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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Balancing forces in the Pacific

By Donald Kirk BEIJING – The struggle for power and peace in Northeast Asia is an extraordinary balancing act in which those participating in the dance constantly risk tripping and falling over. One day we’re hearing that China is almost willing to fight over claims from the South China Sea to the Yellow Sea, and the next we learn that top U.S. and Chinese officials are grinning amiably while chatting about ``communications and cooperation.” The love fest seems rather deceiving, however, considering that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been talking up plans to build up U.S. naval and airpower, promising half a dozen aircraft carriers will be cruising everywhere in defense of just about everyone. If all these countries were on such good terms, why all the military might? The question seems all more puzzling in the wake of ``Rim of the Pacific” war games held off Hawaii in which upwards of 20 nations, from Russia to Tonga, were invited to participate. The Chinese, it seems, were left out of the party ― surely a hurtful omission. You wouldn

Jul 5, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Diving into pool system

By Donald Kirk We’ve all seen journalists’ stories about getting stories ― tales of facing down danger, of dealing with the bureaucracy, battling censorship, all of that. Foreign correspondents have written numerous books on their adventures in pursuit of news. They have little to say, though, about regurgitating material from ``pool reports” or churning out stuff for the others in the pool. All of which brings us to the pool system as it exists in Korea, that is, the pool system and its blood brother, the press club system. Korean journalists often band together covering politicians, ministries and agencies, guaranteeing that each of them has more or less what the others have and nobody gets into trouble. The clubs are quite exclusive. No foreign journalists gain admittance. It’s assumed the foreigners will form their own groups or get special attention from media officials skilled in dealing with the foreign media. The foreign, finance and defense ministries, and the Blue House too, have people who know how to get their stories across to foreigners _ though they’r

Jun 28, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Beautiful island, sad history

By Donald Kirk JEJU – Schoolchildren here sing a mournful song about a gigantic rock about 90 miles southwest of the island where the souls of fishermen lost at sea find their final repose. The rock cannot really be called an outcropping since it’s actually submerged several meters, but South Korea has set up a meteorological station with a helipad as visual evidence that it’s there, lurking ominously below. Sometimes, when the seas are rough, the rock, named Ieodo, does appear shimmering above the surface, dark and menacing. Suitably, its name derives from a folkloric tale embedded in the subconscious of local kids from the time they’re old enough to mouth the words. Sadly, this particular rock is the latest focal point of tensions between China and lesser countries that the Chinese might prefer to view as vassal states, kowtowing in respect and paying tribute as in days of old. The tensions compound as a relatively late entry into regional rivalries, the United States, stages war games reminding the Chinese of the dangers, any time from now to years away, of

Jun 21, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Battling bases in paradise

By Donald Kirk JEJU ― A prolonged visit to this island paradise invites comparisons to another idyllic island, Okinawa. The similarities are inescapable ― Jeju, the southern island province of Korea, Okinawa the southern island prefecture of Japan, each of incredible strategic as well as scenic value. The great difference between the two is that Okinawa was torn apart by the worst battle of the Pacific War in the spring of 1945 while Jeju was almost unscathed. Jeju also escaped most of the Korean War but only after enduring its own special suffering. No one here forgets the revolt that broke out on April 3, 1948, and raged for more than two years. Far more people were killed in the battle of Okinawa, well over 200,000, more than half of them civilians, than on Jeju, where at least 30,000 died, most of them civilians cut down in army massacres. The difference in casualty figures, however, is no guarantee that Jeju could not in some regional cataclysm become a battleground similar to Okinawa. The clouds of war hovering on distant horizons cast vaguely dis

Jun 14, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

On the Town in Okinawa

By Donald Kirk KIN TOWN, Okinawa, Japan ― The neon signs over the little bars and eating places beckon U.S. Marines like bright lights attracting moths to a flame. From an old-time camp across the highway that runs up the eastern fringe of this island bastion of American military might, Marines hit bars with names like Howler’s Karaoke and White Kitchen and Rock America in between ``deployments,” as they’re called, from Southeast Asia to Afghanistan. The scene is not much different from those outside American bases in South Korea. Like U.S. troops in Korea, those on Okinawan bases from the north central coast to the port of Naha in the south are told to be polite, stay out of trouble and avoid fighting among themselves, much less with civilians. In a time of deep questioning about the role of U.S. forces, the thought of a serious ``incident” ― a rape, an assault, a murder ― is a recurring nightmare. That’s because the future of the U.S. armed forces is under the most intense scrutiny in Asia in a time of rising opposition to their presence, questions about their basic

