Opinion - The Korea Times

Differing US views on N. Korea

By Donald KirkDonald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to Korea as the country was making the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, did not take kindly to my column in which I quoted him, accurately, as praising Kim Jong-un “for improving the North Korean economy and downplaying nuclear threats and nuclear weapons development.”The timing of publication of Gregg’s commentary was newsworthy in itself. It appeared on websites in Seoul and Hong Kong on January 12, six days after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6. In an email to me, however, Gregg said “I wrote the article you refer to in early December, at the request of the East Asia Foundation.” Unfortunately, he claimed, it ran “the day before the North Koreans fired their fourth blast.” The article was actually published a week later, but that detail did not stop him from wishing “you had done a bit more checking before writing what you did.”What to check? When an article by such a prominent person appears, it’s immediately quotable. The question is

Jan 28, 2016By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Defending Kim Jong-un

By Donald Kirk Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to Korea, makes an astounding statement in a piece published after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. As “a very positive note,” he praises “the performance of Kim Jong-un in improving the North Korean economy and downplaying nuclear threats and nuclear weapons development.” It is difficult to comprehend, in the aftermath of the latest test, how Gregg came up with quite such an observation. Gregg, who served as CIA station chief before his appointment as ambassador, compounds this craziness in the next sentence in which he states that “Kim is repairing his relations with China” while “adopting a North Korean version of ‘strategic patience’ toward us.” No doubt Kim and all the sycophants around him would love for North Korea’s economy to get better, but really that is not happening while he invests more funds on producing nukes and missiles capable of carrying miniaturized warheads to distant targets. Certainly the rhetoric, far from lowering the t

Jan 21, 2016By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Talkfest on comfort women

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON ― Park Yu-ha, under fire in Korea for writing “Comfort Women of the Empire,” offers what she believes may be a way to reach an understanding with Japan on the whole controversy. Why not, she suggested in a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Center, form a committee of scholars to consider the problem “objectively,” based on facts? “We should not discuss ideologies,” she pleaded. “We need to stay apolitical. It’s important we do not let nationalism take priority. We need to look at what really took place.” Battling charges in Korea for some of her writing on the comfort women, Park Yu-ha offers a view that’s considerably different from any you’re likely to hear in Seoul. She has had, however, to counter claims that she distorts the image of the comfort women by attempting to adopt what she believes is a balanced view. “My book does talk about the issues facing Korean society,” she said. “I have never denied that the comfort woman question existed. There

Jan 14, 2016By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Bosworth, 'consummate diplomat'

By Donald Kirk American ambassadors to South Korea pursue a fine line between defense of the U.S.-Korean alliance and pursuit of North-South reconciliation. If they seem hell-bent on military goals, they’re accused of trying to push Korea into a war that nobody wants. And if they appear overly eager for talks, they appear unrealistic about the North’s intentions. Stephen Bosworth, as ambassador to South Korea during most of the presidency of Kim Dae-jung, gave every impression of enthusiastically supporting DJ’s Sunshine policy of reconciliation with North Korea. At the same time, he had to defend U.S.-Korean relations against attempts by anti-U.S. forces to undermine not only the alliance but the U.S.-Korean friendship. That was a tall order, but Bosworth, who died last Sunday in Boston at the age of 76, managed to mingle toughness and realism with a passionate desire to come to terms with North Korea on its nuclear program. He did so not only as U.S. ambassador but again several years later as U.S. special representative on North Korea. If he never

Jan 7, 2016By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

'Comfort woman' statues

By Donald Kirk The Koreans have a terrific device for upsetting the Japanese. That’s in the form of statues of innocent young girls ― reminders of the suffering of Korean and other Asian women in the service of Japanese soldiers in World War II. They’ve got these statues in New Jersey, California and Michigan, much to the annoyance of the Japanese, but the one that bothers them most is on the sidewalk across a rather narrow street from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. On the one hand, Japanese protests do make sense. Isn’t it rude to implant statuary outside any embassy as a rebuke to the diplomats inside and the nation they represent? How would Koreans feel if Japanese placed works of art touching upon sensitive chords in Korean culture or history in front of the Korean embassy in Tokyo? The image of violated Korean womanhood goes deeper, however, than mere propaganda. If the statue in Seoul is removed from the sight of Japanese diplomats, it will probably go somewhere else that’s sure to displease them. The fact that this particular statue is ta

Dec 31, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Media freedom on trial

