A Korean researcher with a think tank has published an opinion article on why the South Korean government should take advantage of Trump’s offer to allow the ROK to develop nuclear weapons if he is elected President. To break the status quo on the Korean peninsula it would take a policy that has the potential to really shake up the current security paradigm which the ROK developing nuclear weapons would definitely do:
Rather than criticizing Trump, Korea may announcethat it would not develop at this time, but prepare for development of nuclear and anti-nuclear weapons. While seriouslyand feverishly working on these weapons, Korea may ask China, as well as the U.S., to strongly intervene in North Korean affairs to abandon their nuclear programs as a condition for Korea to abandon its own nuclear programs.
In view of North Korea’s progress made in developing short-range missiles that can carry nuclear weapons, Trump’s view may well providea timely diplomatic cover for Korea to really improve its defensive posture and to put heavy pressure for North Korea to negotiate.
When the opponent is as vicious and sneaky as leaders of North Korea, who made complete fools out of Bill Clinton and Kim Dae-jung as well as all of Kim Dae-jung’s successors before Park Geunjye, Korea has to negotiate from the position of strength without which North Korea will clearly not give in. [Korea Times]
Basically this advisor is stating in the interview that Trump has to say one thing on the campaign trail, but once elected President he will be more flexible on the policies he is campaigning on:
A President Donald Trump will neither abandon South Korea nor let the Asian ally defend itself against threats from North Korea, a top foreign policy adviser to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said.
Walid Phares, an international relations scholar who serves as Trump’s foreign policy brain, made the remark in an interview with Yonhap News Agency and Yonhap News Television, stressing that Trump’s remarks, such as his call for Seoul to shoulder all costs for U.S. troop presence, should be taken only as an expression of “principles.” (………..)
“At this point in time he is a candidate. He’s a Republican candidate, practically speaking. So, he will talk about principles, and those principles mean burden-sharing. He wants the South Korean government to share more,” Phares said. “There is a principle … that America alone cannot be defending the world. It does not mean that America wants to withdraw from the world.”
Trump will see “what the South Koreans can offer, or what the Japanese would offer, what our friends in the Middle East could offer. Then he would negotiate. He is good at negotiations,” Phares said of the call for defense burden-sharing.
Such negotiations do not mean Trump will abandon South Korea, Phares said.
“If South Korea is threatened by either North Korea, or other players, a Trump administration would be standing by the South Koreans. There is no idea that we’re going to let South Korea or Japan defend themselves against a threat,” he said.
Referring to Trump’s call for South Korea to shoulder all costs for American troop presence, Phares said that the real estate tycoon “wants to show the maximum” as a negotiator before settling for reality. And such maximum positions could evolve over time, he said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest of the interview at the link, but the bottom line is that if Trump is elected the ROK government best be ready to pay more USFK cost sharing than the 50% they are paying now. Considering Japan is currently paying 75% I would not be surprised if that is the number that Trump may want to settle on.
This really isn’t anything surprising that the new USFK commander is signaling to North Korea that he would like to resume dialogue in regards to any armistice issues like has been done in the past:
The new commander of the United States military forces in South Korea said Thursday he expects resumption of talks and coordination with North Korea during his first visit to the frontline region separating the two sides.
The Joint Security Area (JSA), the inter-Korean truce village where South and North Korean soldiers are standing face-to-face, was the choice for Gen. Vincent Brooks’ first field inspection as the top commander of the 28,000-strong U.S. Forces Korea.
“Each time I come back (here), it reminds me of how quickly things can change on the Korean Peninsula and why it is that we must be ready all the time and remain strong,” Brooks, who took command last month, said in front of an observation post inside the JSA. The officer had served in South Korea in the past during his long military career.
“It also reminds me that as we are in the military armistice controlled areas, there’s a need to continue dialogue and coordination (with North Korea),” the general, clad in a combat uniform, noted.
“We look forward to the time that (talks) can resume again,” he said, expressing hopes on talks with the North on the context of the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War. [Yonhap]
Anything that goes beyond Armistice talks would fall within the purview of the State Department which has made it clear that talks will only happen when North Korea is serious about denuclearization.
The ROK must be getting worried about the possibility of a Trump presidency because they are definitely out defending themselves lately in regards to how much they pay in defense costs:
Seoul’s Defense Ministry says that South Korea is making a considerable financial contribution to the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun made the comment during a regular briefing Thursday after U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump hinted at a renegotiation of defense costs with U.S. allies.
Moon said that although it was inappropriate to assess Trump’s remarks at the briefing, Washington acknowledges Seoul’s considerable monetary contribution to shared defense expenses. The spokesman said that U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert also recently made a remark acknowledging this fact.
Regarding signs that North Korea is preparing for a large-scale artillery drill using a replica of the South Korean presidential office on a shooting range near Pyongyang, Moon said that signs pointing to such drills have been continuously detected.
