When world leaders talk about 'human rights' and when they do not
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The spectacle of the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh did more to lay bare the problems, conflicts and paradoxes of relations among the region’s wildly different and widely scattered nations than to resolve them. The fact that at least three of the leaders at this year’s ASEAN summit won’t be around […]
South Korea moves up in Security Council balance-of-power competition
By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — It’s the annual diplomatic ritual when the 193 member UN General Assembly elects five of its members to serve for two-year stints on the powerful Security Council. As would be imagined the competition is intense to gain real political power and the global limelight on the fifteen member […]
The people be damned: Recalling the odd friendship between 'Snooky' Sihanouk and Kim Il-Sung
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com They formed one of the oddest, blood-stained duos in Asian history. Cambodia’s king and prince and then king again, Norodom Sihanouk, bonded with North Korea’s “Great Leader” Kim Il-Sung for reasons that had to do with their mutual hatred of the United States. Never did the adage, the enemy of my […]