Opinion - The Korea Times

Gambling on defense

By Donald Kirk NEW DELHI ― The prospect of President Trump abandoning friends and allies resonates here for reasons that have nothing to do with North or South Korea.While focusing on whatever deal Trump's likely to cook up with Kim Jong-un, let us not forget the priorities in the capital of the world's second most populated country are a little different. Here in New Delhi, the concern is that Trump's notion of withdrawing several thousand troops from Afghanistan and all of them from Syria will upset the balance of forces in South Asia.Nobody here really believes that U.S. talks with the Taliban for easing tensions will have a happy outcome, just as no one takes seriously Trump's claim that ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is really defeated. “The goals of drawing the Taliban into peaceful politics and thus extricating America from a costly and destructive conflict are the right ones,” says The Economist, “but there are sadly many reasons to fear that the framework will not produce either outcome.”At Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Internati

Feb 7, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Dangerous triangle

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― 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.And it's also that the U.S. is looking for ways to make a deal with North Korea that would tone down the hostility dating from the Korean War and promote reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.The indictment of smartphone giant Huawei comes in the midst of a trade war between the U.S. and China, on top of the contest for control of the South China Sea, China's Belt and Road Initiative across the Himalayas through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean and deepening claims to the island province of Taiwan, basically an independent nation.All these factors give China's President Xi Jinping reason to intensify ties with North Korea while North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un plots to d

Jan 31, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Maintaining 'momentum'

By Donald Kirk 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).The reasons for such widespread insouciance are familiar to all of us who have been following the ups and downs of the North Korean nuclear threat for the past few years, decades. The overwhelming sense is that it can't happen here, that Kim Jong-un may posture all he wants, but honestly he's not gonna press the button on one of those things and send it hurtling into space carrying a real live warhead, is he?The answer to that question is probably not, but then there are other reasons why it's real hard to get people too worked up about just another missile base. We've heard all that stuff before. We're getting missile-and-nuke fatigue. Yes, we know they've got these bases, we know they conducted

Jan 24, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Does Kim need Trump?

By Donald KirkU.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.Still, we have to believe President Moon Jae-in has reason to be confident that a second Trump-Kim summit is absolutely going to happen. He really sounded sure of himself when he said, at that New Year press conference last week, that “Kim's visit to China shows a second summit between the United States and North Korea is nearing.” He also seemed to know pretty much what would be on the agenda.The Trump-Kim summit in Singapore “was not specific enough,” Moon said, understating the vacuity of their joint statement in which they both professed to espouse “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” That statement was so vague as to be comparable to a de

Jan 17, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

North Korea's win-win strategy

By Donald Kirk 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.Bearing this background in mind, you had to be impressed by the firmness with which Ban addressed the opening this week of the Global Diplomacy Convergence Program, a 12-session course bringing together mainly professional people wanting to know how the world works. Ban's message was clear: the Korean confrontation is at a “critical stage” and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un has not done much about denuclearization. Rather, Kim has attempted, and indeed in large measure succeeded, in convincing people that he has showed his desire for peace by suspending nuclear and missile testing, and blowing up a nuclear test site that was already largely destroyed in the North's disastrous sixth and hopefully last such test in September 2017. Ban d

Jan 10, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Forecasting Korea's future

By Donald KirkThe French have two expressions that capture the essence of Kim Jong-un's New Year address. First, there's “deja vu” ― or maybe “deja vu all over again,” as the American baseball player Yogi Berra famously put it. And then there's "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose” ― “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The circumstances no doubt change from year to year, but we've seen this whole drama before: hopes crazily raised by nice words and gestures, then dashed on the rocks by North Korea's refusal to live up to its promises. That's how it seemed yet again as Kim on New Year's Day called for the U.S. to give up sanctions and relieve the “pressure” ― a reference implicitly to nukes on U.S. ships and planes prowling the region.Just because nothing much has really changed on the path to reconciliation does not mean North Korea-watchers, meaning just about everyone, should stop making predictions, alternating between wishful thinking and forecasts of doom. This time of year, it's appropriate to gaze in

