Author: GIKorea

Here is a really good interview from BBC Hardtalk with South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Kang Kyung-hwa. Hat tip to Korea Sparkling:

I am not used to news commentators asking good and informative questions. Kang made the point that the current trade dispute is about the South Korean court ruling on compensating forced laborers, not North Korea export controls as Japan claims. I think everyone agrees on this point and the Japanese are using the North Korean export issue as its legal cover to put pressure on the ROK government on the forced labor issue.

In my opinion Kang did not explain very well how the 1965 Treaty is no longer relevant in regards to settling compensation claims. She kept saying it was the South Korean Supreme Court that came up with the ruling, not the ROK government. However, it is the ROK government that can settle the compensation issue by paying the compensation claims with the money given to the ROK in 1965 by Japan. If they did that to begin with this current trade dispute would not happen. Instead they want to confiscate Japanese property in South Korea.

I believe the Japanese are responding hard on this issue because they want to prevent compensation claims coming from other countries that they have already had settlement agreements with if they paid the South Korean claims. The ROK government knows that Japan is not going to pay the compensation, but are using the dispute for domestic political purposes to obscure their bad economic policies, corruption, and other issues.

I would have liked to have had Foreign Minister Kang asked if she thinks Chinese property should be confiscated if victims of Chinese aggression during the Korean War demand it.

The interview then goes on to talk about the US-ROK alliance and North Korea. Hardtalk asks Kang if South Korea has been sidelined in the negotiations with North Korea as well as the upcoming US-ROK cost sharing talks. Kang says that is not the case, but does not make a very convincing argument. For the cost sharing issue she says that a reasonable amount needs to negotiated for the upkeep of US troops that can pass through the National Assembly. The reported amount that the US is looking for would not make it through the National Assembly.

The interview is pretty long, but I recommend watching the whole thing. I would be surprised if Foreign Minister Kang appears on the show again considering the grilling that she received.

Here is an important update from Yongsan Garrison in regards to its upcoming end of medical services on October 1st. There will be a town hall on September 9th at the Post Chapel at 1500 to discuss.

What does it say that so many mainland Chinese living outside their country with full access to global media and information still fiercely condemn protesters in Hong Kong. Patriotic education and propaganda instilled since youth works!

— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) August 31, 2019

Cho Kuk is pretty trying to claim that he knew nothing of the corruption involving his family members:

Cho Kuk, the embattled justice minister nominee, denied academic-related allegations over his daughter and a dubious investment in a private equity fund (PEF), as he sought to clarify corruption scandals involving his family on Monday.

Cho, former senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, held a press conference at the National Assembly to address the scandals as the hearings set for Monday and Tuesday have effectively fallen through amid political wrangling.

Cho is the focus of public outcry over alleged corruption involving his family, including the suspected undue entrance by his daughter into an elite university and a hefty dubious investment in the PEF.

His daughter was listed as a primary writer of a pathology paper published in a renowned medical journal when she took part in a two-week internship at a medical science institute in 2008 as a high school student. Critics speculate that he may have been involved in her listing and that the paper might have helped her gain admission to Korea University in 2010.

“I did not know the detailed process (about my daughter being listed as the first writer for the paper) at that time, and I’ve come to identify the allegation during the latest verification process,” Cho said.

Cho dismissed allegations that he had contacted a professor to enable his daughter to receive preferential treatment. (……)

The nominee, meanwhile, flatly denied allegations over the PEF investment by his family.

His wife faces allegations that she sought to evade the gift tax after she invested over 1 billion won (US$865,765) in the PEF with her two children.

Cho’s family promised to invest the money that is larger than its total wealth in the PEF two months after Cho was named as senior presidential secretary for civil affairs in May 2017.

The fund bought a firm that produces automatic switches for streetlamps, which later secured hundreds of orders issued by the government and saw an increase in sales.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the opposition lawmakers have backed down from demanding his family members testify during this confirmation hearing. Also if you can believe it, Cho is going around preaching that the ROK needs a fair and just society and called for the need to eradicate social ills committed by the privileged when he is part of the problem.

With that all said it appears that Cho will be appointed by President Moon which means he can squash any investigation into his family.

Here is the slide that lists the dates of when services on Yongsan Garrison will end. The slide is from the recent town hall held at Yongsan Garrison Of particular note is that the PX will close on January 1, 2020 and the Commissary sometime in September 2021. The Post Office is scheduled to be open all the way to August 2022. Considering how the Moon administration is claiming the expedited hand over of Yongsan Garrison this year, these close out dates do not indicate that will happen. It all appears to be political posturing.

It will be interesting to see what the fate of the Dragon Hill Lodge will be as well since the ROK government wants to demolish it, while USFK wants to keep it open after the relocation of Yongsan Garrison is complete.

This Japanese lawmaker is an outcast within Japanese politics because he has made past statements about going to war with Russia over the Kuril Islands which Russia has occupied since the end of World War II. However, stupid comments like this are a gift to the anti-Japan leftists in South Korea:

Japanese lawmaker Hodaka Maruyama caused a sensation on social media after he recommended Saturday to go to war to claim the Dokdo islets as Japan’s.

“Takeshima, the territory unique to Japan, is occupied by illegal occupants,” he wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday, using the Japanese name for the islets. “How do you get it back by means other than eliminating illegal occupiers by dispatching the Self-Defense Forces in various contingencies?” 

Maruyama wrote the post after a group of Korean lawmakers visited the islets on Saturday. Six lawmakers, including three from the ruling Democratic Party, visited Dokdo and criticized the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games for marking the islets as Japanese territory on its website. 

Korea effectively controls Dokdo, an islet in the East Sea also referred to as Liancourt Rocks, and maintains that there is no territorial dispute as it is Korean territory, historically, geographically and under international law. Japan also claims Dokdo as its territory.

“Look to this lawmaker Maruyama,” wrote a Korean user on Twitter on Sunday. “He thinks that Japan can claim Dokdo by going to war. Remember what it was like back in 1592 – they said there will be no war between Korea and Japan, yet there was. We have to be prepared for war now.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I always find it amazing how the news media uses random Twitter messages as some kind of justification of what public sentiment is on issues.

The long debated issue of where to officially put the Combined Forces Command has apparently been settled:

Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) will be relocated from the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek by 2021, defense officials announced Sunday.

The CFC, Korea’s Ministry of National Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff made the announcement jointly on Sunday, adding that a timeline will be finalized in the U.S.-Korea Security Consultative Meeting coming at the end of October or early November.

The move had been forewarned by Washington and Seoul in June, but Sunday was the first time an exact time for the move was announced. 

The move of the CFC will be in time for the expected transfer of wartime operational control (Opcon) over Korea’s military forces from the United States to Korea by 2022.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the ROK was trying to keep the CFC in Seoul and force the Americans to commute every week for meetings. USFK wanted the CFC based out of Camp Humphreys which is what they ended up getting.

According to the article the hand over of operational control is still planned for 2022. 2022 just happens to be of the ROK presidential election so you know that who ever President Moon selects to run for President will take credit for the hand over.

Your regular reminder that our differences with Pyongyang are bigger than a freeze deal or an empty promise of peace. A lasting peace will require it to make a sustainable commitment to systemic change, & its word alone means nothing.https://t.co/ElZbD8jVp4 via @The_Daily_NK

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 31, 2019