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The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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2. John Burton

Korea's voice in Washington

Watching American news coverage of Donald Trump’s trip to Korea last week, the focus was naturally on what the U.S. president would say or do. But that also meant that President Moon Jae-in was assigned by the U.S. media the role of a bit player in his own country. That is one example of how Korea has had difficulty in making its voice heard in U.S. in the last few months despite the escalating tension between Washington and Pyongyang. American journalists focus almost exclusively on this dynamic while largely ignoring Seoul’s perspective. This is placing Seoul at a disadvantage in influenci...

2017-11-13 18:00

When Koreans welcome (if that is the right word) U.S. President Donald Trump next week, they will be greeting a man who has the power to unleash a destructive war on the Korean peninsula that could kill millions. Whether Trump is preparing a preventive war against North Korea has become the subject of a feverish debate in Washington. The consensus among analysts is that the U.S. faces two stark choices in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, either accept it and pursue a policy of containment, or engage in a catastrophic military conflict to stop it. At least in terms of rhetoric comi...

2017-10-30 17:39

When the U.S. intervened in 1950 to halt North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, it was viewed as an effort to halt the expansion of an allegedly monolithic communist bloc led by the Soviet Union and China. The effort to contain international communism and defend the “free world” initially served as justification for maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea after the Korean war ended in 1953. The U.S. decision to protect South Korea also was meant to signal that it was willing to defend friendly governments around the world as Washington sought to create a global balance of power with its commu...

2017-10-16 17:47

I can tell you what Washington policymakers and think tankers have been doing during their evenings the last two weeks. They have been watching the 10-part, 18-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on the Vietnam war, which has been airing on America’s public television stations (whose funding is under threat by proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration). The series has repeatedly come up in conversations, none more so than among those who follow North Korea. Its sobering look at the death and destruction in Vietnam and the ideological splits the war caused in the U.S. is a us...

2017-10-12 17:37

War's economic havoc

The possibility of a conflict on the Korean peninsula is a scary proposition. But as The Economist recently pointed out, global financial markets don’t seem bothered by the prospect. That may be because the markets are discounting the likelihood that war will ever break out, with the threats from Pyongyang and Washington seen as lacking credibility. The case for complacency rests on the assumption that the U.S. would not want to launch a preventive war against North Korea because it would lead to the deaths of millions, including thousands of U.S. soldiers. But some have also pointed out the...

2017-09-18 17:36

Moon's military maneuvers

While President Moon Jae-in has been trying to promote a policy of reconciliation toward North Korea, known as the Sunshine Policy 2.0 after similar approaches pursued by Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, he is also overseeing a strong defense build-up, dubbed by some as Defense Reform 2.0. Moon’s defense plan is patterned after Defense Reform 2020 launched in 2006 by Roh, under whom the current president served as chief of staff. Previously, South Korea’s military structure was heavily tilted toward the Army, whose troops would be expected to do much of the ground fighting in a seco...

2017-09-04 17:11

Media-driven nuclear crisis

On July 25, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that “North Korea will be able to field a reliable, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year,” two years ahead of previous estimates. The report attracted only modest attention among the U.S. media, which was focused that day on an upcoming vote in the U.S. Senate on healthcare reforms, U.S. President Donald Trump’s twitter attacks on U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the denial by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that he had colluded with the Russi...

2017-08-23 17:38

Trump's cultural revolution

I have a confession to make. In my wayward youth, I was a Maoist. The idea of overthrowing bureaucratic structures appealed to my libertarian sensibilities. If I felt the same now, maybe I would be a Trumpist. For one way to understand Donald Trump and his tumultuous presidency is to compare him to Mao Tse-tung and the Cultural Revolution. They share the same strategy of trying to create chaos to challenge and disrupt a hostile establishment. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to overthrow senior government officials who were trying to sideline him after his disastrous Gre

2017-08-09 17:04

Moon's nuclear option

Lee Jong-kul, a prominent lawmaker from President Moon Jae-in’s Minjoo Party, last week told a seminar in Washington that South Korea may have to acquire nuclear weapons, an idea that until now has been confined to the conservative political fringes in Seoul. “If North Korea continues to conduct nuclear weapon and missile tests while the North Korean nuclear negotiations are sluggish, South Korea should decide whether to break the principle of denuclearization and start developing nuclear weapons,” Lee said in a speech at a forum in the U.S. capital sponsored by several Korea-related religio...

2017-07-26 17:43

Moon meets the Art of the Deal

When Korean President Moon Jae-in met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington two weeks ago, the bar had been set so low by the media that anything short of the two leaders getting into a screaming match would have been counted as a success.

2017-07-12 17:37

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