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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Overcoming the colonial past

By Donald KirkCan we really be sure Korea's relations with Japan are improving under the newly installed conservative government? The answer is we can't be sure of anything. We can only hope they can work together in the context of trilateral cooperation.The common denominator of the arrangement is the United States, which has separate historic alliances forged in blood with both Korea and Japan. No one should have any illusions about an actual trilateral alliance. You can't blame Koreans for hating the idea. The Japanese not only colonized Korea, forcing people to learn their language, adopt their names, and bow to their emperor but also took over farmland, barred Koreans from many types of business and imprisoned, tortured and executed dissidents.Oh, and then there are those other long-running, irreconcilable issues, beginning with that of the thousands of Korean girls forced to serve as “comfort women” (sex slaves) for the Japanese. The practice wasn't just a wartime phenomenon. It began before the war when many girls were offered jobs thinking they would serve as wait

Jun 16, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

US vs. China in South Pacific

By Donald KirkThe South Pacific is again a battleground. China is not nearly at the stage of taking over any of the 15 islands stretching across the region of Oceania, but it's definitely disturbing the foes of Chinese expansionism.This week, China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, is touching down on eight islands in the region, making deals at such a rapid pace as to alarm the members of those two oddly-named arrangements that the U.S. has engineered to stand up against the Chinese. One is AUKUS, the Australia, United Kingdom, U.S. grouping, and the other is the Quad, made up of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan.Some of the deals that Wang is looking for come with military overtones. There's no other way to interpret his offers for training police forces. An agreement that he sought with all 10 of the nations at a session in Fiji had provisions to “expand law enforcement cooperation, jointly combat transnational crime and establish a dialogue mechanism on law enforcement capacity and police cooperation.”Luckily some of the 10 nations were not at all willing to go along wi

Jun 2, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Biden's promises to Northeast Asian allies

By Donald KirkU.S. President Joe Biden projected a superficial image of firmness in defense of America's Northeast Asian allies during his five-day mission to Korea and Japan while trying not to inflame regional tensions.His assurances delighted South Korea's newly inaugurated President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Always soft spoken, Biden pleased both of them with comments that might have appeared tough but maybe were not.While playing up “strategic deterrence” in Seoul and Tokyo, he stopped carefully short of seriously deepening the chasm between America's friends and enemies. His goal was not to inflame tensions but to brace up alliances that Donald Trump during his presidency had compromised.The most important takeaway from Biden's visit to Seoul was the affirmation made jointly with Yoon that the U.S. and South Korea would talk about resuming joint military exercises. In other words, fulfilling the promises made during Yoon's campaign for the presidency, military planners from both the U.S. and South Korea should map out the war game that

May 26, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Democracy in action, Korea and the Philippines

By Donald KirkComparisons between South Korea and the Philippines can be tempting. I can't help but succumb to the temptation after covering last week's election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos as president of the Philippines and then observing, via the internet, the inauguration in Seoul the next day of Yoon Suk-yeol as president of the Republic of Korea.Both South Korea and the Philippines, different though they appear, are relatively young democracies, and both have strong historical ties with the U.S. Both are American allies, bound to the U.S. by elaborate treaty arrangements after terrible wars, and both have to worry about the overwhelming power of China.After years of reporting from both countries, however, I'm equally impressed by the differences in culture, society, outlook and aspirations. Those differences are etched clearly in comparing the elections and the types of men who got elected.Bongbong Marcos, as he's commonly known, won by such a wide margin that he would appear to be not only hugely popular but also a symbol of hope for a country mired in poverty a

May 19, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Waging 'war by proxy'

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― The phrase “war by proxy” is in vogue. It's not a new term, but you see and hear it all the time now. That's what the U.S. and its NATO allies are doing in Ukraine, getting Ukrainian forces to fight the Russians on their behalf.Support for this “proxy war” is overwhelming. Leftists and liberals who oppose just about any American adventure overseas are cheering on Ukraine against Russia, and President Joe Biden is lavishing billions on what looks like the opening rounds of a long-running conflict.Americans don't like the idea of U.S. troops getting involved. Nobody wants the U.S. enforcing a no-fly zone and fighting Russian warplanes over Ukraine. The risks are too high. The U.S. might then plunge into a full-scale war against Russia. Other NATO nations don't want to fight Russia either. They too believe in “war by proxy.”The proxies, the Ukrainians, are defending not only their own turf but, like it or not, the rest of Europe. At heart, Russia's Vladimir Putin dreams of recovering the old Soviet empire. After Ukraine, he

