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Donald Kirk

'Animal Farm' never like this

The Demilitarized Zone that's divided North from South Korea since the Korean War evokes images of the Berlin Wall that divided East from West Berlin from 1961 to 1991 but shows no signs of going down after the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

2019-03-14 17:17

To walk or not to walk

By Donald Kirk No matter what he does or says, Donald Trump is playing a losing game with his critics on the North Korea-U.S. situation and probably on just about everything else. If he had joined Kim Jong-un last week in signing a piece of paper agreeing to give up sanctions while Kim promised to shut down the main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, a chorus of Trump-haters would have hissed and booed him down. Those same people, of course, blamed him for “failure” when he rejected Kim's phony offer, shook hands and walked out at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi.Aside from hardcore column...

2019-03-07 17:43

US baffled by reports on NK missile sites

Vietnam versus North Korea

The slogan, “Hanoi, City for Peace,” would have seemed unimaginable when I was a correspondent in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War nearly half a century ago.

2019-02-28 18:02

Trump's Korea 'doctrine'

Is President Donald Trump capable of creating a “doctrine”? Can we dignify any of his utterances with the word, “doctrine?” Thae Yong-ho, the former North Korean deputy chief of mission at their embassy in London, has come up with just that term to describe Trump's policy toward North Korea. He even compares the nascent “Trump doctrine” with the “Nixon doctrine.”

Do Je-hae | 2019-02-22 17:42

On Vietnam's capitalist road

Everybody knows Kim Jong-un has a lot to learn from the capitalist success of nearby Communist countries. No example is better than that of China, whose leaders have urged him to walk the capitalist road to success. His late father, Kim Jong-il, was photographed during trips to China traipsing around one project or another as living evidence that communism and capitalism could survive together, to everyone's benefit, at no risk to his grip on power.

2019-02-14 17:31

Gambling on defense

The prospect of President Trump abandoning friends and allies resonates here for reasons that have nothing to do with North or South Korea.

2019-02-07 17:29

Dangerous triangle

Here's a triangulation that's getting more acute every day: China, North Korea, the U.S. It's not just that China is North Korea's only real ally, its bulwark of defense since the 1950-53 Korean War. It's also that China's differences with the U.S. are deepening with the indictment of its biggest smartphone maker for theft of U.S. trade secrets, for industrial espionage and for money-laundering.

2019-01-31 17:38

Maintaining 'momentum'

The revelation of another “undeclared” North Korean missile base should send shock waves through all those concerned about the safety and security of the region, notably South Korea. Actually, however, it's hard to find ordinary people too worried about the latest report by esteemed experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington (CSIS).

2019-01-24 17:36

Does Kim need Trump?

U.S. President Donald Trump is facing such excruciating trouble on his own home front that you have to wonder when he's going to get enough time off to see Kim Jong-un. For that matter, you wonder if Kim will really want to see him all that much, knowing that he's besieged by enemies and may not even survive the remaining two years of his presidency, much less get elected to a second term.

2019-01-17 16:56

North Korea's win-win strategy

As the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon won a reputation for diplomatic blandness. He took pains not to tread on the sensitivities of all the disparate, often hostile, sometimes warring, states that make up the U.N. That's not easy considering the explosions, brush fires and blood-letting that goes on every day.

2019-01-10 17:14

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