Donald Kirk

Donald Kirk is a veteran correspondent and noted author on conflict and crisis from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to Northeast Asia. Don 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.

After several years as a metro reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post, Don went to Asia as a correspondent in Indonesia in “The Year of Living Dangerously,” 1965–1966, including the fall of Sukarno and mass killings in Java and Bali. He covered Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the late 1960s and early 1970s, first for the old Washington (DC) Star and then for the Chicago Tribune, reporting on the Tet Offensive, the downfall of Prince Sihanouk and the U.S. incursion into Cambodia (1970), and the Easter Offensive in Vietnam (1972). He also wrote articles for The New York Times Magazine and two books before gravitating to northeast Asia.