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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Biden and North Korea

By Donald KirkLook for familiar names from the presidency of Barack Obama to deal with North Korea after the inauguration of Joseph Biden as president on Jan. 20. Biden, having served as vice president for two terms under Obama, knows these old-timers well and may be inclined to name some of them to influential positions in hope, finally, of bringing North Korea to terms on its nuclear program.The chances of Kim Jong-un saying, “right, we agree, and we're giving up our nukes and missiles and the facilities for making them” range from nil to zero, but Christopher Hill, who led the Americans in failed six-party talks on North Korea's nukes and then in frustrating negotiations with North Korea's Kim Gye-gwan, never loses hope. In a Biden presidency, he said in a recent panel discussion, “There will be a little more focus on the substance of engagement and why we are willing to engage.”That remark is a swipe at President Donald Trump, who thought all the presidents before him had failed miserably in dealing with North Korea and swore he had really accomplished som

Nov 12, 2020By Donald Kirk
Biden and North Korea
Donald Kirk

Politics of vengeance

By Donald KirkNo American presidential election in recent years was watched so closely as the one that concluded on Tuesday after considerably more than half of eligible voters had already cast their ballots by mail. It wasn't just the Americans voting in record numbers who were mesmerized by the whole process. The rest of the world was watching too as if it were some great game like the Superbowl played between two football teams, the annual gladiatorial contest that's almost as popular globally as it is across the U.S.In a sense the great show was not just about who would lead a country divided as rarely before since the Civil War between the northern and southern states. It was also an exercise in democracy, a supercharged example of how a democratic system functions or fails in a society that purports to place high priority on freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to smear a person with demonstrable falsehoods, to say just about anything short of libel. In this campaign, more than any other in recent years, the rules of libel were bent and stretched as activists and prote

Nov 5, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Trump versus Biden

By Donald KirkOdds-makers have no doubt fine-tuned the chances of Donald Trump or Joe Biden winning next Tuesday's presidential election. I might lay odds on one or the other but not for the record. It's not that I think it would be wrong to let it be known on whom I was betting. It's just the campaign is so fraught with variables and imponderables that I wouldn't hazard a guess for fear I could be proven dead wrong a few days from now, or later next week, or next month.Wait a minute, this election is so crazy, we're not even sure when we'll have the final count, when the Supreme Court will declare the winner and whether Trump, Melania and all their relatives and aides will be willing to leave the White House if perchance Trump is “the loser.” Admittedly, the sight of them being carried out on the shoulders of Secret Service guardians would be fun on TV, but I'd be worried about never collecting on my bet.It's necessary to put quotes around “loser” because that's one of the Trumpster's favorite words. He's been labeling people “losers” whenever he

Oct 29, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Shifting sands

By Donald Kirk Relationships ― diplomatic, economic or personal ― evolve. The U.S.-Korea relationship is not cast in stone. U.S. diplomats can go on all they want about the tightness of the bond, “no daylight between us” and all that, but it's got to change with the times. Probably no U.S. president has fortified that sense more clearly than Donald Trump. First, he just cannot get over his “love” for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his disdain for South Korea's President Moon Jae-in. That's obvious from the way he praises Kim to the skies, including him with other dictators he admires like Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping. Trump may have trouble with some of their policies but thinks they're wonderful. Sorry, he does not have similar feelings for Moon and is still holding up South Korea for considerably more than the $927 million paid last year for U.S. bases and troops. He has to know his original demand of $5 billion was stupid, but the U.S. would still like a few hundred million more.North Korea is hardly mentioned in a U.S. presidential c

Oct 22, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Protests amid pandemic

By Donald KirkThe pandemic assumes strange forms under strange conditions. No one knows who will be next to catch the bug. It's difficult to criticize the rules set forth in Korea for making as sure as humanly possible that COVID-19 won't spread. For the second time this year, I've been quarantined for two weeks at my place in Seoul, under orders not to leave for so much as a cup of coffee or a stop at a convenience store.This time, though, the system was slightly different from when I got here in April. Rather than test me at the airport on arrival and send me overnight to a youth hostel that the government had taken over for those awaiting test results, I was free to go home with instructions to get tested at the local health center within three days. A large special taxi had to whisk me there and back, for a rather hefty fee. The driver was shielded from the passenger by plexiglass, and I was warned not to get any ideas about straying on the way to or from the center.I knew the system was working when an app installed at the airport, as on my previous arrival, flashed a message sh

