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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Personal tragedy, national shame

By Donald KirkJINDO ― A mother and her sister burst into hysterics, leaping up from the mat on which they had been resting on the floor of the gymnasium where hundreds were waiting for news of loved ones trapped aboard the sunken ferry boat.The two had just seen a photograph of the boy whom they last saw alive boarding the ferry Sewol at Incheon a week earlier for a holiday cruise to scenic Jeju.In vain, a volunteer tried to comfort them as they ran out, jumping into a bus for the 20-minute ride to the docks. A double row of policemen escorted their son’s body, wrapped in a white body bag, from the coast guard vessel to which divers had transferred it after finding it in the depths of the ferry.No matter how resigned the relatives are to the fates of sons and daughters, they cannot overcome the horror of the finality of confirmation of death in the frantic moments as the Sewol sank off the coast of this community of rolling farmland and comfortable homes and shops beside a seascape of small islands extending to the horizon.All day long on a glorious Easter Sunday, I saw parents

Apr 24, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

In NE Asia, three's a crowd

By Donald Kirk The word “trilateral” has a certain allure among those in search of ways to pull disparate nations or regions together. A group of three might cooperate while a group of two might form an alliance and fight the third one, the odd man out. Rather than fight, let’s look for common ground and live happily ever after.That’s what led to the first great trilateral scheme, the Trilateral Commission, set up more than 40 years ago with members drawn equally into a European group, a North American group and an Asia-Pacific group.If the commission is unknown beyond an elite of diplomats and bureaucrats, that’s not for lack of trying. They meet in their own regions and across regions, talking up opportunities for peace and goodwill in a world torn by wars, crises and rumors of war.  Who’s listening, though, is another matter.For an idea of how useless some of this yakking can be, look at what they call “trialogues,” reports on their annual meetings. “Seeking Opportunities in Crisis: Trilateral Cooperation in Meeting G

Apr 17, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Democracy on display

By Donald Kirk       Winston Churchill was thinking of his own defeat at the polls after having led Britain through World War II when he uttered one of his more famous quotes, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  He might, however, also have had India in mind since the Indian subcontinent, once “the brightest jewel in the crown” of the British empire, had just been granted independence while split asunder into two countries, India, predominantly Hindu, and Pakistan, predominantly Muslim.“Partition” was bloody, agonizing and ugly, but India was about to begin a prolonged exercise in democracy.Democracy, India-style, reaches an apotheosis over the next few weeks in turbulent, controversial, colorful elections that may mark a turning point in the country’s history.Anyone who believes in a truly democratic form of government has got to be awed, moved and amazed by this display of the people’s right to elect the men and women they think will

Apr 10, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

In quest of perfect insult

By Donald Kirk The people who write for the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang must be having fun. How else can you account for some of the great turns of phrase that show up in the English-language versions of their harangues?It wasn’t enough that the KCNA quoted an otherwise unidentified military official as saying some “boneheads” in Seoul had forgotten that Yeonpeyong Island was “smashed by our military’s bolt of lightning” in 2010.In the same breath, almost, someone at KCNA was describing the ongoing U.S.-South Korean war games as “madcap nuclear war exercises.”“Bonehead?” “Madcap?” When was the last time anyone heard these words used? Does North Korea have a whole team of writers dreaming up this stuff or is some ace writer, one person, called on to look for the perfect insult?Whoever he or they are, the words are a throwback to a previous era, culled from a dictionary of English slang whenever deemed by definition to be most appropriate.The invective gets better when KCNA writers start making per

Apr 3, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Battling the base on Jeju

By Donald Kirk JEJU ISLAND, South Korea – The protest against building a South Korean navy base off the shore of a pleasant village on the southern coast of this “island of peace” by now seems a little tiresome.No way will the hardy band led by priests and pastors stop construction. They’ve delayed the project by two or three years, but now it’s already half done while the noise of heavy machinery reverberates beyond the tall fences around the site.The futility of the protest seems irrelevant to the Rev. Mun Jeong-hyun, the Catholic priest who conducts Masses every day in a small shelter across the road in Gangjeong village. “Our protest is a failure,” says Mun, his white beard flowing as he looks toward the fence, festooned with anti-base signs and slogans. Still, he adds, “I will be here until I die.”For sure, when the base hosts both South Korean navy ships and civilian cruise liners a couple of years from now, Mun will be outside the gates protesting with many of the same priests and nuns and pastors who’ve been cru

