Donald Kirk is a veteran correspondent and author on conflict and crisis from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to Northeast Asia. Kirk has covered wars from Vietnam to Iraq, focusing on political, diplomatic, economic and social as well as military issues. He is also known for his reporting on North Korea, including the nuclear crisis, human rights and payoffs from South to North Korea preceding the June 2000 inter-Korean summit.[1]
Kirk was correspondent for The Observer (London) in Japan and Korea from the late 1970s to 1982, covering the assassination of President Park Chung-hee of Korea in 1979, the 1980 Gwangju revolt, and financial, diplomatic and political issues in Japan for The Observer and newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. After covering the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 from Beirut and Tel Aviv, he joined USA Today in August 1982 as the paper's first world editor. For USA Today, he ranged from Europe to Asia, reporting on war in Lebanon, revolt in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the 1985-1986 People Power revolution in the Philippines, the democracy revolt in Korea, the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, the 1989 fall of Ceausescu, and the Gulf War from Baghdad, including the U.S. bombing, 1990-91.
After publishing an unauthorized biography of Chung Ju-yung, founder of the Hyundai empire, in 1994, Kirk served in Korea as correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, 1997–2003, and the Christian Science Monitor and CBS Radio, 2004-2020, covering the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, North Korean nuclear and missile tests, anti-American protests, U.S.-Korea trade disputes and Korean politics. He has visited North Korea eight times, writing for Forbes Asia and others, and reported for Institutional Investor and CBS from Baghdad in 2004. He writes columns for The Korea Times and Future Korea and has reported for The Daily Beast since the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and the June 2018 Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Education
Kirk holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton, a master's in international relations from the University of Chicago and an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland Global Campus. He was a Fulbright scholar, New Delhi, 1962–1963; a Ford fellow in Columbia University's advanced international reporting program, 1964–1965; Edward R. Murrow fellow, the Council on Foreign Relations, 1974–1975, visiting fellow, Cornell's Southeast Asia program, 1986-1988; Fulbright senior research scholar, Manila, 1994–1995, Abe fellow, Social Science Research Council, Japan and Korea, 2012; Fulbright-Nehru senior scholar, New Delhi, 2013.
Awards
Kirk won the Overseas Press Club of America Award, 1974, Asia reporting, for articles in the Chicago Tribune on the grim future for South Vietnam after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement in 1973; the George Polk Award, foreign reporting, 1975, for exposing corruption in Vietnam and Cambodia; the Chicago Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck award, 1974; three Overseas Press Club citations, and the Chicago Newspaper Guild Page-One Award, feature-writing, 1962.
Professional organizations
Kirk is a Silver Owl member of the National Press Club, Washington, a life member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong, a fellow of the Institute for Corean-American Studies, and served six terms on the board of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club. He also belongs to the Overseas Press Club of America, International House of Japan, the Authors Guild of America, the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine, 2009 (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, UK), ISBN978-0-230-62048-3.
Jakten Pa Nobels Fredsris (The Search for the Nobel Peace Prize), with Kim Kisam, 2016 (Spartacus, Oslo), ISBN978-82-430-1061-1.
Encyclopedia of Human Rights, entries on North Korea, South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, 2009 (Oxford, New York), ISBN978-0-19-533402-9.
Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm, co-editor with Choe Sang-hun, 2006 (EunHaeng NaMu, Seoul), ISBN978-89-5660-155-7.
Korean Crisis: Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era, 2000, paperback 2002 (St. Martin's, NY, Macmillan UK), ISBN978-0-312-23999-2.
Philippines in Crisis: U.S. Power versus Local Revolt, 2006 (Anvil, Manila), ISBN978-971-27-1726-0.
Business Guide to the Philippines, general editor, 1996 (Butterworth-Heinemann, Singapore, 1998, ISBN978-981-00-7081-6; 2012 (Routledge, London).
Tell it to the Dead: Stories of a War, foreword by Arthur Dommen, 1996 (M.E. Sharpe, Armonk NY) ISBN978-1-56324-718-7; 2016 (Routledge, London).
Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung, 1994 (M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, and Asia2000, Hong Kong), ISBN978-1-56324-425-4; 2016 (Routledge, London).
Tell it to the Dead: Memories of a War, 1975 (Nelson-Hall, Burnham, Chicago), ISBN978-0-88229-287-8.
Wider War: The Struggle for Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, 1971 (Praeger, New York, Pall Mall, London), ISBN978-0-9709728-0-4.
Related Research Articles
North Korea has diplomatic relations with 160 states. The country's foreign relations have been dominated by its conflict with South Korea and its historical ties to the Soviet Union. Both the government of North Korea and the government of South Korea claim to be the sole legitimate government of the whole of Korea. The de facto end of the Korean War left North Korea in a military confrontation with South Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
The history of South Korea begins with the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945. At that time, South Korea and North Korea were divided, despite being the same people and on the same peninsula. In 1950, the Korean War broke out. North Korea overran South Korea until US-led UN forces intervened. At the end of the war in 1953, the border between South and North remained largely similar. Tensions between the two sides continued. South Korea alternated between dictatorship and liberal democracy. It underwent substantial economic development.
