The doughnut hole in the argument that a nuclear North Korea can be contained, managed, and melded into some facsimile of India or Pakistan is a denial of the ideological basis for Pyongyang’s pursuit of nukes. It is not merely for deterrence, but to engineer its final victory. https://t.co/8JbRt5YdKV
— Edward Oh 🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) January 22, 2019
I think President Moon is telling the truth here because President Trump is likely letting his surrogates negotiate the ultimate price for him. Trump though must have given his surrogates guidance on the lowest cost he is willing to accept:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday dismissed recent reports that U.S. President Donald Trump has named a specific price for keeping U.S. troops in South Korea, saying the leaders simply do not speak in such a manner.
Yonhap
“Not just President Trump but no leader of any country in the world speaks in such a manner,” the president was quoted as saying.
“Such reports can be an insult to President Trump,” he added, according to his spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom.
Moon’s remarks follow news reports that claimed the U.S. president may have asked South Korea to pay US$1.2 billion as part of costs to maintain U.S. Forces in Korea.
You can read more at the link.
This is like Pearl Harbor all over again!:
South Korea’s military on Thursday released five photos captured from two videos of a Japanese warplane’s “threatening” low-altitude flyby close to its destroyer a day earlier.
Yonhap
The disclosure came as Tokyo rejected Seoul’s claim that its P-3 maritime patrol plane buzzed by South Korea’s 4,500-ton destroyer Daejoyeong at an altitude of 60 to 70 meters and just 540 meters away in international waters south of the peninsula on Wednesday.
The Korean Navy filmed what it called Japan’s “provocative” flight with an infrared camera and handheld camcorder on the destroyer during the incident that sharply heightened tensions between the neighbors.
Seoul initially mulled releasing the videos but decided later to disclose just still photos, apparently in line with its stance to “act with restraint.”
You can read more at the link, but notice how the ROK uses the term “buzzed”. I don’t think they quite understand that when the term is used in English people generally think of an aircraft flying right over the observer. In this case the Japanese plane was over half a kilometer away from the ship.
You would think someone would have studied how to best handle vehicle access into Camp Humphreys during rush hour periods. It appears that was not the case:
Traffic jams are posing a major headache for the growing population on Camp Humphreys, the U.S. military’s new headquarters in South Korea, with many complaining about a dearth of access gates and guards to man them.
Stars & Stripes
Lines of cars are frequently backed up for several blocks on the roads outside and inside the Army’s largest overseas base as drivers wait to file through sometimes a single lane during rush hours. Scanners used by the guards to check IDs often don’t work promptly, causing even more frustration.
One man was injured when the grab barriers deployed as he was driving through one of the access points in November.
“It is out of control,” said Elyse Hendriksen-Bannon, who must battle traffic twice in the morning to get on post – first when she takes her husband to work and later to take her 13-year-old son to the middle school.
You can read the rest at the link.
"South Korea exported over 300 tons of petroleum products to North Korea in 2018, data obtained by NK News shows, though failed to report the transfers to the 1718 Sanctions Committee as required by UNSC Resolution 2397." @chadocl @nknewsorg https://t.co/9kHBfEww1z
— Jeongmin Kim (@jeongminnkim) January 23, 2019
This is pretty jacked up that Coast Guard personnel serving in Japan have to get food from a pantry. Regardless it is good to see servicemembers helping other servicemembers in need:
Servicemembers working without pay due to the government shutdown picked up donated groceries from a food pantry Thursday at the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo.
Stars & Stripes
Twenty-two Coast Guardsmen, including 15 at Yokota and seven in Singapore, aren’t being paid during the shutdown, which started more than a month ago. The impasse stems from House Democrats’ refusal to provide President Donald Trump with the billions he demands to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Other military branches have continued to receive paychecks, but the Coast Guard, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department, has gone unfunded.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz on Wednesday publicly criticized the lack of pay.
“Ultimately, I find it unacceptable that Coast Guard men and women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as servicemembers,” he said in a video posted to his Twitter account.
You can read more at the link.
It appears that the Trump administration is settling for the lowest sum they are willing to take which is $1 billion for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance:
The United States has demanded South Korea pay $1 billion (1.12 trillion won) in annual defense costs sharing, as its final proposal to months of negotiations on the issue, according to officials, Wednesday.
Korea Times
South Korea flatly rejected the demand, maintaining its position that it cannot pay more than 1 trillion won.
“U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris met with South Korea’s National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong last month to deliver the final proposal,” a government official said, asking for anonymity.
On top of that, Washington also urged Seoul to renew the cost-sharing contract each year from the current five year, according to the official.
You can read more at the link, but I have been saying that I don’t think this issue will be resolved until after the Trump-Kim2 summit. If Seoul gets what they want from the US during the summit then they may be more flexible on paying more for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance.
I have been saying that the Trump administration must be offering something the Kim regime wants in order to agree to a second summit, sanctions relief or a Korean War peace treaty would do it:
U.S. President Donald Trump will most likely offer North Korea some kind of relief from international sanctions or a peace treaty in the near future, a prominent DPRK watcher and legal scholar told NK News last week.
NK News
Speaking in Washington DC ahead of a conference hosted by NK News’s parent organization the Korea Risk Group, Tufts University’s Sung-Yoon Lee said the international community’s growing lack of political will to enforce sanctions will likely allow the U.S. to reward Pyongyang for what he described as its “fake concessions” on the nuclear issue.
“Trump will be willing to lift sanctions formally, I believe, not all sanctions, but he might say, ‘okay the poor starving North Korean people, they are suffering, so let’s lift sanctions on the ban of export of seafood and textiles,’” Lee, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said.
“If the U.S. takes the lead in bending the rules – U.S. rules as well as UN Security Council resolutions – who will object? China? No. South Korea? No. Russia? No. Britain and France which really don’t have a bone in this fight? No,” he added. “So it’s all up to Trump and I think Trump is more than willing to offer premature sanctions relaxation.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Lee also discussed why he believes it’s “too late” to bridge the gap between the U.S. and North Korea on denuclearization definitions, ROK President Moon Jae-in’s role in promoting dialogue with the DPRK, and what he sees as Pyongyang’s long-term goal: forcing U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula and the region.
You can read the whole interview at the link, but Professor Lee believes that sanctions relief and a peace treaty will in the near future be offered by the US.
However, squabbles over the definition of denuclearization could cause North Korea in the next few years to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere over the Pacific to make the point their nuclear program is now complete. I don’t see them doing that due to the affect such a detonation would have on satellites. Taking out satellites with an EMP blast I think would lead to a call for regime removal; just imagine the global financial and economic impacts of losing satellites in low Earth orbit. The outrage I believe would be huge.
I don’t think the Kim regime would risk the blowback which would leave them with an above ground test option. If they were going to do an above ground test they would have to do it over the surface of a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Seems pretty challenging logistically for the North Koreans to pull off such a test, but if they get billions of dollars in cash from the South Koreans and sanctions relief may be they can pull it off.
