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Opinion

Columnists

Fri, October 2, 2020 | 05:44

Donald Kirk

'Parasite' - true or false

The multi-Oscar-winning “Parasite” does not inspire total adulation among all those who have seen it. One Korean-American whom I met in Washington said she thought it represented a distorted, exaggerated image of class barriers, of differences between rich and poor in the country of her birth.

2020-02-20 17:02

Unsung angel of 'Parasite'

In all the outpouring of high praise for the Korean blockbuster “Parasite” after its dazzling success at the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, one noteworthy side of the production was largely ignored: the film had the enthusiastic backing of an heiress to the riches of Korea's biggest commercial dynasty, the Samsung empire.

2020-02-13 17:49

Fighting 'Yellow Peril'

The spread of a deadly disease brings out the best and the worst in people. Upside, scientists look for causes and cures for the coronavirus, often coordinating through the World Health Organization, while doctors and nurses work tirelessly to care for the sick in hospitals and clinics. Negatively, unfounded fears, bordering on panic, are widespread and difficult to stop. Nobody wants to say it's not necessary to quarantine travelers from China or shut down factories, schools, theaters and restaurants in case the dreaded disease has any chance of breaking out where never expected.

2020-02-06 17:10

Third-world-style leadership

Donald Trump would have been a great leader of a small third-world country. That's the type of job for which he would have been a natural, at least to judge from what we're hearing about removing him from his perch at the helm of a much larger, first-world country.

2020-01-30 16:53

Undiplomatic diplomacy

A young ensign is reputed to have told Admiral Bill “Bull” Halsey, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific in World War II, “Your every wish is my command,” to which Halsey replied, “You're damn right it is.”

2020-01-23 17:21

That 'axis of evil'

A detail generally overlooked in all we've been reading about the misfired Iranian missile that brought down the Ukraine airliner with 176 people aboard: It was almost certainly made in North Korea and sold to Iran or made in Iran from a North Korean design and technology.

2020-01-16 17:02

Killing by other names

People who split hairs over semantics ask if decapitation is the same as assassination. The debate assumes relevance in the wake of the killing of the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. No, he wasn't exactly decapitated, meaning his head wasn't literally cut off from the rest of his body though probably not much was left of either after the vehicle in which he was riding from Baghdad airport was struck by a missile fired by a U.S. drone. Was he, however, assassinated or simply a casualty of a war in which thousands have died?

2020-01-09 17:35

Shocks of modern Korea

One of the axioms of modern Korean history is that the future is hard if not impossible to predict. We've had so many surprises since the division of the Korean Peninsula by U.S. and Soviet diplomats in 1945 and the North's invasion of the South nearly five years later that it would be impossible to list them all. Not all unforeseen happenings have been bad. Nobody after the Korean War ended in 1953 would have dared predict the rise of South Korea as a major industrial power. Nor would anyone have imagined at the height of the presidencies of Park Chung-hee and then Chun Doo-hwan from May 19...

2020-01-02 17:27

N. Korea's human rights

We've been hearing a great deal about North Korea's “gift” to the U.S. in the form of the test of a long-range missile or satellite launch as punishment for the failure to agree to sanctions relief. Considering all that's at stake, a “step-by-step” deal under which Kim Jong-un slowly surrenders his nuclear program while the U.S. and U.N. let up on sanctions might seem sensible. Why not, it's tempting to ask, deprive the North of a rationalization for making good on its threats?

2019-12-26 17:50

China's strategy for Korea

In the first annual “Transactions” published by the venerable Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1900, James S. Gale, one of the early missionaries here, wrote, “The more we read, the more we are forced to the conclusion that Korea was under a mesmeric spell at the hands of the Great Middle Kingdom.” In refutation, H,B. Hulbert, another notable missionary, author of a classic history of Korea, argued that “the points of similarity with the Chinese are the exception and that the survival of things purely native and indigenous are the rule.”

2019-12-19 18:18

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