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The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Columnists

Donald Kirk

Pandemic of violence

NEW YORK - The latest news crackles over my car radio. Five killed in a night of violence, 40 injured. Two dead in another shootout, three injured. Two policemen suffering gunshot wounds.

2020-08-27 17:19

Korean baseball on ESPN

NEW YORK - One thing about waking up early in the U.S. is you get to see Korean baseball on ESPN. Six days a week, beginning about 5:30 a.m., 6:30 p.m. in Korea, ESPN carries a Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) game with play-by-play and commentary by two American announcers keeping their eyes on the screen by link from Korea.

2020-08-20 18:24

Media freedom at stake

If “truth is the first casualty,” newsrooms around the world are piled high with the wounded, the dying and the dead. The whole concept of a truthful, free and objective press has always been more myth than reality, a goal held up by politicians and journalists alike but never remotely realized. What's true to one bunch is fake news to another. The line between truth and falsehood wavers every day in Washington while President Donald Trump accuses his worst enemies in the media of purveying lies, and they fire off editorial barrages that sometimes make their opinion pages look like propagand...

2020-08-13 17:44

Avoiding bad news

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The pandemic is deceptive. You know it's here, all around you, but you can't see it or hear or feel it. You cruise down near-empty streets that once were filled with commuter traffic, you go into restaurants that have only two or three customers or maybe none, and you see a majority of people wearing face masks.

2020-08-06 17:23

Comparing protest movements

WASHINGTON - The mayhem on the streets of some American cities may be more shocking to foreign TV watchers than to Americans. No other nation would permit such nonsense to go on for days on end. Where else would duly elected metropolitan mayors defend the trouble-makers as merely exercising their constitutional rights?

2020-07-30 17:33

America's global retreat

WASHINGTON - The United States is at a tipping point in terms of military power worldwide, nowhere more so than in Korea.

2020-07-23 15:56

Fighting China's wars

China is behaving like a caged beast growling, menacing, lashing out and baring its teeth at potential enemies on all sides. In the far northern reaches of India, Chinese forces have challenged Indian troops along what's called a “Line of Actual Control” established after the Chinese nipped off portions of Indian territory in a flare-up nearly 60 years ago.

2020-07-16 17:31

News for North Koreans

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 having on North-South rapprochement? For sure, Kim is not going to agree on denuclearization, but how about just returning to talks?

2020-07-09 17:09

Celebrating July 4th

Most people hardly need reminders of their mortality. Mere mortals know there's a time to live and a time to die, but surely a statue should insure immortality in history if not in person. Not so, as Americans are reminded in assaults on statues of people seen as bad guys, traitors, villains to be dumped onto the ash heap of history, no longer venerated as heroes in stone or bronze.

2020-07-02 16:57

Trump's failed diplomacy

The timing of John Bolton's tell-all, “The Room Where It Happened,” was positively diabolic. Could it be mere coincidence that it hit the book stores in a month of significant anniversaries?

2020-06-25 17:20

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