Opinion - The Korea Times

Escalating sanctions

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON _ Americans are so fixated on the issues of healthcare and Russia that tightening sanctions on North Korea almost escapes notice. One minute the networks are vying with one another on what passes as “analysis” on President Trump’s efforts to replace Obamacare with Trumpcare, and the next they’re covering the latest “revelation” of whatever Trump and his family members and friends might have asked or told the Russians.Foreigners should be forgiven if they simply cannot understand what’s going on.  Certainly Trump isn’t coming clean on all the ins and outs of his relationship with Russia while berating his attorney-general, once a faithful ally, for having “recused” himself from the investigation and naming a special prosecutor, a much respected former FBI director whom Trump is also attacking.  And I would bet not one American in 1,000 or maybe 10,000 has a clue as to how Trumpcare improves on Obamacare and why Trump is trying so hard to ram it through a reluctant Congress.As for expanding s

Jul 27, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Moon's war of words

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON – The standoff on the Korean peninsula is entering a new phase. While President Moon Jae-in calls for talks with North Koreans, he is also honoring the U.S.-Korean alliance and insisting the North give up its nuclear program.Can Moon have it both ways? He’s besieged by protesters who expect him to abandon totally the policies of his conservative predecessors and support North Korea’s strategy of weakening the South from within. Against leftist demands, for instance, he is holding on to THAAD, the terminal high altitude area defense system that consists of one counter-missile battery implanted by the Americans on a Lotte golf course far south of Seoul.In effect, Moon is waging a war of words on two fronts. On one hand, he’s making overtures to the North Koreans in hopes of reopening a dormant dialogue that might bring about regular North-South contacts.  At the same time, he’s got to contend with radicals who expect him to live up to their demands, including removal of the THAAD, seen as a provocation that can only worse

Jul 20, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Art of diplomatic deal

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― We keep hearing so often about tight U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia that we forget the Saudis kicked out the last U.S. troops in the early 2000’s. Seems they regarded the U.S. presence as an affront to Islam more than a decade after U.S. forces drove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of Kuwait and possibly saved Saudi Arabia from being overrun as well. That’s just a detail in the convoluted, incomprehensible puzzle of the Middle East, but the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia is particularly significant considering where they wound up. Yes, the largest U.S. air base overseas is not at Kadena, on Okinawa, or at Osan, South Korea, but in Qatar, an oil-rich country of about 2.7 million people sticking out from the Arabian peninsula into the Persian Gulf. How many Americans know that about 10,000 U.S. troops, plus several thousand civilians, are now in Qatar, almost all of them at Al Udeid Air Base in the desert southwest of the Qatar capital of Doha? From there the U.S. air force directs operations all over the Middle East while war

Jul 13, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Giving peace another chance

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON – Pro-Northers have got to be more than a little disappointed by the recent summit between the presidents of the Republic of Korea and the United States.Judging from all the blather they were emitting before the summit, the pro-North crowd would have far rather seen President Moon Jae-in and President Trump pulling out their stilettos, jabbing one another with sly innuendoes if not full-frontal attacks.Imagine, then, their disappointment to have seen Trump agreeing South Korea should play the lead role in negotiations with North Korea and President Moon should do all he can to encourage dialogue and reconciliation. For that matter, Moon seems to have agreed that North Korea has to be persuaded to halt its nuclear program – something he had said long before the summit but reiterated again here in Washington.The pro-Northers ― those who advocate just about anything to bring about a phony “peace” without North Korea giving up its precious nukes and missiles ― were no doubt not too happy that talk about THAAD was sublimated during the summ

Jul 6, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Talking for peace

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON – The good news about President Moon Jae-in’s summitry with President Donald Trump this week is they’re talking as partners in the drive to end North Korea’s nuclear program and bring about inter-Korean reconciliation.A major barrier to cooperation, however, is loose talk about a peace treaty or peace agreement that would formally “end” the 1950-53 Korean War more than six decades after the truce was signed at Panmunjeom. Sure, why not sign a treaty, say the deal’s advocates, after which all sides will live happily and peacefully, no more “incidents.”Actually, however, any such deal would please no one.The most severe flaw in all talk of a treaty is the North Korean refusal to accept South Korea as an equal partner or even a signatory. The logic here is that the South’s Korean War president, Syngman Rhee, wanted no part of the armistice negotiated at Panmunjom – something North Koreans always point out while dismissing the South.Rhee believed – correctly – that the armistice would l

Jun 29, 2017By Donald Kirk

'Peace will spur US investment in N. Korea'