Korean reunification is the hypothetical unification of North Korea and South Korea into a singular Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification of the peninsula while still maintaining two opposing regimes was started by the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration in June 2000, was reaffirmed by the October 4th Declaration in October 2007 and the Panmunjom Declaration in April 2018, and the joint statement of United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Singapore Summit in June 2018. In the Panmunjom Declaration, the two countries agreed to work to officially end the Korean conflict in the future.
Kim Dae-jung was a South Korean politician and activist who served as the 8th president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003.
The Sunshine Policy is one of the approaches for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea, lasting from 1998-2008 and again from 2017-2020.
On August 8, 1973, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) kidnapped South Korean dissident leader and future president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung from a conference of Korean anti-authoritarian reformers in Tokyo, Japan.
Diplomatic relations between South Korea and the United States commenced in 1949. The United States helped establish the modern state of South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, and fought on its UN-sponsored side in the Korean War (1950–1953). During the subsequent decades, South Korea experienced tremendous economic, political and military growth.
Formerly a single nation that was annexed by Japan in 1910, the Korean Peninsula has been divided into North Korea and South Korea since the end of World War II on 2 September 1945. The two governments were founded in the two regions in 1948, leading to the consolidation of division. The two countries engaged in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 which ended in an armistice agreement but without a peace treaty. North Korea is a one-party state run by the Kim family. South Korea was formerly governed by a succession of military dictatorships, save for a brief one-year democratic period from 1960 to 1961, until thorough democratization in 1987, after which direct elections were held. Both nations claim the entire Korean Peninsula and outlying islands. Both nations joined the United Nations in 1991 and are recognized by most member states. Since the 1970s, both nations have held informal diplomatic dialogues in order to ease military tensions.
Paik Haksoon is the Founding President of the Academy of Kim Dae-jung Studies established by the Kim Dae-jung Foundation in Seoul, Korea. Kim Dae-jung was the 15th President of the Republic of Korea and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2000.
Woo Yong-gak was a North Korean commando who was released from incarceration in South Korea on 25 February 1999.
Munhwa Ilbo (Korean: 문화일보) is a daily newspaper in South Korea. It was established in August 1990, and printed its first issue on 1 November 1991.
The qualification for the 1956 AFC Asian Cup consisted of 19 teams separated in three zones. The winner of each zone would join hosts Hong Kong in the final tournament. Qualification was done on a two-legged format, home and away games.
Lee Hong-Koo is a South Korean former academic, politician, and think tank leader who served as Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea, South Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and United States, and founding Chairman of the East Asia Institute in Seoul.
The Bình An / Tây Vinh massacre was a series of massacres alleged to have been conducted by the Capital Division of the South Korean Army between February 12, 1966 and March 17, 1966 of 1,200 unarmed civilians in the Go Dai village and other areas in the rural commune of Bình An/ Tây Vinh area, Tây Sơn District of Bình Định Province in South Vietnam.
Choe Sang-Hun is a Pulitzer Prize-winning South Korean journalist and Seoul Bureau Chief for The New York Times.
Yang Sung-chul is a South Korean political scientist, politician, and diplomat.
Lee Hee-ho, sometimes spelled as Lee Hui-ho,, was a South Korean women's rights activist, peace advocate and former First Lady of South Korea during the presidency of her husband Kim Dae-jung from 1998 to 2003.
Moon Chung-in is a Special Advisor to President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for Foreign Affairs and National Security. He is also a Distinguished University Professor of Yonsei University, Krause Distinguished Fellow, School of Policy and Global Strategy, University of California, San Diego, and co-Convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). He is currently serving as the editor-in-chief of Global Asia. On 21 May 2017, Moon Chung-in was nominated by President Moon Jae-in as a special advisor on unification, diplomacy and national security affairs.
2000 inter-Korean summit was a meeting between South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-il, which took place in Pyongyang from June 13 to June 15, 2000. It was the first inter-Korean summit since the Korean War 1950-1953.
This is a list of works important to the study of North Korea.
References
1. ^ Donald Kirk (2011-04-30). Time to wise up on North Korea. The Asia Times, retrieved August 25, 2011
2. ^"Former Edward R. Murrow Press Fellows - Council on Foreign Relations". Cfr.org. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
3. ^"The Year of Living Dangerously". Peterweircave.com. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
4. ^ Donald Kirk (2010-03-23). Donald Kirk: Vanished in a time of killing. The Projo Website, retrieved June 6, 2010
5. ^ Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959 - 1975 Reporting Vietnam: Paperback Edition Archived July 10, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. The Library of America, retrieved June 6, 2010
6. ^ Donald Kirk KJ Special On-line Features: Looking Back at the Tet Offensive Archived August 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. The Kyoto Journal, retrieved June 6, 2010
7. ^MacArthur, John R. (2004), Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War (1st ed.), California: University of California Press
8. ^ Susan Jeffords, Lauren Rabinovitz, “Seeing Through the Media: The Persian Gulf War,” p.127
9. ^"A Conversation with Writer and Journalist Donald Kirk on his book, Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine | Center for Strategic and International Studies". Csis.org. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
10. ^"Home | Asia-Pacific Business and Technology Report". Biztechreport.com. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
11. ^"OPC Awards Past Recipients | Overseas Press Club of America". Opcofamerica.org. 2010-01-12. Archived from the original on 2012-07-17. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
12. ^"Search - Long Island University". Liu.edu. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
