Opinion - The Korea Times

US ‘pivot’ toward China

By Donald Kirk A new word has come into vogue over the past year as the United States draws down its forces in Afghanistan and gets out of Iraq. The word is ``pivot.” We’re told the U.S. is ``pivoting” toward Asia, focusing on this part of the world after having concentrated on the Middle East for too long. ``Pivot” is a basketball term ― a player ``pivots” with a great squeaking of rubber soles on the hard court and then passes or shoots. President Obama drew the term from his own experience. He loved to play basketball when he had a little more time in his pre-presidential days as an Illinois politician. The notion of a U.S. ``pivot” sounds nice in briefings and columns but actually is misleading if not ridiculous. The U.S. in recent years has scaled down its presence in Korea while talking about leaving the historic headquarters base at Yongsan and pulling back the only U.S. combat troops between Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone, moving them from Camp Casey to Pyongtaek. In Japan, the U.S. has problems convincing people that construction of a new marine air b

Sep 13, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Moon Sun-myung’s legacy

By Donald Kirk Probably no Korean has inspired more controversy for so many very different reasons than did the Rev. Moon Sun-myung. As a religious figure and a tycoon, he moved from cult to commerce as if they were interrelated, all in accordance with the will of the God who had placed him on earth to heal and help. For most spiritual figures, it is suffice to say that they were messengers of God, bearing news of the creation and the need to do good in the name of the Lord. The Rev. Moon, though, was no mere messenger. Rather, he was a messiah, an emissary whose life on earth embodied the spirit of the Lord. If anyone represented the Second Coming, as forecast by the Bible, it was he. The fact that the Rev. Moon has died, at 92, should demonstrate that he too was a mere mortal after all, but his adherents say that he didn’t really die. Rather, he “ascended” to heaven where no doubt he can go on preaching the gospel, his gospel, to the mere mortals down below. After seeing the Rev. Moon at mass weddings and at the central Unification Church in Seou

Sep 6, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Dokdo: distraction and diversion

By Donald Kirk The North Koreans have got to love this one. The ruckus over Dokdo/Takeshima gets so much play in Korea and Japan that Koreans and Japanese tend to forget they’ve got a real enemy lurking somewhere over the 38th parallel. That would be North Korea, whose strategists may not know how to run their economy but are past masters at playing one side against another when it comes to dealing with their foes. Korea’s righteous wrath over Dokdo versus Japan’s indignant claims to Takeshima are so loud and shrill as to drown out concerns about what Kim Jong-un and Company is up to up there. Wouldn’t it be great for the North Koreans if Korea and Japan actually got into a skirmish with one another over these two rocky islets way out there where nobody would be noticing them if both sides weren’t saying they’re “ours”? No gunfire is about to break out over Dokdo/Takeshima, but South Korea does stage periodic military exercises in the area just to show it’s good and ready for anything. In point of fact, this quarrel is meaningless and useless since South Korea controls t

Aug 30, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Japanese just don’t get it

By Donald Kirk TOKYO ― Japanese have trouble understanding. Why do all the countries surrounding Japan seem so hostile? What is it the Japanese have done to incur the wrath of the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Russians? The sense here is that of Japan encircled, the odd power out, the pariah at the party. On the streets of Tokyo, of course, you don’t really sense the problem. This thriving capital gives every impression of hustling as always; powerful, aggressive, incredibly high-priced. Ok, there’s talk of the GDP declining somewhat while the population ages and goes into decline. People mention the ``lost decades” when the gross domestic product stopped rising year on year, but you don’t really feel it in the air. No matter what they say, however, Japan remains the strongest country in the region, including an aggressive, upwardly mobile China. China`s GDP may have surpassed that of Japan a few years ago, but on a per capita basis it’s far lower, and who believes that Chinese industry, research and development and all the rest have caught up with the Japanese? No

Aug 23, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

A blast from America’s past

By Donald Kirk BALTIMORE – At a Red Sox game here against the Orioles, the name Johnny Pesky was memorialized with cheers, and maybe tears, as if he had played for the local team, the beloved O’s. In fact, Pesky was a mainstay of the visiting Boston Red Sox in the period when they always seemed to be finishing just behind the Yankees. When Pesky died the other day at 92, I had thought he had long since joined the departed. A shower of obituaries and columns reminded me of his role as a member of one of the most memorable teams in baseball history ― memorable for coming in second. Maybe not quite always, but it seemed that way when they succumbed to the New York Yankees on the last day of the 1949 season ― a low point in the New York-Boston baseball rivalry that endures to this day. Baseball teams come and go, and you forget the names of most players, but it’s hard to forget the infield of Pesky at third base, Vern Stephens at short, Bobby Doerr at second base and Billy Goodman at first. And the outfield was memorable too ― Ted Williams in left, Dom DiMaggio, brot

Aug 16, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Ah, the ‘freedom’ to bear arms

