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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Facing expanded war

By Donald KirkLONDON ― The world descends into war by stages that might appear almost imperceptible to billions obsessed with fast-rising prices and the quest for daily survival.For most of us, the proxy war in Ukraine remains a distant contest in which Ukrainian forces fight with foreign weapons, mostly American and British. Their Russian enemy is cumbersome, awkward, demoralized and badly led but not about to compromise or go home as long as Vladimir Putin remains in power.On a personal level, we do not have to worry too much since no American lives, or the lives of the citizens of any of America's 30 NATO partners, are on the line. The Ukrainians are fighting for themselves.Against this background, escalation happens one step at a time. The Americans are now training Ukrainian pilots on F16s, the “fighting falcons” deemed capable of combating Russian MiG and Sukhoi fighters.Then just last week, President Joe Biden said, fine, we'll provide cluster bombs needed to wipe out Russian units much more efficiently than artillery shells, which might take out individual targets

Jul 13, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Risks of comparing Korea, Vietnam

By Donald KirkThe legacy of history is unpredictable, erratic, sometimes generous, more often capricious and jeering.If anybody had told me, when I was a journalist in “South” Vietnam five or six decades ago, visiting the marine press center in Da Nang, the large port city on Vietnam's central coast, that someday a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier would make a port call, I would have assumed the forecast was based on the U.S. winning the war.For sure, one would not have imagined that one of America's biggest warships would be welcome if “North” Vietnam were to defeat “South” Vietnam. What could be more ridiculous than the notion of an American aircraft carrier arriving in Da Nang with the full authority and blessing of the Communist rulers of a united Vietnam? I would have shrugged off such an impossible prospect as a ridiculous joke.But what do you know, the USS Ronald Reagan showed up in Da Nang on a courtesy call intended to show the enduring friendship of the Americans and the Vietnamese, under the thumb of the Communist victors in Hanoi. There it

Jun 29, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

From slavery to success in Japan

By Donald KirkKoreans living in Japan form a huge minority in a society that alternates between discriminating against them and providing them with opportunities. The fate of Koreans in Japan often rests on whether they came, essentially as slaves before and during World War II, whether they are students or professional workers, whether they have adopted Japanese citizenship, with Japanese names or have chosen to remain Korean with their original Korean family names.The place of Korean Japanese is so confusing that it's hard to be sure of their precise numbers. I have seen statistics ranging from one to two million, the figures vary wildly depending in part on how many have returned to Korea. Officially, the Japanese say there are more than 820,000 Korean residents in Japan, but that figure accounts only for those who retain Korean citizenship. An equal number have faded into the mass of Japanese, bearing Japanese names, speaking Japanese as their first language and often marrying Japanese.Stories of the Korean experience in Japan are filled with successes, failures, triumphs and tra

Jun 15, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

North Korea's worsening story

By Donald KirkWe're accustomed to two basic stories from North Korea. First is the North's nuclear and missile programs. Kim Jong-un is forever ordering missile tests, and he may also be considering the North's seventh nuclear test ― which would be its first since September 2017.The other story revolves around hunger, starvation and disease. One might think the North had learned enough of a lesson from the experience of the 1990s when famine wiped out as many as 2 million of its people.But no, even as Kim was declaring he will soon put a spy satellite into orbit, we were getting reports that North Korea has quite a distinction. The North, while plunging into another period of widespread hunger, ranks first on the Global Survey Index conducted by Walk Free, an Australian outfit that's doing what it can to wipe out slavery all around the earth.That's quite a tall order, which Walk Free undoubtedly will not accomplish, but meanwhile, it's putting out fascinating statistics on the levels of slavery in 160 countries.The closest challenger to North Korea in terms of the percentage of peopl

Jun 1, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Bracing for nuclear war

By Donald KirkThe gaunt ruin of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial formed a stark backdrop to the G7 summit as leaders of the seven major industrial democracies and observers from other nations met to fend off wars that could trigger the next nuclear conflagration.Their host, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is from Hiroshima, began the talkfest by escorting his fellow potentates to the Genbaku Dome, the ghostly ruin of the first nuclear bomb dropped in warfare on Aug. 6, 1945.President Joe Biden was not there to apologize for the bomb that killed at least 70,000 people. But his visit to the Peace Memorial was a powerful reminder of the urgent need to look for peace in a world beset by the dangers of wars that could engulf much of humanity. Right now, the hottest war is being fought in Ukraine, where the G-7 leaders agreed totally on the need to stanch the bleeding of the Russian invasion that's cost, by some estimates, 50,000 lives. Just to get the G7 leaders to match their bold words with promises of much more military aid, including F-16 fighter planes, Ukraine's President Volo

