Opinion - The Korea Times

Escalating dangers for Korea

By Donald KirkSuddenly the outlook for keeping the peace on the Korean peninsula has taken an alarming turn for the worse. We’ve long been accustomed to the threat of Korean War II, but now it’s looking like more than a scary mirage. China is up in arms over the arrival of the first elements of the dreaded THAAD counter-missile system in South Korea. North Korean missile test-shots are getting more sophisticated while Pyongyang plays tough and mean with a minor Southeast Asian country with which it had had shockingly good relations. And South Korea is roiled by a political crisis that’s dividing the populace  and distracting attention. Add to that combustible mix the unpredictable policies of President Donald Trump. After years of “strategic patience” under President Obama, might Trump one day decide to back up pledges of U.S. support for the South with a “preemptive strike” -- the term that’s coming into vogue as more than a vague threat? Wearying of rhetoric from Pyongyang, might Trump tweet that he’s sick and tired of the

Mar 9, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

For accurate story in NK, wait until reunification

By Donald KirkTo the rest of the world North Korea is an enigma. No one knows what’s happening among the elite who govern the country. There’s no telling what people are really thinking and saying on the streets of Pyongyang and other cities in the country, much less in remote regions.All we get as journalists writing about North Korea are clues. We see reports via Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency. We get snippets of cellphone conversations via two or three websites purporting to cover North Korea. We hear accounts of harrowing experiences from defectors. We occasionally go to North Korea on carefully guided and monitored tours.Writing about North Korea, no one can claim omniscience – or even expertise. Guides – they’re called “minders” – block visitors from talking to people privately. You can’t call the foreign ministry. You can’t go anywhere except in a van with other visitors hitting the sights. Outside Pyongyang, the van takes you to destinations deemed suitable for visitors. At the North Korean side of

Mar 6, 2017By Donald Kirk

For accurate story in NK, wait until reunification

ROUNDTABLE Trump to force N. Korea to choose: nukes or survival

Donald Kirk

North Korea's biochemical menace

By Donald KirkThe poisoning of the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un should make everyone painfully aware of a category of “weapons of mass destruction” that’s overlooked in the controversy over nuclear devices.In all the negotiations, recriminations, talk and double-talk about North Korea’s nuclear menace, little is said about the North’s highly sophisticated program for developing chemical and biological “weapons of mass destruction.” How advanced the North Koreans are may not be clear, but they’ve developed dozens of types, ranging from anthrax to ricin to sarin and potassium cyanide, to name a few.The North Koreans may not be as far along as others in chemical and biological warfare, but they are definitely capable of inflicting death with VX, the chemical nerve agent that killed Kim Jong-nam at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The question is whether they can deliver this and other agents on a mass scale, spraying them over vast areas, killing thousands as would a nuclear explosion.Just as North Korean scientis

Mar 2, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Fake news and false flags

By Donald KirkThe assassination of Kim Jong-nam promises to go down as one of those weird acts of terrorism that North Korea, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, will forever deny having perpetrated.The prevarication and obfuscation in this case would appear a little more ornate than North Korea’s unending denials of having anything to do with anything. Forget about the sinking of the Cheonan in the Yellow Sea nearly seven years ago that killed 46 sailors, or the explosion over the Indian Ocean in 1987 of a Korean Air flight that sent 115 aboard to their deaths, or the bombing in the Burmese capital of Rangoon in 1983 that killed 21 – but missed its target, Chun Doo-hwan, then South Korea’s president.Don’t blame us, the North Koreans have said every time. Blame those villains, American and South Korean agents. Denials are easy. Pro-Northers have stories to cover all the angles regardless of mountains of evidence to the contrary.Now they’re coming out with the same type responses to the murder of Kim Jong-nam, the outcast, exiled member of North

Feb 23, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Brotherly love lost

By Donald KirkKim Jong-nam showed the warm and human face of North Korea’s dynastic family. You had to like the guy, judging from sightings in the gambling enclave of Macao, across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong off China’s southeastern coast. One time he was spotted in a Macao bus. Another time he was seen at a doorway with a funny little smile on his face.Then, for a while, he dropped out of the news. Speculation was he’d been told to keep his mouth shut and stay out of sight after making disparaging comments about his younger half-brother, “Respected Leader” Kim Jong-un. He had had the nerve to say he doubted if the kid would last long in power.You can’t imagine any offense much worse than suggesting the man on the throne might be deposed. Perhaps it was a case of sour grapes. Kim Jong-nam, at 45 a dozen years older than Kim Jong-un, had been cast aside as a potential heir by their father, Kim Jong-il, after trying 16 years ago to enter Japan on a fake Dominican passport. Apparently, the “Dear Leader” didn’t care for th

