Based on Japan’s recent military budget proposal I think we can infer that they expect the current peace initiative between North Korea, South Korea, and the United States will not last:
Aegis Ashore Deckhouse
Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking to more than double spending on missile defense, including purchases of costly American arsenals, to defend against North Korean threats.
The record-high 5.3 trillion yen ($47 billion) request for fiscal 2019, approved Friday by the ministry, is up 2.1 percent from last year. The military spending has risen seven consecutive years under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The request related to missile defense rises to 424 billion yen ($3.8 billion) from about 180 billion yen last year. The overall government budget plan is to be submitted for Cabinet and parliamentary approval later this year.
The final budget could still grow because the request leaves out spending to reduce Okinawan communities’ burden of hosting many of 50,000 American troops stationed on the southern island and a relocation cost for some troops to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
A big chunk would buy a pair of land-based Aegis missile defense systems and a ship-to-air SM-3 Block IIA interceptor with an expanded range and accuracy developed jointly by the U.S. and Japan, as well as upgrading of fighter jets and destroyers to make them compatible with advanced interceptors. [Stars & Stripes]
Sankei reports China conducted its own "decapitation exercise" targeting KJU's vacation homes, key nuke facilities and NK command centers. The training was conducted in April near NK border, after the 1st KJU visit but before the inter-Korean summit (4.27) https://t.co/5qV419tYHF
Via a reader tip comes news that a South Korean think tank is recommending one of the worst Inter-Korean ideas yet, a single currency between North and South Korea:
South and North Korea should use a single currency to form an economic union in the mid to long term, the Korea Institute of Finance (KIF)noted in a report Sunday.
“When investment increases in North Korea along with inter-Korean trade of goods and services, the flow of capital will naturally follow. It will lead to problems such as settlements and which currencies should be used,” said Lee Yoon-sok, a senior research fellow at the KIF.
To deal with such problems, the two governments may allow residents to exchange their money with other currency when traveling North or South.
They may also allow the currencies of the two countries to be freely used in both countries. The researcher added that some North Koreans are known to be holding South Korean currency, expecting economic integration. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link, but if we thought North Korean counterfeiting was bad now, just wait until there is a single currency the Kim regime can control and print at will and call it inflation. I wonder who’s face would go on the bills?
Also of interest is that the KIF believes that sanctions will be eased on North Korea before the mid-term elections by President Trump to give him a foreign policy win. As long as North Korea does not commit to real denuclearization I don’t see sanctions being dropped, but I guess we will see what happens.
Starting this month, basic pension payments will rise and more families will be eligible to receive childcare subsidies.
The Health and Welfare Ministry has increased the monthly basic pension from 200-thousand to 250-thousand won for people 65 and older who fall in the bottom 70 percent income group.
Most families raising a child aged five or younger will also receive 100-thousand won each month from September. For a household of three, combined income will need to be below eleven-point-seven million won a month to be eligible for the benefit.
Those who are eligible for the childcare stipend can apply at local administration offices or at the Web site bokjiro.go.kr. The first payment will be on September 21st.
Monthly benefits for people with serious disabilities will also rise 50-thousand won to as much as 250-thousand. [KBS World]
The Olympics continue to prove to be extremely wasteful and Pyeongchang is the latest example:
An aerial view of Olympic venues in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province on Aug. 22 /Yonhap
Gangwon Province is mired in massive debts after hosting the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang earlier this year.
The mountainous province with a population of 1.5 million had to host the biggest Winter Olympics so far, and six months on conflict with locals and unpaid wages continue to plague the local government, while the astronomically expensive venues sit empty.
The biggest headache is what to do with the speed skating rink, ice hockey center and Alpensia Sliding Center that have proved a bottomless pit of maintenance costs.
The province has to fork out W20.3 billion until 2022 just to keep the facilities running, but nobody knows what will happen afterwards (US$1=W1,109). Gangwon Province has asked the National Assembly to have the central government take on 75 percent of the upkeep costs, but the central government refused since it could set a bad precedent for allocating state funds.
The alpine skiing venue in Jeongseon, which was built on a 101-hectare piece of land owned by the Korea Forest Service, faces demolition. The government footed 75 percent of the W203.4 billion cost of building it and Gangwon Province the rest. A precondition was to return the land to the government after the Winter Olympics, but now locals want to keep it, hoping that the facility can generate income for the remote province.