May 23, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Dividends of summitry

By Donald KirkThe rapid succession of summits between President Yoon Suk Yeol and President Biden and then between Yoon and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida should in theory open a new chapter in South Korea's two most important relationships with foreign countries.Certainly, it was great to see these leaders getting together in what appeared to be the friendliest summits imaginable. On sober second thought, however, we have to recognize the downside of both these summits. The fact is South Korea did not quite achieve all it wanted in either of them.The results of the White House summit were particularly ambivalent. No way, it seemed, was the Biden administration open to demands for South Korea to have nukes on its soil. That goes for nukes planted by the Americans on bases in the South, ready for firing back at the North in case Kim Jong-un makes good on his threats to unleash tactical nukes against the South.Nor were the Americans the least receptive to South Korea fabricating its own nukes. We assume, after all, their success in making nuclear reactors for power plants, that K

May 11, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Debating extended deterrence

By Donald KirkDeterrence is the new word for defense. When our leaders talk about increasing “deterrence,” they mean doing a lot more to defend against enemies. Now the Americans and Koreans are talking about vastly increasing their deterrence against North Korea, which says it's building more and better missiles, and more nuclear warheads too, all for defense.The problem with talking about ever more deterrence is that no one quite knows what it means. The term that's now in vogue is “extended deterrence,” but what does “extend” add to deterrence? Will American and South Korea forces stage more and better military exercises, and will we send big bombers from Guam and Okinawa on patrols along the Demilitarized Zone? Will aircraft carriers be cruising off the east and west coasts of the Korean Peninsula more often?The Americans are also using the word “deterrence” to put off South Korean desires for more than just rhetoric. A majority of South Koreans think South Korea should be producing its own nuclear warheads, and many also think the

Apr 25, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

On defense against China

By Donald KirkThe United States has strengthened its defenses in East Asia by gaining year-round, permanent access to nine bases in the Philippines. These aren't American bases, but U.S. troops can move in and out of them as needed for exercises or, for that matter, in a real war.This month, the bases are supporting more than 17,000 American and Philippine troops in the biggest war games in the Philippines in years. The Philippines' President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has reversed the policies of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who undermined the Philippine-American alliance by courting China. Duterte saw a warm relationship with China's President Xi Jinping as needed to head off conflict in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims as Chinese territory.Bongbong, whose father, Ferdinand Marcos, ruled as a dictator for 18 years before his overthrow in the People Power Revolution in 1986, has decided the country's future lies in renewing close ties with Washington. The Americans had to evacuate their huge air and naval bases more than 30 years ago after the Philippi

Apr 13, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Leaders on trial

By Donald KirkShow trials of foreign leaders make the indictment of Donald Trump for paying off a porn actress to silence her look like an episode that should flicker, flare and fade. In Asia, former leaders have gone to jail with a regularity that proves the enduring truth of the Shakespearean line, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” They may not have been monarchs, but they all wore figurative crowns of thorns. In South Korea, the long-ruling dictator, Park Chung-hee, was assassinated in 1979 by his intelligence chief. A general, Chun Doo-hwan, soon seized power, leading to protests across the country and revolt in May 1980 in Gwangju in which more than 200 demonstrators were killed. One of Asia's great show trials was that of Chun and General Roh Tae-woo, elected president as Chun's successor in 1987 after Chun promised to step down amid some of the biggest protests in Korean history. Roh served a five-year term, but he and Chun were arrested and convicted in 1996 for corruption and the Gwangju Massacre. Sentenced to death and life in prison, respectively, Chu

Apr 9, 2023By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Waging Star Wars

By Donald KirkThe heavens far above the stratosphere may be the battleground in Star Sars against North Korea's vaunted hypersonic cruise missiles. The U.S. command showed off its high-flying answer to attacks from the North while U.S. and South Korean forces were winding up their first full-scale joint war games in six years. The exercise, for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), fortified the South Korea-U.S. alliance at a time when North Korea is escalating its missile tests. The North has loudly rejected calls to give up its nukes, investing its resources into fabricating more of them while sinking deeper into poverty and hunger reminiscent of the famine of the 1990s in which nearly 2 million people died from hunger and disease.In never-ending trials of military strength on the Korean Peninsula, the THAAD display left no doubt that one decisive factor in a second Korean War may be which side has the sharpest, strongest missiles ― and the ability to shoot them down.The most fearsome missiles in South Korea may belong to the THAAD unit on a former golf course 220 kilometers

Mar 28, 2023By Donald Kirk
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