By Donald Kirk The zeal with which the Korean government pursued the case of Tatsuya Kato, charged with criminal libel, bears disturbing parallels to the records of other countries that prosecute critics. The charge of libel is a favorite weapon of authorities in Singapore and Malaysia, to name two notorious practitioners of that technique.They profess some measure of democracy, but in other countries, legal niceties are irrelevant. Censorship prevails ― and pity the miscreant who gets his adversarial views into print or on the air.  In the Philippines, where there is no censorship, assassins simply gun down critics whose voices or articles challenge or merely offend local warlords and power-grabbers.By a rather narrow margin, it seems, Korea avoided going after someone whose work had been more than a little infuriating. The exoneration of Kato, who had reported from Seoul on a rumor that President Park Geun-hye was unreachable for seven hours in April while the Sewol was sinking with hundreds of high school students on board, marked a victory for him as well as Sankei

Dec 24, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Putin's 'new cold war'

By Donald Kirk  WASHINGTON ― The term “new cold war” is gaining common currency. That’s because of Russia more than China. Russian President Vladimir Putin is talking like a latter-day Cold Warrior in nationalist, ethnocentric terms that alarm a new generation of Kremlin-watchers. Putin, they say, is appealing to deep instincts in the Russians as he talks in increasingly tough terms about Russian interests in eastern Europe and the middle east ― and even mentions the N-word, nuclear warfare.No, Putin doesn’t exactly threaten with the use of nuclear weapons. Rather, he says he would hope tensions would never reach the point at which it might seem necessary to nuke the rebels in Syria whom Russia has up to now been bombing and striking with missiles. Really, no one sees nuclear war about to break out, at least not right away. Nonetheless, Putin’s mention of nukes, in any context other than getting rid of them by cutting down stockpiles, is alarming. He’s going to be around for a while, probably a long time. There’s no telling what will hap

Dec 17, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Waging war, at home and abroad

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON  ― First he was talking about kicking out all 12 million “illegal immigrants” in the U.S., and now he wants to exclude all Muslims from the right to enter the U.S. You have to wonder from Donald Trump’s remarks whether he’s lost touch with the concept of the American “melting pot” and the Latin motto “e pluribus unum,”  i.e.,  “from many, one.”There was a time, little remembered, when Chinese were the targets of tremendous prejudices. That was when they began arriving in the late 19th century as laborers, working on the railroads snaking across the American continent. Japanese were punished in World War II for being Japanese and herded off to internment camps. What would happen if Koreans, Indians, Vietnamese and Filipinos, groupings of about two million apiece, scattered across the U.S., mostly in or near big cities, experience similar pressures and penalties?It’s not hard to imagine, as Trump’s pronouncements on broad segments of un-American undesirables gain widesp

Dec 10, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Power to the people

By Donald Kirk Freedom will ring on the streets of Seoul tomorrow, Saturday, when demonstrators denounce the government for numerous transgressions beginning with the scheme to impose state-edited, state-published school textbooks in place of those by independent scholars.  People by now are so accustomed to the sounds of protests reverberating around the center of the capital that many will be tempted to ignore the shouting and move on. However, this may be a little too big to dismiss if the last such outpouring, in mid-November, is any guide.It would be easy to say that noisy demonstrations in Seoul are expressions of the rawest, most visible forms of democracy, but you have to wonder if these confrontations between protesters and police are all that justifiable or healthy. The police have had to resort to firing tear gas, as in the days when protesters were battling the distinctly undemocratic regimes of Park Chung-hee and his successor, Chun Doo-hwan. Too bad Park’s daughter, President Park Geun-hye, finds herself echoing the firm resolve of her father as she vows

Dec 3, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Battling for democracy

By Donald Kirk President Park Geun-hye is pursuing a fight-talk strategy. On Monday, South Korean gunners staged a live-fire exercise in waters well within hearing range of North Korea’s southwestern coast. Next, North and South Korean negotiators were planning to meet at Panmunjom.The contrast between military drills and diplomacy suggests the President’s ambivalence in a time of flagging popularity. Back from sessions with global leaders at APEC in Manila and then the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Park talked tough about “iron-clad security” on the fifth anniversary of North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea that killed four South Koreans.Understandably, Park would like nothing better than for tensions to ease, in the aftermath of the episode in August in which South and North Korean gunners fired across the line between the two Koreas. That near-crisis faded after high-level talks got South Korea to cancel loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea and the North to express “regret” ― not a real “apology&rd

Nov 26, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

Differing US views on N. Korea

Defending Kim Jong-un

Talkfest on comfort women

Bosworth, 'consummate diplomat'

'Comfort woman' statues

Media freedom on trial

Putin's 'new cold war'

Waging war, at home and abroad

Power to the people

Battling for democracy

Top 5 stories