Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON – South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has been trying so hard to achieve the impossible dream of reconciliation with North Korea that it’s easy for foreign observers to forget a strong, traditional conservative opposition that deeply opposes the pattern of concessions to the will of North Korea’s leader […]
by WorldTribune Staff, May 14, 2019 With Kim Jong-Un observing, North Korea on May 4 launched a series of projectiles featuring a short-range ballistic missile and large-caliber multiple launch rocket systems from Hodo peninsula in the Wonsan area. A group of retired Korean military officials condemned the North’s latest missile test and, at the same […]
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, […]
