Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk [Editors’ note: South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, the country’s first female president, is facing her biggest political crisis since coming to power in 2013. A close female friend, Choi Soon-Sil, 60, is accused of selling influence. She is the daughter of late religious leader Choi Tae-Min, who befriended Park […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk Rodrigo Duterte was reputed as a killer long before his election as president of the Philippines five months ago. He countenanced the slaughter of hundreds of drug addicts and dealers while mayor of Davao, the major port city on the rebel-infested southern island of Mindanao, and has applauded the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The late Don Oberdorfer would surely have had qualms with the award named for him and presented by U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert to Noh Hyo-dong, the longtime diplomatic and Washington correspondent for Yonhap News Agency. Why would a top U.S. diplomat be handing out a prize in the name […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk North Korea is truly a schizophrenic state. All in a day we hear about the need for generous foreign donors to come to the rescue of thousands of victims of flooding in the Onsong district in the hard-scrabble northeast where life is tough in the best of times. Then, in […]
by WorldTribune Staff, September 9, 2016 North Korea announced its fifth nuclear weapons test only hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near the North’s northeastern nuclear test site. Four of the five tests have taken place during the Barack Obama administration and the first under the George W. Bush administration. The U.S. policy […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk You have to credit the North Koreans with chutzpah ― the Yiddish word for “nerve,” brazen arrogance or insolence, all in untranslatable exclamation. The leaders of the world’s 20 strongest, most powerful nations were gathered in a solemn conclave in China, and in Pyongyang North Korea’s Supreme Leader did […]
by WorldTribune Staff, September 5, 2016 North Korea decided to make its mark on the G20 Summit by firing three medium-range missiles into Japan’s air defense identification zone on Sept. 5. Pyongyang’s move led to a rare face-t0-face meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, who met on the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk Time slowly erases the traces of those held in North Korea. The longer they’re there, the easier it is to forget them. Their families, reluctant to invest more psychic energy on those for whom they know the North Koreans have no mercy, give up the quest. As individuals move […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk U.S.-China relations are at their worst in years, and North and South Korean are not getting along either. In fact, relations between those two are at such a low ebb that two-way trade, once about several hundred million dollars a year, has almost ceased. Curiously, however, North Korean coal […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The prospect of a missile war between North and South Korea poses a threat to regional stability that previously seemed unimaginable. Images of North and South Korean gunners firing ballistic missiles at one another from redoubts far north and south of the demilitarized zone are edging closer to reality […]