During a major foreign policy speech Wednesday, Trump said that if elected president, he would call for a summit with Asian allies to discuss a rebalancing of financial commitments. [KBS World Radio]
Below is a really good read in today’s Korea Herald that I recommend reading in full. It is about the history of mixed raced children in South Korea fathered by US military servicemembers. These mixed race kids definitely had a hard life growing up in South Korea. Of particular interest is the role that Korean brokers played in trafficking women into the sex industry. It makes me wonder if these were the same brokers who trafficked women to Japanese soldiers during the Japanese colonial period?:
Jang Yeon-hee is searching for her American soldier father, who left Korea while her mother was pregnant with her in the 1960s. (Claire Lee/The Korea Herald)
Jang is one of some 40,000 mixed-race Koreans born in South Korea from 1955-1969, many of whom were born to American soldiers who were temporarily stationed here. Many of the Korean women who gave birth to such mixed-race children were those who were trafficked by Korean brokers to work as prostitutes for the U.S. military.
Many fathers simply went back to the U.S. and never returned. Mothers relinquished their children, as many of them had no financial means to raise them, while suffering from severe social stigmatization for being sex workers. Most of the children were adopted into American families. For those who remained in Korea, like Jang, life was filled with a sense of alienation, racist attacks and longing for her birth parent. (………)
To this day, Kang doesn’t know if her father died that day or simply decided to leave her mother for good. After her father went missing, Kang’s mother had a number of live-in relationships with American soldiers, who supported her financially.
Her mother soon started working as a dancer for the U.S. military, moving from one base to another. Kang lived in almost every Korean city that had active U.S. military bases, including Dongducheon, Osan, Paju, Pyeongtaek and Uijeongbu. During these years, Kang witnessed many teenage daughters of sex workers being trafficked or forced to work as prostitutes by their mothers’ pimps and brokers.
“Those brokers should still be tracked down now and jailed. … It’s not too late,” she said. [Korea Herald]
Here is what President Obama had to say about the current way ahead with North Korea during an interview with CBS News’ Charlie Rose recently. It appears that the deployment of THAAD is very likely considering the US President is now commenting on upgrading the posture of missile defenses against North Korea:
In regards to North Korea, Mr. Obama described the regime as “a massive challenge.”
“Our first priority is to protect the American people and our allies, the Republic of Korea, Japan, that are vulnerable to the provocative actions that North Korea is engaging in,” Mr. Obama said.
He said North Korea is “erratic enough” and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is “irresponsible enough that we don’t want them getting close.”
“But it’s not something that lends itself to an easy solution,” Mr. Obama said. “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea.”
Mr. Obama explained how the U.S. has been preparing to fend off threats from North Korea.
“One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile defense systems, so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we’re also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they’re posing right now,” Mr. Obama said. [CBS News]
With the nuclear threat North Korea is building and the continued territorial aggressiveness of the Chinese developing nuclear weapons in both South Korea and Japan may happen eventually anyway:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has reiterated that he is open to allowing South Korea and Japan to have nuclear weapons so as to defend themselves against threats from North Korea.
Trump made the remark during a town hall meeting televised on CNN Tuesday night, stressing that the North has nuclear weapons and the U.S. is no longer rich enough to defend other wealthy nations, like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
“Can I be honest are you? Maybe it’s going to have to be time to change, because so many people, you have Pakistan has it, you have China has it. You have so many other countries are now having it,” Trump said, referring to nuclear weapons.
“At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself,” Trump said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Asked again if he means it’s OK for Japan, South Korea and even Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons, Trump said, “It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.” [Yonhap]
Via a reader tip comes this article stating that US and ROK forces are possibly exercising beheading strikes against the Kim regime during the current Foal Eagle/Key Resolve exercise:
Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a “beheading mission” against Kim Jong Un himself.
It’s the kind of option military planners tend to consider but almost never use. Neither the U.S. military nor South Korea’s defense ministry has actually said it is part of the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises that began this week and will go on for about two months.
But Pyongyang, already feeling the squeeze of new sanctions over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, is taking a plethora of “beheading mission” reports from the South Korean media very seriously. That goes a long way toward explaining why its own rhetoric has ratcheted up a decibel — even by its own standards of bellicosity. It could also explain some subtle rejiggering afoot in the North’s military strategy. [Business Insider]
The deployment of the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea is taking another step closer to becoming reality:
The United States and South Korea are expected “within a week” to hold the first meeting of a joint working group aimed at discussing the proposed deployment of the THAAD missile defense system, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea said Wednesday.
Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee that it will take some time to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to the South as the working group has determine the right location and other details.
“We’re forming a joint working group that I think will have its first meeting within a week,” he said. “THAAD is a complex system. It’s going to take some time for us to find the right location because where you locate it makes a difference on how effective it is. So we got to find the right location and do that work, which we will do in accordance with our SOFA.” [Yonhap]
The Chinese are still complaining about the deployment and I really like what the PACOM commander Admiral Harris had to say in response:
U.S. Pacific Commander Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. criticized China’s opposition to THAAD, saying it is “preposterous that China would try to wedge itself between South Korea and the United States for a missile system designed to defend Americans and Koreans.”