Mar 27, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

More flights from hell

By Donald Kirk The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines 777 confronts the world with a crisis that’s never going to end. The loss of 239 people is tragic enough, but the implications for air travel are still more frightening.The point, which nobody had believed was possible, is that a plane can vanish in defiance of all fail-safe systems, all the most elaborate gear, both within the plane and on the ground. That’s a reality that I don’t think any passenger, nor any of the experts, had quite grasped. In all the other great air disasters, wreckage began to surface fairly soon, if not right away.By now it’s been nearly two weeks since MH370 was first reported overdue by two hours from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It’s possible, by the time this column appears, that pieces of the plane will have washed up on some shore or drifted within sight of a passing vessel or circling aircraft.Whatever turns up, whenever, the disappearance of MH370 is all the more shocking considering how safe air travel has seemed. I’ve flown in any numb

Mar 20, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

East Asia's rim of fire

By Donald Kirk MANILA ― One long-running story forever dominates the front pages here. That’s corruption, bribery and cheating on a mass scale.The story now is that of a few senators sending special funds to an agency charged with conducting worthy projects. The projects didn’t exist, and the money went into the coffers of the senators.That’s another variation on a familiar theme. The assumption is, even if the project is legit, the one who makes the deal gets 10 percent.So does the person in charge of the agency or NGO, and so do underlings with hands extended for their percentage. Very little goes where it’s supposed to.The story is so common that Hector Villaneuva, press secretary during the presidency of Fidel Ramos in the 1990s, looks upon the whole show with distinct disdain.It’s “a quarrel among elite politicians,” he writes in the Manila Bulletin, “where the masses have no participation and are not direct beneficiaries of the greed, scams and criminal acts of politicians” and “executives” of President Beni

Mar 13, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

The roar of the Russian bear

By Donald Kirk The Russian bear is definitely waking up after a long period of hibernation. Russian troops have taken over the Crimean peninsula, and it’s hard to believe they’re about to leave under a blitzkrieg of scolding by President Obama and a phalanx of editorialists and European leaders.The Russian entry into Crimea reminds us of the days after World War II when troops of the old Soviet empire were overrunning Eastern Europe, placing “satellite” states under the thumb of the late unlamented Joseph Stalin.Call it an incursion or invasion, but the ease with which the Russians marched into Crimea, the autonomous region jutting into the Black Sea off the southern reaches of Ukraine, is probably the best you can say about the whole operation. At least, at this writing, no one has been killed. Let us hope the body count remains at zero.At the other end of the Eurasian landmass, watching the drama on television, people may seem a little removed from this unreal apparition of old-style Russian might after thinking that Russia was no longer a superpower.Ho

Mar 6, 2014
Donald Kirk

Ill winds from China

By Donald Kirk The Chinese are wielding a dangerous weapon that may have escaped the notice of military strategists.While everyone worries about China’s territorial claims and growing influence from the Indian subcontinent to the Yellow Sea and North Korea, the more immediate threat posed by Middle Kingdom expansionism is the ultrafine dust that covers the Korean peninsula, blows over Japan and wafts as far as Hawaii and the continental U.S.In fact, those targets sound awfully like those mentioned in reports of North Korea’s latest extra-long-range Taepodong missile.If North Korean rhetoric boasts the fearsome weapon can carry a nuclear or biological or chemical warhead to the U.S. west coast, how about ultrafine dust laden with noxious ingredients?The dangers associated with ultrafine dust suggest the Chinese may already be waging a form of biological-chemical warfare though no one’s accusing them of deliberately plotting to wipe out hundreds of millions.Leave it to the North Koreans to get around to that idea once they’re done with the latest charm offe

Feb 27, 2014By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

The cruelty of divided families

By Donald Kirk The North Korean propaganda machine is nothing if not super-skilled at emitting conflicting signals. One day they’re castigating the U.S. and South Korea for military exercises, and the next they’ve dropped the subject and are ready to entertain a bunch of elderly South Koreans at a reunion with their long-lost relatives.Could the big switch have had anything to do with the realization that the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry was about to unleash the most authoritative condemnation of North Korean human rights abuses ever leveled against the regime?  Surely we’re never going to be able to prove it, but the rapid sequence of the North Koreans caving in and agreeing to go through with the reunions without mentioning the war games and then having to deal with the U.N. report hardly sounds coincidental.Not that any of that matters to the old people struggling to recognize one another and looking for the words to say to relatives, some of them cousins whom they never saw even when they were little. The last thing they’re worried

Feb 20, 2014By Donald Kirk
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