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Donald Kirk

Kim's dubious deal with Putin

Kim Jong-un’s magical mystery tour through the Russian Far East may have added a frightening dimension to the standoff between alliances in Northeast Asia. Russia appears poised to shower North Korea with fighter planes, warships and the technology to put satellites into orbit while North Korean factories, hidden around the country, pump out millions of artillery shells for Russia's beleaguered forces in Ukraine.

2023-09-21 16:42

Summitry takes center stage

History is playing games. Who, as Saigon was falling to the forces of “North” Vietnam in April 1975, would have looked into a crystal ball and seen an American president 50 years later talking with Vietnam's top leaders about aiding their Communist regime?

2023-09-07 16:35

Don't count on Camp David

President Biden should be credited with a terrific public relations success. In less than one day, he got the leaders of South Korea and Japan to appear in full accord on mutual defense against all the bad guys in the region, mostly North Korea but also China.

2023-08-24 16:35

Jeju cherry trees: force for peace

Australian anthropologist Grant McCall had a vision for peace that extended from the south Pacific to the Korean Peninsula. A symbol of his quest for goodwill and tranquility in Korea was the Jeju King Cherry tree. And his dream of the way to pursue peace was to plant some of them in and around the resort area of Wonsan on North Korea's southeastern coast.

2023-08-10 16:35

Korea's quest for 'peace'

Anniversaries ending in zero or five are likely to focus special attention on the lessons of history. None is more portentous than the 70th anniversary this week of the signing of the truce that halted the Korean War on July 27, 1953.

2023-07-27 16:35

Facing expanded war

LONDON - The world descends into war by stages that might appear almost imperceptible to billions obsessed with fast-rising prices and the quest for daily survival.

2023-07-13 16:35

Risks of comparing Korea, Vietnam

By Donald KirkThe legacy of history is unpredictable, erratic, sometimes generous, more often capricious and jeering.If anybody had told me, when I was a journalist in “South” Vietnam five or six decades ago, visiting the marine press center in Da Nang, the large port city on Vietnam's central coast, that someday a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier would make a port call, I would have assumed the forecast was based on the U.S. winning the war.For sure, one would not have imagined that one of America's biggest warships would be welcome if “North” Vietnam were to defeat &ld...

2023-06-29 16:35

From slavery to success in Japan

Koreans living in Japan form a huge minority in a society that alternates between discriminating against them and providing them with opportunities. The fate of Koreans in Japan often rests on whether they came, essentially as slaves before and during World War II, whether they are students or professional workers, whether they have adopted Japanese citizenship, with Japanese names or have chosen to remain Korean with their original Korean family names.

2023-06-15 16:35

North Korea's worsening story

We're accustomed to two basic stories from North Korea. First is the North's nuclear and missile programs. Kim Jong-un is forever ordering missile tests, and he may also be considering the North's seventh nuclear test - which would be its first since September 2017.

2023-06-01 16:50

Bracing for nuclear war

The gaunt ruin of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial formed a stark backdrop to the G7 summit as leaders of the seven major industrial democracies and observers from other nations met to fend off wars that could trigger the next nuclear conflagration.

2023-05-23 16:30

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