Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk South Korean leadership, by banning defectors from launching balloons wafting leaflets over North Korea, has struck a devastating blow against free speech and freedom of information in both Koreas. The anti-leaflet legislation is inspiring an adverse reaction not only in Seoul but also at the United Nations and in […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The North Korean economy is in such dire straits that none of the experts know quite what to do about it other than beg Kim Jong-Un, please, sir, reform the economy and do away with your nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and a lot of aid. If […]
Special to WorldTribune.com [Editor’s Note: Far East Correspondent Donald Kirk is back in the United States on leave.] By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON — The outbreak of protests in cities and even small communities across the U.S. reveals not only the extremes but also the confusion in American life. While the liberal media focuses on the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk China looms like an enormous bullying giant above its borders with India stretching more than 4,000 kilometers from the high Himalayas to the west to more mountains and lower level frontiers to the east. In between is Nepal, over which China wields increasing influence, and Bhutan, which is tied […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The insistence of a pair of brothers on scattering hundreds of thousands of leaflets from balloons fired over North Korea confronts the South with tough questions. Is it worth upsetting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his sister, Kim Yo-Jong, knowing the negative effects the leaflets are […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The Samsung empire’s de facto leader, Jay Y. Lee, is a free man despite the best efforts of Korean government prosecutors to lock him up while he faces yet another trial to keep him from taking over the group as the only son of Lee Kun-Hee, still hospitalized and […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has dodged a bullet, meaning the onslaught of speculation about whether he was dead or alive, ill or just avoiding the coronavirus. It’s amazing how quickly and easily many of us were taken in by the initial report on the Daily NK, based on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The vanishing act of Kim Jong-Un provokes one inevitable question. With all the billions that the U.S. puts into gathering intelligence by all those “agencies,” why can’t any of them come back with the definitive answer on the state of his health? Just think about the multi-tentacle […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The phrase has a certain drama, overtones of life-or-death struggle: “The last plane out of” a city under attack, under siege, on the brink of surrender. In my case, it was “the last plane out of Washington,” or, to be precise, the last non-stop flight from Washington […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk NORFOLK, Virginia — America’s mightiest warships, including the carrier John C. Stennis, line up grey and forbidding here at the world’s largest naval base at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. A few gate-keepers, security people, stand guard on the piers, but otherwise almost no one is visible. It’s […]