Oct 15, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

One crazy campaign

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― There's never been an American presidential campaign like this one. In fact, there may not have been a campaign like this one in any other country.Let's count the ways. First there was the pandemic. Or did the protests and riots come first? Next there was the death of a respected Supreme Court justice. Oh, and then there was President Donald Trump, the pandemic-denier, coming down with COVID-19.The atmosphere is simmering with so much controversy, so many views, so much news, that it's really hard to sort out what's more important and what will happen next.Right now, focus is on the latest medical bulletins on Trump. He says he's fine, don't worry about it, but then in February he was saying don't worry about COVID-19. Now that he's got it, he might be expected to be saying, I was wrong, I've seen the light and I know anyone can get it any time.But he still seems not to have fully grasped the meaning of what he and millions of others are suffering. He's not, as his doctor said, “out of the woods” just yet. Considering all the medical attention h

Oct 8, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

America's 'perfect storm'

By Donald KirkPHILADELPHIA ― The Independence Hall where 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence is a vision in red brick, its clock tower looking over a park where the Liberty Bell is now encased in glass. It was that bell, famed for its hairline crack, that rang out the news of the 56 members of the continental congress approving the declaration on July 4, 1776.These days, though, Independence Hall looks almost modest, dwarfed by much taller icons of modern society and barely noticed by tourists since the hall was reopened to socially distanced visitors. On a beautiful autumn day, demonstrators might prefer to protest in the center of the city at the rococo City Hall, an enormous gem of 19th century architecture.At the pinnacle of City Hall stands a statue of William Penn, a leader of the Society of Friends, i.e. the Quakers, who had led his people to the new colony more than a century before the creation of the U.S. A famous painting called the Peaceable Kingdom shows Penn dispensing good will to American Indians, a.k.a. Native Americans, along with assorted charming animals

Sep 24, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Woodward's take on Trump

By Donald KirkAcclaimed journalist Bob Woodward offers inside stories that escaped all of us while covering the three Trump-Kim meetings in 2018 and 2019. In the course of 18 interviews, and in 27 messages that he obtained between Trump and Kim, he provides details that make his latest book, “Rage,” enthralling reading for anyone, whether a scholar, journalist, government official or a total newcomer to the scene, and outlines the issues that have made it impossible to bring about permanent peace and tranquility on the Korean Peninsula. Since the first reports of the book came out last week, we've seen plenty of stories quoting Trump telling Woodward that Kim is “beyond smart” and Kim saying the bond between them was like a “fantasy film.” We knew that Trump was flattered by correspondence from Kim addressing him as “Excellency,” and we have long been aware that Trump professed that he and Kim fell “in love” when they met for the first time in Singapore in June 2018 for what may have been the most over-hyped exercise in summ

Sep 17, 2020By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

President 'bone spur'

By Donald KirkNORFOLK, Va. ― President Donald Trump is noted for his outrageous remarks, none more absurd than his claim to have averted another Korean War by meeting Kim Jong-un three times for nothing more than a bonanza of breathless media coverage.But wait. Now he's gone a step further ― one that may escape notice amid a wash of other news, including a report that he labelled thousands of Americans killed in war in Europe as “losers,” even “suckers.”Actually, the Trumpster has denied repeatedly having made any such remark during a visit to France nearly two years ago in which bad weather purportedly forced the cancellation of a visit to a cemetery with the graves of 1,800 marines who died in the Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918. A lot of people, including the former national security adviser, John Bolton, who doesn't have much good to say about his ex-boss, were with him and agree with his impassioned denials of ever more “lies” about him.As for the “four sources” to whom The Atlantic magazine attributes the report, none have bee

Sep 10, 2020By Donald Kirk
President 'bone spur'
Donald Kirk

Protests inflaming politics

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― A wooden barrier was blocking the street, and a policeman was standing beside his patrol car. Accident? Arrest? Nope, “protests,” the cop told me. A few blocks toward the center of the capital, more police cars cut off main avenues. Over the radio came word that demonstrators were near the White House shouting slogans.The spirit of protest is not only alive and well but getting louder as the days wind down toward the most controversial, divisive election in memory. While President Donald Trump denounces his foe, Joe Biden, as “a socialist” on the side of vandals and rioters, Biden blames Trump for fueling the unrest, encouraging the rightists, holding him responsible for the violence wracking American cities.It's easy for both sides to accuse the other. They all cite numerous examples beginning with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a veteran policeman. Then there was Jacob Blake, paralyzed by seven shots fired by a policeman, and two men shot and killed by a 17-year-old kid. All in the same city in Wisconsin. Radicals an

Sep 3, 2020By Donald Kirk
Protests inflaming politics
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