Environmentalists and the KFS insist it must be demolished and the forest restored. [Chosun Ilbo]
Notice that the ROK ambassador said nothing about North Korea wanting to maintain momentum to denuclearize. The Kim regime is of course willing to talk in hopes of gaining concessions for little to nothing in return:
South Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Cho Yoon-je (Yonhap)
North Korea remains determined to maintain the momentum of dialogue with the United States despite a recent hiccup, South Korea’s top envoy in Washington said Thursday.
Ambassador Cho Yoon-je dismissed a view that Pyongyang and Washington are shifting back to a confrontation after months of diplomatic engagement.
“North Korea’s intention of maintaining dialogue momentum is certain,” he told South Korea’s Washington, D.C. correspondents.
He was referring to “various speculations” driven by media after President Donald Trump called off Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang this week. [Yonhap]
Below are excerpts from some more great analysis by Professor B.R. Myers about the state of Inter-Korean affairs and the United States. This first excerpt shows how President Moon really feels about the US-ROK alliance:
B.R. Myers
This is in line with the remarkable discretion Moon Jae-in has sustained since the start of his election campaign. Never does he speak more guardedly than when around foreigners critical of the North. Shortly after he took office I asked two Americans who had talked with him on separate occasions what impression they had got: “well-rehearsed,” said one, “well-drilled” the other. Had he given vent to the sort of anti-American, pro-North remarks Roh Moo Hyun went in for (though Roh was conservative in comparison), his policies would have encountered more resistance.
His base knows how he really feels. During the presidential election campaign in 2012 the novelist Kong Chi-yŏng, a prominent supporter, tweeted cheerfully that the Yankee-go-home candidate Lee Jung-Hee sounded “like Moon’s inner voice.” The conservatives pounced, and she had to do a quick Prufrock: It wasn’t what she’d meant at all. Since then the Moon camp has shown remarkable discipline. Professor Moon Chung-in is an exception of sorts, since it’s his job to send up trial balloons. [B.R. Myers]
I have long believed that President Moon is just a better polished, smarter, and more disciplined version of former President Roh Moo-hyun. Remember Moon was Roh’s Chief of Staff during his presidency, so learned well from all of Roh’s mistakes. This discipline and political smarts he learned has allowed Moon to sell himself as a centrist when he is in fact a leftist.
This next excerpt shows how the Moon administration plans to implement their confederation plans with North Korea:
To assume that the two Korean administrations do not already see each other as confederates, and behave accordingly, albeit discreetly, is like assuming that a man and woman planning a marriage are not yet having sex. When we ask for Moon’s help in getting the other half of the peninsula to denuclearize, we are in effect asking this fervent nationalist to help remove the future guarantor of a unified Korea’s security and autonomy. Why should he comply? The only remaining point of the US-ROK alliance is to ease the transition to a confederation — which would obviate that alliance altogether.
The recent news of South Korean violations of sanctions (and of a presidential award just given to the main importer of North Korean coal) is merely illustrative. It’s trivial in comparison to the basic truth staring us in the face: No true liberal-democratic ally of the United States would think of leaguing up with an anti-American dictatorship, let alone one still in the thrall of a personality cult. I’m not sure whether the Trump administration is unaware of this or merely pretending to be.
At any rate a peculiar pattern has repeated itself every few weeks or so since Moon took office. It goes like this. First the Blue House is caught in some statement or act of disloyalty to the spirit of the alliance — like appointing an unrepentant former enforcer of North Korean copyrights to the second most powerful post in the government. (I don’t mean the prime minister.) South Korean conservatives then shout in chorus, “The Americans won’t stand for this!” Whereupon the White House rushes to say, in effect, “Oh yes we will!” It seems to revel in making pro-American, security-minded South Koreans look foolish. (…….)
It’s therefore easy to imagine Trump or Pompeo expressing support for whatever “peace system” Moon and Kim happen to agree on, so long as progress toward denuclearization is made first. Any significant step in that direction — which we can expect the upcoming Pyongyang summit to announce with great fanfare — would then compel the US to sign off on confederation, thus encouraging the South Korean public to do likewise. Before we know it, the ROK could be locked in an embrace it might eventually need American help to get out of. [B.R. Myers]
As always I highly recommend reading the whole article from Professor Myers at the link, but at some point you would think the Trump administration would start pushing back on President Moon’s pro-North Korean agenda. Possibly the suspension of Inter-Korean railway inspections by the United Nations Command is the start of a push back?
