The Korea Times - Home

Site Map PDF Subscription Register LogIn
Site Map PDF Subscription Register LogIn

Thu, April 26, 2018 | 12:48

Opinion > Columnists > Donald Kirk >

Donald Trump should be thankful the Republican convention in Cleveland that nominated him for the presidency was held the week before Hillary Clinton's shining moments at the Democratic conflab in Philadelphia. Just think what the fallout would have been if the Muslim parents of an army captain who was killed in Iraq had talked at the Democratic convention before the Republican convention.

Donald Kirk | 2016-08-04 17:08

Nation divided against itself

WASHINGTON - The two top American political parties are so badly fractured you wonder if they’ll ever come together again. And that's to say nothing of the American public: that is, the vast majority who don’t participate in party politics at all. It’s difficult to know which party is more divided. The Democrats are split between the majority who see Hillary Clinton as their only hope and a vociferous minority rallying around the socialist Bernie Sanders. Most Republicans don’t care for Donald Trump even if he did overwhelm all his foes whom he insulted to death while campaigning for the nom...

Donald Kirk | 2016-07-28 17:04

Suffocating in hot air

WASHINGTON - The venom of opposing forces in the U.S. presidential campaign inspires comparison to the rhetoric of Kim Jong-un and his propaganda machine.

Donald Kirk | 2016-07-21 17:03

Britain's new conservatism

LONDON - Nobody does politics like the Brits. Just as Hillary and the Trumpster were turning into bores in the U.S., along came an unpredictable change in the leadership of the United Kingdom. While one conservative takes over from another as prime minister, confusion reigns. For the benefit of anyone thinking Japanese or Korean or Taiwanese political struggles are nasty, what could have been nastier than the quick dash for power that grabbed headlines here after a majority of Brits voted for Britain's exit from the European Union? If the outcome of the Brexit vote came as a shock, the after...

Donald Kirk | 2016-07-14 17:02

War of words over Brexit

LONDON - Here in the eye of Typhoon Brexit, the airwaves, internet and print media reverberate with the shockwaves of what is seen as the End of Britain as we know it or a tempest in a teapot. The roar of the storm is such that it can only be compared to the ruckus of royal infidelities and rumors and rubbish that transfixed the British media in decades past. If one thing is missing from all the statements and counter statements, charges and counter-charges, claims and lies heard over here, it is a whiff of royal scandal that would really rivet attention. In the coffee shops and pubs of swin...

Donald Kirk | 2016-07-07 16:42

Brexit and Britain's culture clash

WASHINGTON - We’ve been reading for so long about Britain’s economic troubles, the social system and the culture intertwined with the country’s slow, not always graceful, decline, that the British exit from the European Union comes as less than a shock. Or if it is a shock, that’s because most of us only talked to people in and around London, maybe at Oxford or Cambridge or some other academic center, when not looking at stately cathedrals and cute country villages. Certainly, we didn't talk a lot to the Brits who voted yes to Brexit-and more than likely the beginning of the end of an awkwar...

Donald Kirk | 2016-06-30 17:04

When your rifle's 'automatic'

TORONTO - A drive across the American continent takes you through a strange land where the airwaves are full of personal invective mingled with expert analysis of what's an automatic weapon or semi-automatic or plain old-fashioned pistol or rifle. Say what you want to learn about the political charges and counter-charges flung about in places like Korea and Japan. They’re tame by comparison to the name-calling, charges and counter-charges of the principal contenders for president of the U.S. As if the back-and-forth between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were not surprising enough, we also...

Donald Kirk | 2016-06-23 16:36

Shooting it out in America

WICKENBURG, Arizona - Statues, plaques and memorials remind visitors of the violence that once prevailed in this pleasant town of about 6,000 people 65 miles northwest of Phoenix. Here was the Wild West, where gun-toting cowboys fought with the original inhabitants of the land, the American Indians, or Native Americans who had arrived millennia before them. Here too, miners for gold and copper struck it rich in a desert of vast flatlands and rocky outcroppings. Opposite my hotel is a freshly painted wooden structure with balconies and a front porch that I'm told historically was a brothel, n...

Donald Kirk | 2016-06-16 17:05

North Korea's unreality game

North Korea, that is the people who run the place, likes nothing better than endorsements from foreign visitors. The list of foreigners paying obeisance to the Kim regime, Kim Jong-un and his father and grandfather before him, is quite long.

Donald Kirk | 2016-06-09 17:08

Agreeing to disagree on NK

By Donald Kirk JEJU ― Ask an expert analyst how to deal with North Korea, and the responses range from getting tough to massaging gently. Nobody has the real answer ― though some people like to talk with absolute certainty ― and there’s no proof that anything’s going to work.The differences were sharply etched during last week’s Jeju Peace Forum at which former Korean foreign ministers sparred on the issue and soothsayers from the U.S., China and elsewhere exchanged quite different views. Nobody seemed to disagree more than Song Min-soon, foreign minister under th...

Donald Kirk | 2016-06-02 17:02

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Missile attack on Syria