Feb 16, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Brotherly love lost

By Donald KirkKim Jong-nam showed the warm and human face of North Korea’s dynastic family. You had to like the guy, judging from sightings in the gambling enclave of Macau, across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong off China’s southeastern coast. One time he was spotted in a Macao bus. Another time he was seen at a doorway with a funny little smile on his face. Then, for a while, he dropped out of the news. Speculation was he’d been told to keep his mouth shut and stay out of sight after making disparaging comments about his younger half-brother, “Respected Leader” Kim Jong-un. He had had the nerve to say he doubted if the kid would last long in power. You can’t imagine any offense much worse than suggesting the man on the throne might be deposed. Perhaps it was a case of sour grapes. Kim Jong-nam, at 45 a dozen years older than Kim Jong-un, had been cast aside as a potential heir by their father, Kim Jong-il, after trying 16 years ago to enter Japan on a fake Dominican passport. Apparently, the “Dear Leader” didn’t care for

Feb 16, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Trade wars looming

By Donald KirkPresident Donald Trump’s most fearsome offensive on the world stage has nothing to do with immigration reform, or building that wall all along the U.S. border with Mexico, or defense or treaty alliances or the North Korean nuke-and-missile threat. It’s all about U.S. trade relations with the rest of the world.When you come right down to it, all that other stuff may be good for headlines but isn’t going to affect most Americans directly. The hassle over letting refugees into the U.S. doesn’t faze people too much on a personal level. Sure, Trump may be raising suspicions ― and prejudices ― against Muslims and Mexicans, but lives of most people won’t change dramatically just because he would like to keep them off American soil.Nor do people really worry a lot, day in and day out, about the network of U.S. treaty alliances that shield them against their enemies. Kim Jong-un may threaten to fire a long-range missile that’s capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to a distant target, but who believes he’ll really attach a live warhead t

Feb 9, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Trump's vision of 'Fortress America'

By Donald KirkDonald Trump has bumped into a global donnybrook with his order banning entry into the U.S. for people from seven Muslim countries. No doubt, after the initial cries of rage and indignation, bureaucrats in the swamp of Washington will regularize ways for enforcing his order in the face of legal challenges and attempts at evasion.That’s because Trump’s campaign against Muslims is more than a device to stamp out terrorism. In accordance with the vision of his campaign promise to “make America great again,” he’s reverting to a form of isolationism that is special to the American character. Isolationists defeated President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of American entry into the League of Nations after World War I, and they battled to keep America out of World War II. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor snuffed out the fantasies of isolationists anxious to avoid entanglement in a war that was already engulfing Europe. For years some persisted in claiming that President Franklin Roosevelt had invited the attack in his search for a pretext to plu

Feb 2, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Trump's opening move on the chessboard

By Donald KirkPresident Donald Trump has now made his first substantive move in foreign policy with broad repercussions for Northeast Asia, including both Korea and Japan. The consequences may be far-reaching.By signing an executive order formally withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trump has signaled that he may actually carry out some of his bold campaign promises. He means to return jobs to American workers, to keep U.S. companies from going overseas in search of cheap labor, and to protect the American economy from neighbors near and far. That’s reason for dozens of governments to review their ties with the U.S., to consider what Trump might do next and to anticipate the impact on their own economies.Initially, of course, Trump’s signing the order was strictly theater.  It won’t have any immediate effect. TPP had not become a reality. The concept of a dozen nations banded together engaging in tariff-free trade sounded great as advocated by President Obama, but members of both parties in the U.S. Congress saw too many flaws. Trump may be a

Jan 26, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Snowden playing the role

By Donald KirkAs Donald Trump is inaugurated today in Washington, it may be timely to wonder what if anything did Edward Snowden, in Moscow, have to do with his election.Would Snowden be letting his skills go to waste? Might he be sharing notes with Russian friends on cyber-sleuthing and cyber-espionage ― and have advised on the hacking that Democrats claim was carried out by the Russians during the U.S. presidential campaign?If that question seems unfair, some would say he behaved more than unfairly by revealing the secrets of the National Security Agency and CIA. Oh, that’s right, he did so for the sake of the American people, whom the NSA was betraying by spying on them.Maybe so. Moreover, Snowden has given interviews insisting he’s had nothing to do with serving his Russian hosts. In fact, he’s criticized Russia’s record on human rights, and he says he’s earning his living giving lectures. He appears, in a conversation with Katie Couric on Yahoo, extremely poised, reasonable, well-spoken and self-contained.Or is he putting on a terrific act &nda

Jan 19, 2017By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

Escalating dangers for Korea

For accurate story in NK, wait until reunification

North Korea's biochemical menace

Fake news and false flags

Brotherly love lost

Brotherly love lost

Trade wars looming

Trump's vision of 'Fortress America'

Trump's opening move on the chessboard

Snowden playing the role

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