May 31, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Storm over US bases on Okinawa

By Donald Kirk NAHA, Okinawa, Japan ― The future of American power in Asia revolves closely around U.S. forces on this island that is home to a full panoply of U.S. air and ground forces well south of the Japanese ``mainland.” Most people here would just as soon they go somewhere else. Uncertainty about the American military presence may not be much of a consideration, however, to the ruling elite of mainland Japan. The leadership of the Democratic Party of Japan, having taken over from the deeply conservative long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party on pledges to get rid of U.S. forces here, has just about abandoned the idea. The hot air of getting the Americans out of bases they have occupied since annihilating the island’s Japanese defenders in a three-month battle 67 years ago began blowing downwind while China asserted its claim on the Senkaku Islands to the south. Now that the Chinese have staked out a sphere of influence from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea, no one’s quite sure how to respond. The North Koreans added fuel to the fire by torpedoing the Ch

May 17, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

On the brink on May Day

By Donald Kirk The air was filled with propaganda on May Day of two distinct genres. On a foray downtown, I picked up leaflets singing the praises of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. Then I found another one on old-style communism but without much if any reference to either of those hoary old figures. Somewhat longer treatises on the glories and lessons of communism were on sale at small stands around the plaza in front of City Hall. I had to wonder if the same stuff would be on offer in Pyongyang ― or would the North Koreans ban them for failing to display the requisite images of the Kim dynasty? Probably so. Can anyone imagine the North Korean thought police countenancing a book on revolutionary socialism that failed to credit Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il with having offered the proper ``guidance?” Kim Jong-un should be equally quotable when he gets around to coming up with his own revolutionary philosophy. Right now the kid is too busy pumping up the enthusiasm of his soldiers to have formed a worldview on the scale of ``juche,” self-reliance, or ``songun,” military

May 3, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Weighing nuclear ‘options‘

By Donald Kirk The vagaries of public opinion are difficult to fathom, never more so than when it comes to the missile and nuclear programs of the two countries that George W. Bush described as forming an ``axis of evil.” Although often mocked for using the term in his state-of-the-union address in January 2002, Bush had it right when he saw Iran and North Korea at opposite poles of an axis in which he also placed Iraq, then under the rule of Saddam Hussein. The reason for puzzlement about political responses to Iran and North Korea is basic: The protests over their missile and nuclear programs don’t seem to correlate with one another. Here the world went ballistic over North Korea’s test-firing a long-range rocket a week ago, yet Iran has test-fired a number of missiles without arousing that much concern other than in Israel, the putative focus of Iranian hostility. Granted none of the Iranian missiles have been as long-range as the North Korean long-range model, but the Iranian ``mid-range” Shahab-3 and Ghadr missiles can go far enough to rain hell on Israel. The

Apr 19, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Politics, race and gun control

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON ― The mass killing of six women and a man at an obscure Christian college near Oakland, Calif., raises two questions about America’s legal system and the Korean-American experience in the United States. The question about the legal system is why the United States refuses, under extreme pressure from the National Rifle Association, gun manufacturers and other vested interests, to exercise stringent controls over the sale and use of guns and rifles. Every day, everywhere you go in the U.S., you read and hear stories of killings by pistol and rifle fire. A high proportion of big stories here, after you get through the boring stuff about Republicans bad-mouthing one another in pursuit of the right to try to dethrone President Obama in December, revolve around shootings and killings all over the country. The political rhetoric is similar in tone to the rhetoric in Korea from the United Democratic Party except that the issues and policies of the would-be candidates in the U.S. and Korea are polar opposites. In the U.S., conservatives

Apr 5, 2012By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Sound and fury at summit

By Donald Kirk The noise generated by next week’s nuclear security summit is deafening. Everywhere you turn, you’re inundated with seminars, conferences, symposiums and just plain speeches. It’s as though everyone with an agenda, an opinion, and a claim to some level of expertise wants to get in a word. The talking began with briefings by top-level officials ― first the one who calls himself the ``Sherpa” for the summit. Sherpa is a term the Koreans and others picked up from the Americans. The allusion is to those Nepalese guides who show mountain climbers the way up the summit of Mount Everest. The idea is the Sherpa will lead all the climbers, the 50 or so heads of state and international agencies and deputy heads and ministers, up to the top. When they get there, they’ll look down on the world below and let fly a vague but portentous statement about the evils of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. Then they’ll come on down again and go home in a blaze of press conferences and departure comments. The statement will have to have been largely written before all these pot

Mar 22, 2012By Donald Kirk
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