Author: GIKorea

At some point I would not be surprised if the Moon administration plays the anti-US card at some point to get the American negotiators to back down on increased cost sharing demands. In the past the usual suspects would already be out there protesting like crazy about something like this, but clearly the Moon administration has them in check for now:

Alarm has started to spread in Seoul over reported demands by the United States that Korea contribute to the upkeep of U.S. military forces beyond the Korean Peninsula. 

According to Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on Thursday, Washington’s chief negotiator in negotiations with Seoul over the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), James DeHart, told Korean lawmakers and government officials in a meeting that Korea should pay approximately $4.7 billion in alliance upkeep costs – around five times the amount it currently pays to keep U.S. forces stationed on its soil. 

Yoon told a local broadcaster that this amount includes labor and logistics costs for the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) – which Seoul is already paying – but also maintenance and deployment costs for U.S. strategic assets on Korean soil and at U.S. military bases abroad, possibly in Guam, Hawaii and around the Indian Ocean. 

Other expenses demanded from Korea include the costs of conducting combined military exercises and upkeep for civilian attaches to the USFK.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is the most bizarre North Korean defector story I have read. This could be dramatized into a movie plot:

South Korea deported two North Koreans back to the communist nation after learning that they killed 16 fellow crew members on their fishing boat and fled to the South, the unification ministry said Thursday.

The two in their 20s were sent back to the North at around 3:10 p.m. through the truce village of Panmunjom, five days after they were captured near the Northern Limit Line sea border in the East Sea on Saturday, according to the ministry.

It marks the South’s first deportation of North Koreans through Panmunjom.

“We decided to deport them after determining that accepting them to our society could pose a threat to the lives and safety of our people and that such criminals cannot be recognized as refugees under international law,” Lee Sang-min, the ministry’s spokesperson, said at a press briefing.

The government also plans to send back the fishing boat of the North Koreans, a ministry official said. 

Officials said that it took a couple of days for the South’s Navy to seize the North Koreans as they attempted to run away after crossing into the South.

During an investigation, the North Koreans confessed that they and another crew member first killed the captain of the fishing boat in late October out of anger over his harsh treatment before killing the other protesting crew members one by one later, according to officials. 

They were also quoted as saying that all the bodies were dumped overboard.

They initially intended to return to North Korea and seek shelter. When the boat arrived at a North Korean port on its east coast, however, one was captured by local police, causing the other two to get scared and flee, the official said.

Yonhap

Here is the latest on the pending termination of the GSOMIA:

The United States appears to be heaping pressure on South Korea to retract its decision to end a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo amid North Korea’s continued saber-rattling and specter of tighter security cooperation between China and Russia.

U.S. diplomats have openly voiced concerns over the looming termination of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), seen as a symbolic platform for Washington to expand its trilateral defense collaboration with the Asian allies.

In August, Seoul announced its decision to end GSOMIA in response to Tokyo’s new export curbs seen as political retaliation for last year’s Korean Supreme Court rulings against Japanese firms over wartime forced labor. It will expire on Nov. 23 unless Seoul reverses the decision.

In a recent interview with Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Marc Knapper, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan, urged Seoul and Tokyo to maintain GSOMIA despite their chilled ties.

“Nobody is happy with the situation. Actually not nobody — there are people happy with the situation, but they happen to be in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang,” Knapper said in the interview.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I guess we will see if this leads to any resolution to the trade dispute between the two countries:

President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday he has had a “meaningful” meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that could herald the start of dialogue for mending soured ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

Moon held an 11-minute conversation with Abe on Monday ahead of an ASEAN Plus Three summit in Bangkok, the first one-on-one talks in more than a year amid frayed ties.

“I’ve held a meaningful meeting with Abe that could be a start point for dialogue,” Moon said on his social media, wrapping up his three-day trip to Thailand for ASEAN-related summits.

The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae characterized it as a face-to-face conversation, neither a formal summit nor a “pull aside.” But Moon and Abe agreed to resolve pending issues via dialogue during a meeting held in a “very friendly and serious” mood, Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.