Old Korea hand Donald Kirk is much displeased that Herr Bush took Pyongyang off the US list of terrorist states

Donald Kirk has had a long hate affair with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [DPRK] which is more commonly known as North Korea. Kirk is an old Asia hand; he was the International Herald Tribune's man in Seoul, and has contributed to Institutional Investor, TheNation, The National Review, and is a regular on Asia Times Online. Washington based, he's chummy with the Pentagon and the American Enterprise Institute, and his articles appear in the Christian Science Monitor and occasionally he makes an appearance on Public Television channels and speaks at the Korea Society. Recently, he visited the DPRK; he didn't like what he saw there and his filings make that very clear, snide and smary as they are. He added little to what other critics of Kim Jong il had to say. Kirk when he covers South Korea, took a distinctly hard line, shrill assessment on Kim Dae Jung's opening to Pyongyang which we went under the name of 'Sunshine Policy', and he was quick to attack Roh Moo hyun, Kim's successor in the Blue House. With the election of the right wing Lee Myun bek as president of South Korea, Kirk has found a man to his liking. It doesn't take a rocket scienctist to figure out why. Lee's espoused the old Bush line against Pyongyang, but with some arm twisting from Herr Bush, he held his tongue on the DPRK's removal from the US list of terrorist states. For even the occasional student of Korean affairs, reading Kirk is enlightening. He is the conduit of right wing neo con attitudes and is a sounding board for the Pentagon and other US agencies best left unnamed. Kirk is a must read for that alone.