By Donald Kirk NEW YORK ― Koreans must wonder what is it about Americans and their love of guns; every day you see reports here of unbelievable mayhem. If it’s not a mass shooting, such as the one that killed a dozen people at the opening of the Batman movie in Colorado, then it’s every day stuff for the inside pages: a hold-up, a jealous husband. Oh yes, another slaughter, the latest, six killed at a Sikh temple in Milwaukee. Guns are so easy to get here it’s a wonder more people aren’t getting killed. Any psychopath could spray the stands at a baseball game with automatic weapons or pull out a pistol on a bus and start shooting. The number of people who own guns has gone up since the Colorado shooting. Gun advocates argue, if people in the audience for the Batman movie had had guns, someone would have shot the guy. Gun owners, already in the tens of millions, are stocking up on guns on the theory that President Obama, if reelected, will want to introduce legislation making gun ownership more difficult. Not that Obama is doing a thing to cr

Aug 9, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Playing the nuclear card

By Donald Kirk North Korea plays the nuclear card every chance it gets. Wherever you go in the North, you get hints of the country’s reliance upon nuclear weaponry as the ultimate ``defense” against the United States. Your guides don’t talk about it all the time, just at propitious moments such as during a visit to the North Korean side of the line at Panmunjom or in a tour of the Great Fatherland Liberation War Museum, where we hear about the North’s heroic victory over the Japanese in 1945 and then over the Americans and ``south” Korea in 1953. (Style note: North Korean propaganda calls for a lower case ``s” in ``south Korea,” never ``South Korea.”) The argument is, if the U.S. and South Korea invade, then the North will strike back with missiles carrying nuclear warheads. For North Korea, nuclear prowess forms the ultimate defense. U.S. politicians, however, would prefer to forget North Korea’s nuclear program. They don’t take it all that seriously. That’s understandable. Away from seminars and symposiums, you don’t hear too many people in Seoul worrying much

Aug 2, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Asking the forbidden question

By Donald Kirk You pay a high price when you go to North Korea. You’re led around to sights you don’t really want to see, on a hectic schedule that can be quite tiring, and you never get out of the sight of your minders. The whole point of the exercise is to try and get a slight sense of where the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is going in terms of policy, living, development, all that. Your minders will have other ideas. For starters, they want visitors to pay homage to Kim Il-sung, the ``eternal president.” In nearly two weeks in the country, our group had to line up three times before bronze, or bronze-plated, statues of the Great Leader. One or two people, having bought flowers from a woman with a cart load of them nearby, stepped forward each time and laid them at the feet of each statue ― the first time, to be precise, at the feet of a new statue on Mansudae of Kim Il-sung standing next to his son, Kim Jong-il, ``eternal general secretary” of the Workers’ Party and ``eternal chairman” of the National Defense Commission. One of the minders thoughtfully exp

Jul 26, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Under ‘guidance’ in N. Korea

By Donald Kirk PYONGYANG – You don’t come here looking for news about North Korea. On the day after ``Respected Leader” (that’s what we’re supposed to call him) Kim Jong-un and his mystery lady attended a show featuring Walt Disney characters on stage, our minders were fonts of ignorance. They professed to know nothing about an event we’d seen reported by BBC on TV sets in the luxury hotels for foreign guests. You’re so tightly controlled in North Korea you have a hard time finding real non-news, that is, soft stuff that gives a clue as to what’s going on. On my latest visit, I’ve now seen the home where Kim Il-sung spent his childhood for the fifth time. I’ve traipsed for the third time through the Fatherland Liberation War Museum, and I’ve been to the Juche Tower looming high above the Daedong River three or four times ― I don’t think it was completed during my first visit here 20 years ago. Oh, and no visit would be complete without a look around the Pueblo, the U.S. spy ship captured off the east coast in 1968. When I first saw the Pueblo in 1995, it was moored at

Jul 19, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Perils and pitfalls of Mt. Geumgang

By Donald Kirk MT. KUMKANG, North Korea ― An air of desolation hangs over this fabled resort area four years after a North Korean soldier shot and killed a middle-aged South Korean woman who had made the fatal mistake of wandering outside the tourist route to look at the sunrise over the East Sea. The great square where hordes of South Korean tourists once gathered excitedly to look at the thriving shops, snack in the cafes and enter the domed theater for a performance by North Korean acrobats is almost deserted. Dozens of buses rest empty and unused in a nearby parking lot. Tourists arrive in small groups from China, but they don't begin to fill the void left by the killing of a woman who your North Korean guide insists had ignored a warning shot while wandering close to a North Korean military installation. Nothing, however, can disturb the unparalleled majesty of the soaring granitic peaks and spires of Mt. Kumkang, looming beyond the shopping area, as inviting now as it ever was. In fact, a visitor, arriving on a carefully monitored tour from Pyongyang, finds the

Jul 12, 2012By Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk

Read more

US ‘pivot’ toward China

Moon Sun-myung’s legacy

Dokdo: distraction and diversion

Japanese just don’t get it

A blast from America’s past

Ah, the ‘freedom’ to bear arms

Playing the nuclear card

Asking the forbidden question

Under ‘guidance’ in N. Korea

Perils and pitfalls of Mt. Geumgang

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