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Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk has been covering Korean Peninsula issues for decades.

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Donald Kirk

Asia's deepening standoff

By Donald Kirk The acronym, “AUKUS,” when you try to pronounce it, sounds like some weird wild animal, an AUKUS. The initials stand for Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., but to the North Koreans and their Chinese supporters, they might as well be spelling the exotic name of one of those strange beasts that only inhabits Australia. Maybe a new breed of kangaroo or wombat with particularly sharp claws and mean teeth, poised to spring and strangle and tear apart enemies near and far. Actually, AUKUS is a brand new alliance whose first dividend should be a nuclear submarine for the Australian navy, reliant on American and British technology, just the thing for scaring the Chinese in the South China Sea and intimidating a few others too. Surely North Korea sees it that way, warning darkly but vaguely of “extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of a nuclear arms race.” Hang on, what are the North Koreans getting so worked up about? It's not likely that this submarine will be s

Sep 23, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

History's 'what if' questions

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― Millions remember exactly what they were doing when first hearing about awful events. The day John F. Kennedy was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, I'd been sleeping after an overnight shift for a paper in New York. For some reason I had to call about paying a parking ticket. The woman who took the call was weeping. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me Kennedy had been shot. I forgot about the parking ticket while pursuing on-the-street stories for the paper.Nearly 38 years later, I had boarded a bus near the central post office in Seoul on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, when I got a call from EBS, the Educational Broadcasting System. The voice on the line asked urgently, what did I think about what had happened?What the hell happened, I wanted to know. Amazed by the question, the voice told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York and what's your comment? I had no trouble conjuring a spontaneous expression of shock.She also asked if I had any contact in New York who might comment. I had just the man ― a retired journalist whom I'd known wh

Sep 9, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Afghanistan's meaning for Korea

By Donald KirkThis nightmare scenario comes to mind: the Chinese have invaded South Korea in the name of the North Koreans, who are sort of an auxiliary force, and the wobbly, weak-kneed American president decides the South Koreans can fight on their own with no American troops, no U.S. air or naval power, just the arms the Americans have been selling them for billions.The Americans, those who are left in the South, have all fallen back to Camp Humphreys, the sprawling base south of Seoul, and nearby Osan Air Base. The South Koreans have fought valiantly, but the Chinese hordes have overwhelmed them and now are surrounding an enclave from Humphreys to Osan.The Americans have built up the walls surrounding Humphreys into what the U.S. commander assures journalists is an impenetrable fortress. Then the Chinese begin firing missiles into the base. The American president, having been elected on the populist slogan “War is Wrong,” decides it's time to get out. His secretary of state negotiates a ceasefire with the Chinese for the 10 days he guesses it will take to airlift all

Aug 26, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Olympic gamesmanship

By Donald KirkAmazingly, the Tokyo Olympics went quite well. The upside of dramatic events, medals and celebrations captured top headlines on the sports pages. There were few real glitches. The decision of American gymnast Simone Biles to pull out of events that were too much for her mentally and the defection of Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya as her coaches were trying to force her to return to Belarus for remarks she had made against the dictatorial regime added touches of drama to the spectacle. The absence of spectators from the stands did not diminish the glory of competing for medals and headlines before a global TV audience.There was, however, a downside that raises questions. The first is whether a surge in COVID-19 cases in Japan was related to the Games and whether Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was right to insist on holding them in the face of widespread anti-Olympic protests. Speculation about the impact of the Games on the disease as cases spiked in Japan will go on forever, but the Japanese will always say they did their best by banning spectators. We've al

Aug 12, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Looking for peace 68 years later

By Donald KirkThe U.S., North Korea and China were still at war, rhetorically speaking, on the 68th anniversary earlier this week of the signing of the armistice that formally ended the Korean War. The North Koreans declared the armistice a victory after the Americans and South Koreans and contingents from 16 other countries had fought to a stalemate.Few Americans are aware the United Nations Command remains at the apex of an alliance in which Americans and South Koreans, under the Combined Forces Command, are committed to defense of the South. Fewer still know that the Korean War, technically, remains unfinished. That is, the armistice never morphed into a peace treaty.That's just as well, since treaties are often signed to be dishonored if not broken. The Versailles Peace Treaty ending World War I never made it to its 20th anniversary before Europe was in the throes of World War II. The post-war history of South Korea has been one of miraculous economic recovery and evolution toward democracy while the North has plunged into economic distress made worse by one of the world's most r

Jul 29, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Battling for glory in England

