Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com This just in — Dennis Rodman wasn’t quite Kim Jong-Un’s first choice as his guest for fun and games in Pyongyang. There was actually a move afoot to invite Michael Jordan, but there was a catch. The idea was that he would have gone with the blessing of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Pyongyang’s claim to have called Gen. James Thurman, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, to warn him about “a grave situation” on the Korean Peninsula inspires speculation about what the general and his caller from the North might have talked about. North Korea did not say who made the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Following is a transcript of the inaugural address of South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-Hye: My fellow Koreans and seven million fellow compatriots overseas, As I take office as the 18th-term President of the Republic of Korea, I stand before you today determined to open a new era of hope. I […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — It’s long been an economic truism that the United States pays the lions share of the UN budget. Moreover the European Union (EU) countries contribute the largest bloc of dues of the 193 member organization. Well, there’s good and bad news. The USA’s budget assessment is no longer as […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com When Kim Jong-Un and the North Korean propaganda machine hint they’ve got startling new weapons for striking terror into Americans thousands of miles away, they may not be talking about just their long-range missiles. How about drones, possibly the most talked about new death-dealer in the inventory of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com New Chinese leader Xi Jinping has flatly ruled out political reform in an unpublished internal speech during his recent tour of the quasi-capitalist Guangdong Province. According to a transcript of the speech obtained by East-Asia-Intel.com, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary bitterly accused party members who favored […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The fields of North Hwanghae Province in southwestern North Korea looked lush and green when I was there in July. One of the North Korean minders helpfully explained why the farmers there had it pretty good. They divided their crops between the state and themselves. The more they […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea’s high-profile nuclear threats despite international warnings of consequences that could jeopardize the country’s economic future signals instability in Kim Jong-Un’s regime that could trigger internal backlash, an analyst here said. The destitute nation, during its final stage of preparations for a third nuclear test, […]
Sol W. Sanders An old saw has it that only the British would build a city on a small, mountainous, rocky, waterless island and only the Chinese would live in it. Something of a backwater until 1949 when the miseries and violence of Mao Tse-tung and the Communists inflicted on the Mainland of China […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders TOKYO — Myron Macht, my diminutive friend, deceased alas! gourmet, bibliophile, raconteur – and unfortunately victim of post-traumatic syndrome as a veteran gunner in U.S. bombers during World War II, had a theory. Mike said, only half in jest, that the troubles of the contemporary world were all […]
