11, 2019 The failure of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to produce an agreement has shaken the Kim dynasty to the point where the young dictator is “almost in a time out,” a U.S. envoy who was a key North Korea negotiator […]
by WorldTribune Staff, March 10, 2019 Do South Korean children know that the Korean War started with an invasion from the communist North? Pro-North Korean influence on public school curricula in the South have focused attention on the private education of even kindergarten children, according to a report by the East Asia Research Center. Jeongyojo, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk HANOI – Call the outcome of the second Trump-Kim summit disappointing or frustrating, but it was anything but a “failure.” The real failure would have been President Donald Trump’s signature authorizing concessions in return for promises made only to be broken. The North’s nuclear program is buried so deeply […]
Special to WorldTribune, March 1, 2019 A secretive group believed to be protecting the son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s assassinated older brother declared the formation of a government-in-exile Friday on the 100th anniversary of Korean mass demonstrations for independence. The full text of the declaration is published below: The Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD) […]