I've declared a Kubernetes deployment which has two containers. One is built locally, another needs to be pulled from a private registry.
const appImage = new docker.Image("ledgerImage", {
    imageName: 'us.gcr.io/qwil-build/ledger',
    build: "../../",
});
const ledgerDeployment = new k8s.extensions.v1beta1.Deployment("ledger", {
  spec: {
    template: {
      metadata: {
        labels: {name: "ledger"},
        name: "ledger",
      },
      spec: {
        containers: [
          {
            name: "api",
            image: appImage.imageName,
          },
          {
            name: "ssl-proxy",
            image: "us.gcr.io/qwil-build/monolith-ssl-proxy:latest",
          }
        ],
      }
    }
  }
});
When I run pulumi up it hangs - this is happening because of a complaint that You don't have the needed permissions to perform this operation, and you may have invalid credentials. I see this complain when I run kubectl describe <name of pod>. However, when I run docker pull us.gcr.io/qwil-build/monolith-ssl-proxy:latest it executes just fine. I've re-reun gcloud auth configure-docker and it hasn't helped. 
I found https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-cloud/issues/112 but it seems that docker.Image requires a build arg which suggests to me it's meant for local images, not remote images.
How can I pull an image from a private registry?
EDIT:
Turns out I have a local dockerfile for building the SSL proxy I need. I've declared a new Image with 
const sslImage = new docker.Image("sslImage", {
  imageName: 'us.gcr.io/qwil-build/ledger-ssl-proxy',
  build: {
    context: "../../",
    dockerfile: "../../Dockerfile.proxy"
  }
});
And updated the image reference in the Deployment correctly. However, I'm still getting authentication problems. 
I have a solution which uses only code, which I use to retrieve images from a private repository on Gitlab:
config.ts
import { Config } from "@pulumi/pulumi";
//
// Gitlab specific config.
//
const gitlabConfig = new Config("gitlab");
export const gitlab = {
    registry: "registry.gitlab.com",
    user: gitlabConfig.require("user"),
    email: gitlabConfig.require("email"),
    password: gitlabConfig.requireSecret("password"),
}
import * as config from "./config";
import { Base64 } from 'js-base64';
import * as kubernetes from "@pulumi/kubernetes";
[...]
const provider = new kubernetes.Provider("do-k8s", { kubeconfig })
const imagePullSecret = new kubernetes.core.v1.Secret(
  "gitlab-registry",
  {
    type: "kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson",
    stringData: {
      ".dockerconfigjson": pulumi
        .all([config.gitlab.registry, config.gitlab.user, config.gitlab.password, config.gitlab.email])
        .apply(([server, username, password, email]) => {
          return JSON.stringify({
            auths: {
              [server]: {
                auth: Base64.encode(username + ":" + password),
                username: username,
                email: email,
                password: password
              }
            }
          })
        })
    }
  },
  {
    provider: provider
  }
);
// Then use the imagePullSecret in your deployment like this
deployment = new k8s.apps.v1.Deployment(name, {
            spec: {
                selector: { matchLabels: labels },
                template: {
                    metadata: { labels: labels },
                    spec: {
                        imagePullSecrets: [{ name: args.imagePullSecret.metadata.apply(m => m.name) }],
                        containers: [container]
                    },
                },
            },
        });
Turns out running pulumi destroy --yes && pulumi up --skip-preview --yes is what I needed. I guess I was in some weird inconsistent state but this is fixed now.
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