By Donald KirkLONDON ― The tension was building for days. Commentators of all political stripes were writing that the English, divided between right and left, liberals and conservatives, haves and have-nots, upper and middle and lower classes, were coming together at last. The unifying force: a game of soccer, or football, between the English and Italians for Euro Cup 2020.“This town isn't divided, we're one people,” headlined the Sunday Times over a feature about a city named Blackburn, one third of its inhabitants from the Indian subcontinent, “and we all love England.” “Long described as 'segregated,'” said the paper, “the south Asian community is cheering on Kane and Co. as loudly as anyone else” ― Kane being the very Anglo-looking English captain, Harry Kane.But why 2020? The answer is simple. Euro Cup 2020 was postponed, not canceled. Like the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, opening this month, this quadrennial display of Eurocentric athletic prowess would forever be known as 2020. Here, a year later, was evidence that the pandemic

Jul 15, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Shifting priorities

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― The news from Afghanistan is not good, but what did anyone expect? As the U.S. and other NATO forces withdraw, the Taliban are attacking, killing enemies, taking over the country, including stockpiles of U.S. supplies provided for Afghan government forces.President Joe Biden has said really the Afghan government has to stand up for itself and survive on its own. For many reasons, ranging from the strength of the Taliban and the support it's receiving from Russia and Iran, among others, to the inherent weakness of a regime riddled by corruption and inefficiency, its days in power in Kabul appear numbered.Disappointment over Afghanistan mirrors other setbacks for the U.S. No one should forget the U.S. failure to stand by the Kurds, left on their own in Syria when Donald Trump in one of the more controversial acts of his presidency ordered U.S. troops to pull out. Now we wonder about the U.S. commitment to the Persian Gulf, defended by the U.S. Fifth Fleet, supported by U.S. air power, against Iran, supported by Russia.That's not likely to happen for a number

Jul 1, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Fantasizing peace on Jeju

By Donald KirkThe search for peace and reconciliation between North and South Korea burns bright in one province of South Korea that endured far more suffering than other regions before the Korean War had even begun.The rest of the world is unaware of what happened on the island of Jeju, but a movement led by Ko Chang-hoon of Jeju University offers reminders of the slaughter that raged from April 3, 1948, at least until the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. Ko has been organizing panel discussions and debates that not only publicize Jeju as a “world peace island” but also foster dreams of Jeju's own special dialog with North Korea.The ultimate dream, as one participant in the discussion, Grant McCall, an anthropologist at Sydney University, articulates it, is for cruise ships from Jeju to go regularly to Wonsan, the port on North Korea's southeastern coast, bearing COVID-19 vaccines and medical equipment, among other items direly needed by the North Koreans.Why Wonsan? Kim Jong-un hopes to turn the Wonsan region, famed for its beaches and scenery, just an hour nort

Jun 17, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Memorializing Vietnam, Korean wars

By Donald KirkWASHINGTON ― A gentle wind on a sunny day created the perfect atmosphere for visiting monuments on the Mall, honoring America's war dead on its Memorial Day, which is the last day of May.Staring at the 58,000 names etched in the shiny black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, as a journalist who covered the war, I looked for those whom I might have known among the 58,000 who died. On the other side of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, wandering past the stainless-steel statues of 19 troops on patrol, I gazed at the mural, also in black granite, portraying U.S. forces against the backdrop of the forbidding terrain over which they fought the Korean War's bloodiest battles.It comes as a shock to realize that the Korean War, having ended in 1953, a dozen years before the first U.S. combat troops landed in Vietnam, was so forgotten that its memorial did not open until 1995, 13 years after the debut of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It was as though Americans had wanted to obliterate from memory the trauma of a conflict in which 36,574 U.S. troops were killed,

Jun 3, 2021By Donald Kirk
Donald Kirk

Deals at Korea-US summit

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON ― It's time for a reality check on North Korea. No, I'm not suggesting we come to our senses about Kim Jong-un and his nuclear program and try to bludgeon him into “denuclearization.” We all know he's not giving up on the program on which he's staked the pride of his fiefdom and dynasty. Nobody is even talking up that fantasy.No, what we should realize by now is that Americans, led by President Joe Biden, find it hard to focus on North Korea when Kim's not firing off missiles or ordering nuclear tests. People here are just not fixated on North Korea except when there's a crisis, or mini-crisis. Then they may wake up for the duration of one or two news cycles and move on.That's why there's not all that much excitement about the summit at the White House today, Friday, May 21, between Biden and President Moon Jae-in. The Korean media will be watching whatever the two presidents and their aides are saying, looking out for nuances and innuendoes, but sorry to say that the American public ― not to mention maybe Biden and his team ― are looking elsewhe

May 20, 2021By Donald Kirk
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