What can Korea Learn From Ireland? by Senior Advisor Tom Coyner

My recent essay, “Denuclearization – Korea’s Red Herring,” stirred much discussion. Most reaction was favorable, but there was also some heated controversy. I had a chance to engage at depth with two ambassadors to Korea. Both diplomats were quite familiar, of course, with North and South Korea. This article is a reposting of an article from 2012, but seems pertinent for, also, today. I will try to fairly represent both ambassadors’ perspectives since one man was skeptical and the other

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How I Discovered that Smoking Weed is Legal in North Korea – by Tom Coyner

A hat tip to a non-Korean artist friend who also has lived much or most of his life in Asia for forwarding this piece to me. Given the cost of tobacco and the ease of cultivating marijuana, I had heard from a foreign friend who had lived in North Korea that workers often resort to marijuana in the Korea North of the DMZ as a cheap substitute for tobacco. Perhaps only in the DPRK may one find that to be

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