Author: GIKorea

It will be interesting to see if the Iran War has any impact on Lee’s approval rating if oil prices rise sharply enough to where it impacts the Korean economy:

President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating fell slightly from a week earlier last week, marking its first decline in six weeks, a survey showed Monday.

Lee’s approval rating stood at 57.1 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week, according to the survey by Realmeter, commissioned by a local business news outlet. Of those surveyed, 38.2 percent said they did not approve of Lee, up 1 percentage point over the cited period.

Realmeter partly attributed the drop in approval rating, which came despite positive financial and economic indicators, to recent social debates over the fairness of the government’s push to merge major cities and provinces and lowering the age for criminal punishment.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting Op-Ed in the Korea Times from a retired ROK Army general on what South Korea should learn from the Iran War:

(……..) There are clear parallels between Iran and North Korea. Both rely on missiles, coercive rhetoric and calibrated escalation to compensate for economic and conventional weakness. Both view nuclear capability as regime insurance. Both assume that external actors will ultimately avoid confrontation due to escalation risks.

The difference is that North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons. That reality does not guarantee safety. It merely raises the stakes.

The true stabilizing factor on the Korean Peninsula is not North Korea’s arsenal. It is the alliance structure anchored by South Korea, Japan and the United States. That structure imposes strategic restraint on all sides because any conflict would be immediate, catastrophic and alliance-driven.

But restraint depends on credibility.

Here is the uncomfortable point the Korean public must confront: the U.S.-ROK alliance is not indestructible. It is sustained by political will on both sides. If South Korea signals that the alliance is conditional, negotiable or politically expendable, Washington will not ignore that signal.

Great powers adjust. They always do.

Some in South Korea believe the alliance can be strategically “tested” — that Seoul can publicly distance itself from Washington, question joint exercises, dilute trilateral cooperation with Japan and still assume the American security guarantee remains unchanged. That is a dangerous illusion. (………)

If Washington perceives hesitation in Seoul, it will hedge. Hedging does not require abandonment. It requires adjustment — force posture changes, prioritization shifts, conditional commitments. And once strategic recalibration begins, it is rarely reversed quickly.

The first costs of miscalculation will not fall on Washington. They will fall on Seoul.

Progressives who advocate engagement with North Korea are not wrong to seek reduced tension. Dialogue is necessary. But dialogue that undermines deterrence credibility invites coercion. There is no historical example in which weakening alliance solidarity strengthened negotiating leverage with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Strategic autonomy is often invoked as justification for recalibrating ties with the United States. But autonomy without substitute capability is exposure. China will not defend South Korea against Northern aggression. Japan cannot replace American extended deterrence. An independent nuclear option would impose severe economic and diplomatic penalties on South Korea. (………)

Testing the alliance for domestic political leverage is not strategic sophistication. It is strategic gambling in an increasingly unforgiving environment.

Korea Times

You can read the whole thing at the link.

Besides making money from sending their Soldiers to fight for Russia, selling them weapons has been quite lucrative for the regime as well:

North Korea is believed to have shipped some 33,000 containers of military supplies, including weapons and ammunition, to Russia as part of its support for Moscow in the war with Ukraine, a military intelligence unit said Sunday.

The shipped volume, in terms of ammunition, could amount to over 15 million 152-mm artillery shells, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the defense ministry said in a report submitted to Rep. Kang Dae-sik of the main opposition People Power Party.

The assessment marks an increase from the DIA’s announcement in July last year that about 28,000 containers of military supplies had been shipped from North Korea to Russia.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Once again North Korea is ignoring Lee’s call for talks because they don’t need anything from South Korea. Currently all their needs are being met by the Russians. Whenever the Ukraine war ends and the flow of money from Russia stops that is when you will see the Kim regime open to talks with South Korea in order to start a new revenue stream:

President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday urged North Korea to return to the negotiating table with the United States and join efforts to shape what he called a “new future,” vowing to work with relevant countries to turn the Korean War armistice into a peace regime.

Lee made the remarks in his first address marking the March 1 Independence Movement at the COEX exhibition center in southern Seoul as the nation commemorated the 107th anniversary of the nation’s 1919 independence movement, a watershed event during Japan’s 1910-45 brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

“Since North Korea is formulating and implementing a new five-year plan, I hope that it will swiftly return to the negotiating table and join us in shaping a new future,” Lee said, stressing that “hostility and confrontation serve neither side’s interests.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is good that the ROK Army is thinking of innovative ways of how to use drones and AI, but I think if this was feasible in combat conditions the Ukrainians would have already tried it:

Once reconnaissance drones transmitted live footage of suspected enemy positions — identifying troops and possible landmines ahead — a column of armored vehicles began advancing toward hostile terrain.

Uncrewed systems moved first. Four-legged robotic platforms and explosive-ordnance disposal robots scanned the ground for hidden threats, while drones hovered overhead maintaining surveillance.

Behind them, an armored vehicle equipped with an artificial intelligence-based remote weapon control system locked onto targets, followed by a Korean Combat Engineer Vehicle clearing a safe passage for advancing forces.

The scene unfolded during the Army’s first live operational drill featuring the Korean Combat Engineer Vehicle, or K-CEV, at the Yangpyeong Integrated Training Ground in Gyeonggi Province on Thursday.

The drill offers a glimpse into how the military envisions future battlefield operations centered on artificial intelligence and staffed-unstaffed teaming.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

I guess this reaction to the bombing of Iran from North Korea is to be expected, but the term “gangster-like conduct” is quite interesting coming from a regime known as the Sopranos State:

North Korea on Sunday strongly condemned military strikes against Iran by the United States and Israel, calling them “gangster-like conduct.”

The U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on Saturday (U.S. time) in a large-scale military operation that the Iranian state media said killed its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid a stalemate in indirect nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran. 

In a statement carried by the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang said Israel’s attack on Iran was conducted with the active support and backing of the U.S., and that Washington’s subsequent military actions constituted a “thoroughly unlawful act of aggression” and a “gross violation of sovereignty.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.