Opinion - The Korea Times

Renewing the 'war on terror'

By Donald Kirk This week’s Asia edition of Time magazine features the cover line, “What It Takes to Forgive a Killer.” Thinking the editors had had time to do a cover on the massacres in Paris, I discovered cloying, patronizing interviews with friends and relatives of the nine African-Americans shot and killed at random on June 17 in Charleston, S.C., by a 21-year-old white racist. An editor’s note signals what’s coming with a condescending message on “the quality of mercy” in which she says, “The philosopher Ernest Renan said that nations must forget the past in order to forgive and move forward.” One article tells us “forgiveness describes the state of mind of the forgiver: you have harmed me, but I refuse to respond in kind.”Oh sure ― ask the Jews, Poles, Russians, gypsies and others if they’ve forgiven the Nazis for the slaughter of more than 12 million people in death camps in World War II; or the Chinese about forgiving the Japanese for the rape of Nanking, in which 200,000 people died; or ask the few

Nov 19, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

'People!' - a journalistic tapestry

By Donald KirkCorrespondents by the time they reach a certain age may look back on an extraordinary range of people encountered in odd situations and settings. We all have stories to tell, uniquely our own, rich and varied, few more so than Sol Sanders, who spent years in capitals ranging from New Delhi to Bangkok to Tokyo and points in between and beyond. Now, at 88, he’s put his experiences together in a book named “People!” all about the hundreds recalled from his childhood in a small town in western North Carolina to his present existence as a fulminating curmudgeon in Virginia.In “a kind of stream of consciousness,” Sanders invokes ups and downs larded with personal opinions, vignettes and political commentary laced with trenchant criticism of names in the news and those who write the news. I barely knew Sol, whom I met on the steps of the venerable Continental Hotel in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and I don’t think he remembered me when I reminded him a few months ago. He was at the time a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, the

Nov 12, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Harsh memories linger on

By Don Kirk The trilateral summit last weekend was long on promises but short on hard-and-fast commitments and planning.Yes, the fact that leaders of Korea, China and Japan could meet at all was remarkable considering Japan’s ongoing occupation of the Senkaku Islands, Diaoyu to the Chinese, in the East China Sea and encounters with Chinese fishing vessels within the 20-kilometer limit patrolled by the Japanese coast guard. Also, there’ve been overflights by Chinese planes to which Japan has responded by scrambling its own aircraft ― a dangerous game that risks open hostilities.Then there’s the Japanese claim to two huge rocks, Dokdo to the Koreans, Takeshima to the Japanese, in the middle of the East Sea, a.k.a. the Sea of Japan. A Korean police garrison zealously guards the rocks, which the Japanese say are theirs. And, yes, one other territorial dispute seems equally insoluble ― that’s the Ieodo rocks, almost entirely under water, 150 kilometers southwest of the southernmost Korean island province of Jeju and 275 kilometers east of the Chinese

Nov 5, 2015By Don Kirk

Donald Kirk

Summitry roars to a climax

By Donald Kirk It’s the season for summits with heavy overtones for Northeast Asia.  After President Park met President Obama in Washington and President Xi in Beijing, after Xi met Obama in Washington, after President Putin saw Obama at the United Nations and Xi in Beijing, after Prime Minister Abe called on Obama in Washington, what more could they say?We should know quite soon.  The race for the final word in regional summitry this year climaxes this weekend when the leaders of the three Northeast Asian powers, so often at odds with one another, descend upon Seoul for summit after summit after summit.  Actually, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say all three of these people are really the “leaders” of their countries. Certainly Park Geun-hye is the leader of the Republic of Korea, and no one doubts that Shinzo Abe leads Japan. But then, what about Chinese Premier Li Keqiang? Nice title, but he’s not exactly his country’s leader. Everyone knows, at the apex of the Chinese hierarchy, President Xi Jinping reigns supreme.Li is co

Oct 29, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Korea's textbook

By Donald Kirk For years, the South Korean government and private Korean organizations have objected to Japanese textbooks that convey a rather sunny version of Japan's imperial and colonial history. Now a textbook controversy is turning Koreans against Koreans, and exposing deep divisions in Korean life.All sides acknowledge that young South Koreans need some understanding of what's going on in North Korea, but how should high schools portray life on the other side of the border? Should they depict their neighbors as enemies or victims? Is objectivity even possible?The government's National Institute of Korean History, convinced it's the arbiter, plans to replace existing textbooks with an authorized "correct history textbook" by March 2017, leading some to accuse the government of spreading propaganda while trampling on freedom of expression and discussion.Conservatives say the liberal scholars who wrote the existing textbooks have tended to ignore the darker aspects of the North Korean dictatorship, while liberals accuse conservatives of wanting to "demonize" the North.One pa

Oct 26, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Joy and pain of family reunions

