Donald Kirk

Time is running out for President Moon Jae-In. He has barely more than half a year to leave a legacy in Korean and world history as the leader responsible for bringing permanent peace at last to Korea, North and South.

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.

South Korean leadership, by banning defectors from launching balloons wafting leaflets over North Korea, has struck a devastating blow against free speech and freedom of information in both Koreas.

The North Korean economy is in such dire straits that none of the experts know quite what to do about it other than beg Kim Jong-Un, please, sir, reform the economy and do away with your nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and a lot of aid.

FPI / August 13, 2020 By Donald Kirk [Editor’s Note: Far East Correspondent Donald Kirk is back in the United States on leave.] WASHINGTON — The outbreak of protests in cities and even small communities across the U.S. reveals not only the extremes but also the confusion in American life. While the liberal media focuses […]

FPI / July 20, 2020 By Donald Kirk China looms like an enormous bullying giant above its borders with India stretching more than 4,000 kilometers from the high Himalayas to the west to more mountains and lower level frontiers to the east. In between is Nepal, over which China wields increasing influence, and Bhutan, which […]

FPI / July 10, 2020 By Donald Kirk SEOUL — The insistence of a pair of brothers on scattering hundreds of thousands of leaflets from balloons fired over North Korea confronts the South with tough questions. Is it worth upsetting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his sister, Kim Yo-Jong, knowing the negative effects the […]

FPI / June 16, 2020 By Donald Kirk The Samsung empire’s de facto leader, Jay Y. Lee, is a free man despite the best efforts of Korean government prosecutors to lock him up while he faces yet another trial to keep him from taking over the group as the only son of Lee Kun-Hee, still […]

FPI / May 13, 2020 By Donald Kirk 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. It’s amazing how quickly and easily many of us were taken in by the initial report on the Daily NK, […]

FPI / April 30, 2020 By Donald Kirk SEOUL — 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? Just think about […]

FPI / April 19, 2020 By Donald Kirk SEOUL — 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. In my case, it was “the last plane out of Washington,” or, to be precise, the last non-stop flight […]

FPI / March 25, 2020 By Donald Kirk NORFOLK, Virginia — America’s mightiest warships, including the carrier John C. Stennis, line up grey and forbidding here at the world’s largest naval base at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. A few gate-keepers, security people, stand guard on the piers, but otherwise almost no one is […]

FPI / March 19, 2020 By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON — The mere idea of the nation’s capital more or less shutting down would have been beyond imagination if anybody had talked about it seriously two months ago. Even after the outbreak of coronavirus in China had reached Korea and Europe, very few people would really […]

FPI / March 3, 2020 By Donald Kirk In a time of crisis, near-panic, over a disease to which the best medical minds have yet to find a sure cure, total cooperation is essential. The World Health Organization, scientists around the world, anyone who knows anything is duty-bound to try and help. Which brings us […]

FPI / February 18, 2020 By Donald Kirk U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has mounted a broad campaign warning against China’s infiltration of American life from university campuses to American companies, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. At just about every opportunity at which he’s asked to speak or comment, Pompeo accuses the Chinese […]