May 5, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Remembering Asia's bloodiest war

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― The Korean War is less and less “forgotten.” You don't hear people calling it “the Forgotten War” nearly as much as we did years ago. For elevating awareness of the worst calamity ever to befall the Korean Peninsula, we can thank North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, who's done his best to alert the world to the dangers of a second Korean War by staging missile tests and threatening nuclear annihilation.Now an elaborate memorial to the war is finally about to stage its second opening in Washington. The memorial opened for the first time on July 27, 1995, 42 years after the Korea War truce was signed at Panmunjom. On the next anniversary, the 69th, the memorial is to be rededicated with one remarkable enhancement ― a “Wall of Remembrance,” including the names of all those who died in the war as members of U.S. military units.No, they weren't all in U.S. military units. More than 7,600 of them were members of the Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army. Having been under U.S. command, fighting with the Americans, they're listed al

Apr 21, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Why missile testing matters

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― North Korea is escalating the rhetoric in the run-up to two dates of huge importance in the confrontation of forces on the Korean Peninsula.First, there's the 110th anniversary on April 15 of the birth of the dynasty founder Kim Il-sung, grandfather of the current incumbent on the throne, Kim Jong-un. Then, on May 10, the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol takes charge as South Korea's new president elected under the country's “democracy constitution,” promulgated in 1987 after tremendous protests against military rule.Each of these impending events may help to explain the outburst of North Korean missile tests along with vituperative shrieks from the North's propaganda machine. Some of the rhetoric is really quite frightening, as when Kim Jong-un's sister, Yo-jong, warned of the need to “reconsider a lot of things pertaining to South Korea.'”It's easy to dismiss such statements as the same bluff and bluster we've heard before, but tests of ever more impressive North Korean missiles may be too alarming to ignore. And, if Kim Jong-un orders a

Apr 7, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Watching in horror as Mariupol falls

By Donald KirkImages of the Russian army strangling the cruelly crushed Ukrainian city of Mariupol pull at heartstrings around the world, evoking indignant cries of “stop it” and “do something” to rescue the survivors, drive out the invaders and save what's left of a shattered community of more than 400,000 souls, many now dead or dying.You cannot help but admire the bravery of ordinary people holding out in Mariupol even as Russian tanks rumble through empty streets littered with the wreckage of buildings and lives lost in a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds. You wonder, though, what's the rest of the world doing besides wringing hands, offering help that will never be enough and cringing at pleas for the kind of aid that might stop the fearsome Russians dead in their tracks.In a battle between David and Goliath, David is supposed to win, but in the real world the biblical story is a fantasy that's a nightmare for Mariupol and much of the rest of the country. Yes, aid is pouring into Ukraine, and foreign volunteers are rushing to join the Ukrainian

Mar 24, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Putin and Kim love their nukes

By Donald KirkNuclear weapons have an irresistible allure. Nations stake their prestige on them. Crowds have cheered at the news of a country's first nuclear test. For a nation to be called a “nuclear power” is evidence it's as strong as any other country, ready to annihilate enemy forces and hostile citizens by the millions.No country is prouder of its nuclear success than North Korea. After each of its half dozen nuclear tests, the North's state media has burst into applause for all the great physicists and engineers who made possible such a momentous accomplishment. North Korea, however, is still knocking at the door for formal admittance as the ninth member of the global “nuclear club.”The U.S. has been refusing to recognize the North as a nuclear power ever since Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il, ordered its first nuclear test on October 9, 2006. CBS, for which I was filing radio reports from Seoul, had me madly gasping out the news. The next time Kim ordered a nuclear test, on May 25, 2009, I was driving in downtown Washington. Al Jazeera called asking

Mar 10, 2022By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Edging into war

By Donald KirkThe descent of Eastern Europe into war is like an excruciating movie in which you have to fear the worst.You can't believe that Russia's Vladimir Putin would have marshalled all those forces within shooting distance of Ukraine without planning to use them. You know you have to accept the tragic news that people will be killing one another across a corner of the region that few of us could have spotted on a map until all TV networks began showing us maps of where the Russians are likely to strike.Putin and his ministers and assorted flunkeys presented one distortion after another in what was described as a press conference in which they mouthed every rationale imaginable for going to war. The only relief came in the prospect of more dialogue as enunciated by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while Putin looked on silently like a master approving the carefully rehearsed words of his loyal servants.It would be difficult to sort out all the nonsense they were talking about, but what sticks are repeated claims that the Ukraine forces, with the blessing of the 30 NATO nations le

Feb 24, 2022By Donald Kirk
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