Jan 3, 2019By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Missing Mattis on North Korea

By Donald KirkThe departure of Jim Mattis as defense secretary by the end of the year has grave implications for Korea. If there was one voice of reason, calm and common sense when it came to North Korea and the U.S. defense of the South, it was that of Mattis.I encountered Mattis on his first trip to Seoul and then during a couple of others. He was strong in his belief in the need to be sure of having the troops and resources for the South's defense. At the same time, he went along with the shift in policy under President Moon Jae-in. His response was, give peace a chance.Talks between Moon and Kim Jong-un and between President Donald Trump and Kim were fine but on one condition: Mattis wanted no compromise on denuclearization, on North Korea giving up its nukes and the long-range missiles capable of carrying them to distant targets and, yes, the facilities for making them.It would be hard to characterize Mattis as a hard-liner, a war hawk eager to bomb out the North's nuclear sites or, for that matter, a foe of Moon's efforts at rapprochement and dialogue. If anything, he saw defen

Dec 27, 2018By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Looking at South-North rail service

By Donald KirkThe notion of opening a rail service between South and North Korea is captivating. You have to hope that someday the dream will come true and trains will be hauling passengers and freight from South to North and back again as they should have been doing for many years.There are, however, obstacles that make the idea somewhat unrealistic. Quite aside from U.S. and U.N. sanctions that prohibit construction right away, other issues may be more serious. For one thing, there's the cost. Who's going to pay for overhauling the North's railroads?Experts from South Korea, after studying first the western and then the eastern rail system in North Korea, say the entire network is in awful shape. After 10 days looking at the tracks, roadbeds, bridges and tunnels of the North's eastern rail system, Lim Jong-il, director of the railway construction division of the railway bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, refrained from blunt language as he talked about what he and his colleagues had seen.The eastern line, said Lim, was “almost the same” as the

Dec 20, 2018By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Asking hard questions

By Donald KirkIt's fine to talk to the North Koreans about their nukes and missiles. Go ahead and tell them they're a threat to the world, the human race, to civilization. No problem. The North's stock retort, as we all know, is they're needed for self-defense against the Americans, who bombed the hell out of us in the Korean War. One topic, however, is strictly off the table, verboten, banned, forbidden, absolutely not mentioned if you want to keep talking to them: human rights.That's why President Moon Jae-in, on the 70th anniversary this week of passage by the U.N. General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said not a word about North Korea as he gingerly remarked, “The way to improve the human rights of the entire Korean people” is “to eliminate the remains of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula and establish permanent peace.”Sure, but what's he going on about? Is he equating South with North Korea, suggesting the South's record on human rights is comparable with that of the North? Or is he just trying to avoid the topic, to bury it be

Dec 13, 2018By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Talking about summitry

By Donald Kirk Summitry is in the air. Excitement and speculation are rife. Everyone is talking about talking. How about talks between the leaders of the two Koreas, between each of them and the U.S. president, maybe a meeting of all three together?President Moon Jae-in has just sat down with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G-20 gathering in Buenos Aires, and they both came out bursting with optimism about more summits. Trump is talking about seeing Kim Jong-un for their second summit early next year. He mentioned three possible venues but didn't say which, prompting a lot of guessing.Moon, meanwhile, would love to receive Kim in Seoul. The mere idea of the North Korean leader deigning to visit the South Korean capital is mesmerizing. It was all well and good for him to step across the line at their first summit in April, but that gesture was really symbolic, a photo-op. Three South Korean presidents have gone to Pyongyang ― Kim Dae-jung in 2000, Roh Moo-hyun in 2007 and Moon in September. Kim's late father, Kim Jong-il, promised return visits to the South but never ma

Dec 6, 2018By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

Gambling on defense

Dangerous triangle

Maintaining 'momentum'

Does Kim need Trump?

North Korea's win-win strategy

Forecasting Korea's future

Missing Mattis on North Korea

Looking at South-North rail service

Asking hard questions

Talking about summitry

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