By Donald KirkAnother round of visits for South Koreans to see their long-lost relatives in North Korea brings both hope and sadness. Anyone selected for a family visit has to know, after seeing a brother, sister, cousin or some other relative who may be hardly remembered, that it’s all over. There will never be another chance to meet this person. Nor will there be phone calls, postcards, emails, none of the usual means of communication. In parting after three days, goodbye really means goodbye. An appropriate farewell might be, “See you in another life.”The sadness goes much deeper than that. It encompasses the tens of thousands who apply to go to the North for those final meetings and never know the excitement of hearing their name selected in the lottery run by the South Korean Red Cross. When the family visits began after the June 2000 summit between the late Kim Dae-jung and the late Kim Jong-il, the feeling was these would be regular affairs, maybe once a month. Over the intervening 15 years and four months, there have been just 20 rounds of family visits, inc

Oct 22, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Man of peace - or appeasement?

By Donald KirkPresident Obama might be considering the motto on which Woodrow Wilson ran for president in 1916 as his enduring legacy. “He kept us out of war,” Wilson’s pitchmen told the cheering crowds before Wilson, after his election to his second term, reversed course and sent American soldiers to Europe, tipping the balance in favor of England and France against the Germans in World War I.Obama is barred by the U.S. Constitution from seeking a third term, but at every turn in his presidency he has opted for scaling down U.S. forces overseas, backing away from battle, preferring diplomacy and rhetoric to bloodshed and carnage. He’s had a lot to say about Russia’s takeover of Crimea from the Ukraine, about Russian infringement in the Eastern Ukraine, about Russia’s war in Syria. He decried Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons, and he lamented the loss of much of Iraq to ISIS after withdrawing U.S. troops who had fought for the country since his predecessor, George W. Bush, ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And he&rsq

Oct 15, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

TPP: Not just about trade

By Donald KirkThe Trans-Pacific Partnership carries implications far beyond the commercial benefits that President Obama and others claim would result from it.Arguments pro and con in terms of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the 12 countries that have signed on to TPP are sure to go on for years. The debate will intensify as others join. Like the deal to stop Iran from producing nuclear warheads, TPP has shrill detractors and diehard advocates. Their point is basic. The agreement may not be perfect, they go on saying, but commercial interests everywhere will benefit ― as will millions sharing in easier access to cheaper goods.But just think of the controversy surrounding the KORUS FTA. If South Korea joins the TPP, as may happen even though the South has so far stayed away, we may be sure the critics and rivals will accuse the South of not abiding by the terms. They will, of course, talk about all those barriers, hidden, bureaucratic, political and cultural, to the free entry of foreign goods.Maybe so, maybe no, but who can believe that a trade pact drawing these dozen c

Oct 8, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Forgetting the 'Forgotten War'

By Donald Kirk   WASHINGTON ― You know how forgotten the Korean War is when you see a documentary about the young correspondents who battled U.S. officialdom in the early years of the Vietnam War and hear comparisons between Vietnam and World War II, Vietnam and Iraq ― and not one word about Korea.Correspondents in Vietnam were a privileged lot. We could go anywhere on military aircraft, get all the quotes we wanted from American GIs and return to the pleasures of Saigon. Neil Sheehan of United Press International, who was there at the outset, at a showing at the Newseum in Washington of a documentary “Dateline ― Saigon,” talked about the disconnect between what he and others were seeing and the line from American generals. The most compelling story is the distorted account the generals were handing out about a battle in a hamlet named Ap Bac, south of Saigon, in which nearly 100 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed by Viet Cong guerrillas who stood their ground against assault from three sides.The debacle at Ap Bac in 1963 has come to symbolize the weakness of

Oct 1, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Obama vs. Xi: A matter of 'optics'

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― China President Xi Jinping's meeting with President Obama today is sure to be an exercise in double-and-triple talk that will sorely test the skills of both of them in papering over, covering up and otherwise evading issues that neither of them is going to be able to resolve. The differences between the U.S. and China are so deep, so overwhelming, so broad as to raise the question: Why is President Xi getting a 21-gun salute at the White House on top of a state dinner and all the other folderol that goes with receiving the leader of a close friend? Xi may be worthy of respect for the way he's taken charge of China, gone after his foes and sought to bring about reforms, but he's no friend of the United States. Rather, China is a potential foe in a contest for power and influence extending from the Western Pacific, around Southeast Asia to the Indian Ocean. Okay, that Xi was meeting some of the titans of high-tech America after arriving in Seattle on Wednesday before going on to Washington for Friday's full-dress treatment may help. The clash b

Sep 24, 2015By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

Renewing the 'war on terror'

'People!' - a journalistic tapestry

Harsh memories linger on

Summitry roars to a climax

Korea's textbook

Joy and pain of family reunions

Man of peace - or appeasement?

TPP: Not just about trade

Forgetting the 'Forgotten War'

Obama vs. Xi: A matter of 'optics'

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