Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk, from Washington, D.C., travels to South Korea, with stops in London, the middle east, Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines, among other places, writing on the confrontation of forces in the post-9/​11 era.

Don has served as Korea correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and The Daily Beast and has written for such diverse magazines as Forbes Asia, Institutional Investor, Far Eastern Economic Review, The New Leader, Future Korea Journal, National Review, Kyoto Journal and Hemispheres and commentaries for newspapers ranging from The Wall Street Journal Asia, South China Morning Post and Korea Times to the Los Angeles Times, Providence Journal, Washington Examiner and Newsday.

Don first visited Seoul in 1972 as Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and has covered major events in Korea from the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in 1979 and the Kwangju revolt in 1980 to every presidential election since adoption of the "democracy constitution" in 1987.

From 1988 to 1994, he focused on economics and labor, writing Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung, a critical study of Hyundai, Korea's largest chaebol, and its founder. Again in Seoul, he wrote Korean Crisis: Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era, published in 2000, and Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine, a biography of the late South Korean president.

The University of Maryland University College in 2004 awarded him an honorary doctorate as "one of the United States' most knowledgeable observers and commentators on Asia."