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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Not one week into the New Year, the North Koreans jolted global concerns as well as the Richter scale with a nuclear weapons test. While the underground blast shook the remote Punggye-ri region near the Russian border, the political reverberations of the bomb have been […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com American ambassadors to South Korea pursue a fine line between defense of the U.S.-Korean alliance and pursuit of North-South reconciliation. If they seem hell-bent on military goals, they’re accused of trying to push Korea into a war that nobody wants. And if they appear overly eager for talks, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Could aircraft carriers be the next big thing for Korea’s enormous shipbuilding industry, the world’s best and biggest? With orders down during the global economic slowdown, it would seem logical that Hyundai Heavy Industries and some of its rivals bring up the topic of aircraft carrier production with […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korean leaders have been living in fear of coming under Chinese control but had no option but to rely on the economic giant for much-needed hard currency, documents and sources said. According to the 2007 inter-Korean summit transcript disclosed by South Korea’s spy agency, then North Korean […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com We keep hearing about all the countries where Edward Snowden is looking for asylum ― Ecuador and Venezuela would love to have him just to show they can’t be intimidated. Now it seems Ecuador is chickening out while Venezuela vies with Nicaragua for the distinction of defending the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com East-Asia-Intel.com In a shocking poll, 69 percent of South Korea’s high school students believed that it was the South that started the Korean War in 1950. President Park Geun-Hye expressed dismay on June 17 during a cabinet meeting in the Blue House, the presidential office/residence complex in Seoul. “This kind of wrong […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Memories and images of Margaret Thatcher and her legacy as displayed in the media this week evoke an obvious question: What would the Iron Lady have done about North Korea? The answer would seem clear. It’s hard to imagine the woman who dispatched troops to the Falklands in […]
