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The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Columnists

Donald Kirk

Historic scoop, March 1, 1919

The suffering inflicted on Korea by Japan lives on in exhibits in the Seoul Museum of History about the nightmare of Japanese rule.

2021-03-04 17:06

Games of war and peace

PYEONGTAEK - U.S. soldiers pour out of the walk-in gate of Camp Humphreys on a weekend afternoon, strolling by bars and restaurants, tailor shops and souvenir stands, breathing in the atmosphere after constraints are lifted and “the ville,” as GI's have been calling the strip for years, is open again for fun and games.

2021-02-25 16:44

Protests from right to left

The great divide in the U.S. between far right and far left parallels debates around the world between political and ideological extremes, but there's one big difference. The main provocateur of the most violent protest in the U.S. remains at large if still under fire.

2021-02-18 18:23

Lessons of coup

The renaissance of undisguised military rule in Myanmar should provide inspiration for Donald Trump. The generals who jailed democracy crusader Aung San Suu Kyi and her cohorts are raising the same claims about Myanmar's parliamentary elections in November that Trump has been charging in U.S. elections held around the same time. Having won only 33 of 476 seats for their candidates against 396 for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, they say the voting was rigged, the count was fraudulent and they want to look at the voting rolls.

2021-02-04 17:00

COVID-19's sad anniversary

An important anniversary has slipped by. It was in January 2020, while visiting Hong Kong for a few days, that I started seeing stories about a strange new virus diagnosed in the industrial Chinese city of Wuhan. The first headlines didn't seem like a big deal. Some "experts" were saying the virus had been found in Wuhan and nowhere else.

2021-01-28 16:46

Dealing with Biden

Together, North and South Korea confront Joe Biden with what may be the most unnerving foreign policy problems of his presidency.

2021-01-21 17:06

Freedom to inspire or incite?

For the U.S., the worst is yet to come, and that's not just over the few days before Joe Biden's inauguration next Wednesday (Jan. 20) as the 46th U.S. president. The furor over free speech and freedom to protest, intermingled with the impact of COVID-19 on tens of millions of Americans who don't share the bounty of stock dividends and inflated salaries and bonuses, will make legitimate debate and the threat of violence a fact of American life for a long time.

2021-01-14 17:00

Trump's mad obsession

LONDON - In Europe, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson is sometimes called the English version of Donald Trump. And in the U.S., Trump's bitterest critics liken him to a dictator, maybe an American version of Hitler or Stalin or Mao or even his bosom buddy Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.

2021-01-07 16:36

Brits in denial

Much of Britain is on level four in the battle against COVID-19, but you might not know it from watching people in the week between Christmas and New Year. A quick survey of pedestrians in and around Hammersmith station in west London showed about half not wearing face masks. On buses and subway trains, no one was enforcing rules about masks, and warnings to stay home were easily ignored despite signs in lights advising, “COVID-19 CASES VERY HIGH PLEASE BE CAREFUL.”

2020-12-31 17:00

By Donald Kirk There never was a Christmas like this one. COVID-19 has frightened countries around the world into cutting down or cutting out gatherings, and in the U.S. Donald Trump ― Mr. Bluff and Bluster himself ― is concocting fiendish schemes to overturn the results of the presidential election before the U.S. Congress meets on Jan. 6 to certify the victory of Joseph Biden. At least we can say we haven't descended to open conflict, to guerrilla warfare, to breakaway states in open battle, all of them united against the United States, one nation hitherto indivisible with liberty and just...

2020-12-24 17:00

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