Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Comparisons between North Korea and Burma (also known as Myanmar) over the years have suggested that the two nations share some of the same problems. However, even in the worst periods of military dictatorship, Burma never bore any similarity to North Korea. The contrast extends from urban market […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Satellite images show China has deployed the advanced HQ-9 surface-to-air missile system to a disputed island in the South China Sea. Taiwanese and U.S. officials confirmed that batteries of the HQ-9 surface-to-air missile launchers were set up on Woody Island in the Paracels chain, according to a report by Reuters. China, Taiwan […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Chinese President Xi Jinping was on hand for the Feb. 16 launch ceremony for China’s largest investment project in Saudi Arabia, the Yasref oil refinery. Xi told reporters the refinery, which covers more than 5 million square meters in the city of Yanbu on Saudi’s west coast, conforms to the Saudi national […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com North Korean rocket launches and nuclear tests risk getting boring. The pattern is familiar: expressions of outrage, loud condemnation ― then nothing. Has the latest one-two punch of nuclear test and rocket launch changed a thing? The easy answer is not really ― but think again. The lines […]
Special to WorldTribune.com North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un continued his series of purges as army chief of staff Ri Yong-Gil was executed, according to a report on Feb. 10. Ri, who was chief of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) General Staff, was executed earlier this month “for corruption and factional conspiracy,” Yonhap and other South […]
Special to WorldTribune.com North Korea’s recently-launched satellite is “tumbling in orbit,” rendering it virtually “useless,” a U.S. official said. If the description is accurate, the satellite launched by Pyongyang on Feb. 7 would be incapable of functioning in any useful way, a senior U.S. defense official told CNN. Kwon Ki-hyun, a spokesperson for South Korea’s […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com MANILA ― No city suffered more in World War II than this sprawling metropolis of more than 10 million people. No enemy was more cruel, more hostile, more destructive than the Japanese after defeating U.S. forces in the Philippines at the outset of the war in the Pacific. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Iran says it now has access to more than $100 billion worth of overseas assets that were unfrozen as a result of a landmark nuclear deal with world powers. Government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said much of the money was stored in banks in China, India, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders Largely ignored by the mainstream media, the Jan. 15 Taiwan elections have enormous implications not only for the Island’s 25 million people, but for China – and the U.S. Ironically, the election of the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] leader, Tsai Ing-wen, a woman at that — reinstalled a […]
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 […]