Donald Kirk

An exercise in terrorism

By Donald KirkThe death of Otto Warmbier provides a powerful reminder of the torture and terrorism perpetrated by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.Americans are no doubt aware of the tyranny of the dynasty led by a man who revels in ordering the development of long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the U.S., but how many know about the suffering of the millions who have died in his gulag system?Nor do Americans, saddened by the tragic suffering of a college student with whom many can empathize, remember that hundreds have been held for years in North Korea, mostly fishermen but also the crew and passengers of a hijacked Korean Air plane and dozens more kidnapped off remote beaches. Almost no one, moreover, comprehends the torture the regime inflicts on those guilty of about anything that offends the ruler.That’s just one reason why the death of Warmbier is so suspicious. After he arrived in his native Cincinnati, comatose but breathing, doctors were sure the North Koreans were lying when they said he’d been in a coma for months after t

Jun 22, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Peace or appeasement?

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON – Christine Ahn, a policy analyst with the Korea Peace Network, had what appeared to be good news as she opened a conference here with the portentous title, “Off Ramps to War: Paths to Building Peace with North Korea.” Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student accused of having torn a banner from a wall as a souvenir on what was to have been his last day on a typical Pyongyang tour, was coming home after 17 months’ imprisonment.Warmbier had been in a coma for months, the victim of beatings that had left him limp when last photographed, held up by prison guards during a tearful court appearance at which he was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor.Details of Warmbier’s suffering would definitely have interfered with the message of the conference, all about the mistakes of U.S. policy toward North Korea, the need for dialogue and a “peace agreement,” if not a treaty, to mark closure on the Korean War. The message was: sanctions, bad; talk, good.The stars of the show, at the Elliott School of International Affa

Jun 15, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Talking in circles at Jeju

By Donald Kirk JEJU ― Gary Samore of the Belfer Center at Harvard, formerly with the Obama administration, suggested at the annual Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity that resolution of North Korea’s nukes-and-missiles program may be insoluble. That sense weighs heavily on policy-makers in Seoul and Washington. How can Koreans and Americans agree on a common approach, and where is South Korea going in its alliance with the U.S.?Americans and Koreans alike wondered how long the special U.S.-Korea relationship can endure despite the claims of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during visits to Seoul that the U.S. and Korea are “in lockstep.” Differences were all too clear in debate here on the unending standoff for power and influence in the region.Chinese participants seemed far more concerned about the U.S. counter-missile battery known as THAAD than about North Korean missile tests. Asked whether “the U.S. pivot to Asia” would “continue under the Trump administration,” Wang Dong

Jun 8, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Hangover after the honeymoon

By Donald KirkIt's tempting for punsters to play on the surname Moon. There’s “honeymoon,” of course, and “moonshine” – the latter for whiskey distilled in the mountains of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee by the light of the moon.How long, then, will the honeymoon last for President Moon Jae-in while North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un orders weekly missile shots? The question assumes critical relevance after the North’s latest test of a Scud missile that flew nearly 300 miles before landing in waters inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.The tests have definitely diluted the thrills of a honeymoon in which Moon has reached high levels in popularity while appointing aides noted for having opposed bygone conservative policies. That’s to be expected considering Moon’s record as a liberal activist and advocate of dialogue with North Korea.In his state of shock, however, Moon agrees with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that it’s “not the time for dialogue with North Korea.” Could it be the liberal

Jun 1, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Trump tower over Pyongyang?

By Donald KirkEverybody’s talking about overtures to Pyongyang. Informal talks, secret talks, talks about talks – then, somewhere in everyone’s pet solution, comes the killer line: Pyongyang has to “freeze” its missile-and-nuclear program before real talking begins.It’s unlikely Kim Jong-un will “freeze” anything, but here’s an idea. Remember that enormous triangular-shaped building that dominates the Pyongyang skyline? That’s right, the Ryugyong Hotel, 105 stories, 330 meters high, never opened, a monument to failure.The Ryugyong is celebrating an anniversary of sorts. Well, maybe not a celebration, just a rueful reminder of high hopes and wild dreams sacrificed on the altar of dictatorial fantasies. Yes, it was 30 years ago this year that construction began. The job was to have been done in two years, but then came the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its east European satellites ― and the end of Soviet support of the North Korean economy.But wait. Isn’t Donald Trump one of the world’s best known r

May 25, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

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Escalating sanctions

Moon's war of words

Art of diplomatic deal

Giving peace another chance

Talking for peace

An exercise in terrorism

Peace or appeasement?

Talking in circles at Jeju

Hangover after the honeymoon

Trump tower over Pyongyang?

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