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Donald Kirk

Trump's failed diplomacy

The timing of John Bolton's tell-all, “The Room Where It Happened,” was positively diabolic. Could it be mere coincidence that it hit the book stores in a month of significant anniversaries?

2020-06-25 17:20

Exploding dreams

One of the most quoted cliches among North Korean experts is that Kim Jong-un is really smart, that he knows what he's doing, all so shrewdly calculated for maximum impact. Just who qualifies as a North Korean expert and who doesn't is another matter. In a sense we're all experts. We all have opinions about North Korea, and much of what we say, write and think is unprovable, so who's to know who knows anything?

2020-06-18 17:55

Korean-style protests

Harvard professor Cornel West caught the divisions in American life when he warned of both the hopes and concerns of Americans after the funeral for George Floyd in Houston. “We got hope in the form of motion,” the renowned African-American philosopher told CNN's Anderson Cooper, “but we've gotta get ready for the backlash.”

2020-06-11 17:27

Truths about Gwangju

By Donald Kirk Details about what happened at Gwangju during those terrible days from May 18 through May 27, 1980, remain elusive four decades later. One of the greatest mysteries is who ordered helicopters to fire on demonstrators. Investigators will have trouble extracting confessions from aging army veterans or finding witnesses beyond those who have long since described what they saw, but hidden documents may be revealing.Chun Doo-hwan, the general who seized power in the months after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee nearly seven months earlier, has consistently denied helic...

2020-05-28 17:34

Gwangju's place in history

The memories never fade. The stories of the 10 days of defiance, of suffering and bloodshed, live on in a city that still seethes with resentment 40 years after the uprising that began with a student demonstration on May 18, 1980.

2020-05-21 17:17

Fighting the coronavirus is like advancing through a minefield in which explosions can kill and wound if not defeat the entire offensive. South Korean health experts would acknowledge the hazards after the bug spread through crowds in bars and clubs in Seoul's Itaewon district just as new cases had fallen to a few a day.

2020-05-14 18:21

Misreporting North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has dodged a bullet, meaning the onslaught of speculation about whether he was dead or alive, ill or just avoiding the coronavirus.

2020-05-07 17:04

How's Kim doing?

The vanishing act of Kim Jong-un provokes one inevitable question. With all the billions that the U.S. puts into gathering intelligence by all those “agencies,” why can't any of them come back with the definitive answer on the state of his health?

2020-04-30 17:07

Lessons in battling COVID-19

You have to admire the efficiency with which Korea is managing its campaign to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

2020-04-23 17:44

Last flight from Washington

The phrase has a certain drama, overtones of life-or-death struggle: “The last plane out of” a city under attack, under siege, on the brink of surrender.

2020-04-16 18:08

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