Here is the latest exercise held between the ROK and the United States to further deter North Korea:
This photo taken on Oct. 14, 2016, shows a Super Hornet jet landing on the USS Ronald Reagan during a flight operation unveiled to South Korean reporters in the sea north of Jeju Island. (Yonhap)
The flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was bustling with sailors and planes Friday to demonstrate air flight operations to dozens of South Korean reporters who arrived on board after an hour-long flight from a U.S. air base near Seoul.
The first thing that greeted reporters was pilots in the cockpits of their Super Hornet fighter jets getting ready to take off and the flight deck crew assisting in the operations in waters some 240 kilometers from Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, and north of Jeju Island.
Before the planned demonstration, Rear Adm. Charles Williams, commander of the carrier battle group of the U.S. 7th Fleet, delivered a short briefing on the ongoing joint exercise between South Korean and U.S. navies amid ever-growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.
“Our operations on the Korean peninsula are part of the ongoing partnership with our Republic of Korea Navy counterparts that has been around for more than 5 decades now. The work we have done with our counterparts has proven to strengthen our alliance,” the flag officer said.
As for the meaning of the combined exercise, Lt. Commander Aaron V. Kakiel, a spokesman for Carrier Strike Group 5, which the nuclear carrier is a part of, said, “This exercise has been planned for a very long time. We’ve been working with our Korean counterparts to exercise our interoperability in this area. It is not a direct response to any (provocative) actions (by any country). It is meant to be training for us to work together for a stronger alliance.”
During the 30-minute demonstration, nine fighter jets took off and 15 fighter jets made landings. Most of the fighter jets were FA-18 Super Hornets. Others were the E-2C Hawk Eye early warning plane and the EA-18G Growler, the fleet’s electronics warfare plane.
U.S. and South Korean navy officials said the joint exercise will further improve interoperability to be fully ready to strike back against any military attacks by North Korea. [Yonhap]
The Incheon Coast Guard conducts a firing drill against violent Chinese fishermen and boats catching fish illegally in the South Korean waters off Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 13, 2016. Six patrol boats joined the drill, which followed the government’s recent decision to use force and firearms against violence by illegal Chinese fishermen. The stern measure came about after a Coast Guard speedboat was sunken by a Chinese boat which rear-ended it in defiance of a crackdown on illegal fishing inside the South Korean waters on Oct. 7. (Photo courtesy of Coast Guard) (Yonhap)
I agree with the concept that a “grand bargain” with China is the only way to end the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program, but I don’t think what the professor is recommending that the US offers in return would cause the Chinese to turn on the Kim regime:
The United States should seek a grand bargain with China that commits Beijing to use its leverage over North Korea to end its nuclear program in exchange for American concessions like the scrapping of a decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, a U.S. expert said Wednesday.
Amitai Etzioni, a George Washington University professor, made the point in an article in the National Interest, stressing that the “greatest threat” to U.S. security that the new American president will have to confront is North Korea.
The professor said that efforts to simply “urge” or “shame” China into acting won’t work.
“The costs to China if it were to move to rein in North Korea are considerable. China views living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse,” he said.
Instead, China should be offered a deal based on “differential salience,” which means that each side should get what’s important to its national interests from the other side by giving up what’s less important.
“China might well have a high interest in gaining assurances that if the North Korean regime collapses and the two Koreas are unified, the United States will not move its troops to the border with China,” the professor said. “This is a no- or low-cost proposition for the United States, because once the North Korean nuke program folds or the regime collapses, the United States should be quite content not to move its troops north.”
He also said that the U.S. could offer not to deploy THAAD because once the North’s s nuclear missile program is no longer an acute threat, the United States should be quite willing not to place THAAD in South Korea. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but for the Chinese to turn on the Kim regime I think they would want something extremely significant in return that meets their security interests. North Korea is a buffer state for them that can also be counted on as a third actor if conflict with Taiwan for example was to occur to tie up US forces. This is a huge strategic benefit from the Chinese perspective. That is why I think the complete removal of USFK from the peninsula is the only thing that would get the Chinese attention.
From the Chinese perspective if the Kim regime is removed and the Koreas are united what other reason would the US have to keep troops in Korea other than to threaten China? I don’t think the Chinese would even go for this proposal and would push for more US concessions in regards to Taiwan to really strike a deal, but I think any proposal would have to include the removal of US troops from Korea.
Maybe I am wrong, does anyone else have any differing opinions on what it would take to strike a deal with China?
This is a really horrible tragedy which appears to have been caused by negligence by the driver:
A fire on a tour bus killed 10 people Thursday night on a highway in Ulsan. Seven others on the bus, which was carrying 22 people including a tour guide and the driver, were injured.
About 10:10 p.m., the bus scraped against a crash barrier several times while changing lanes. It then caught fire.
The passengers could not get out because the crash barrier was blocking the door. Some of them managed to break the window and escape, but 10 people could not escape from the smoke and fire, survivors and witnesses said.
Firefighters extinguished the fire at 11:01 p.m. Only the frame of the bus was left.
The tour guide told police that they couldn’t find the emergency hammer, so the driver used a fire extinguisher to break the windows.
The driver, surnamed Lee, 49, claimed that one of the tires went flat and made the bus lose balance. He added he did not doze off. But police suspect he was speeding, based on traffic camera footage and testimony from some of the passengers that the bus was travelling at high speed before suddenly changing lanes.
Police will request an arrest warrant for the driver for accidental homicide, saying Lee did not drive safely enough. “The driver claims the accident was caused by a flat tire, so we will send the bus to the National Forensic Service for inspection,” Choi Ik-soo, chief of the Ulju Police Station, told journalists at a briefing. [Korea Times]
It looks like this how the ROK government has decided to show its citizens that is doing something about the amount of crime committed by Chinese tourists on Jeju island:
Captured image from Beijing News website
According to the Beijing News and other local Chinese newspapers on Sunday, over 100 Chinese tourists were refused entrance to Jeju Island by Korean immigration authorities over China’s week-long national holiday last week, and the tourists were reportedly detained at the Jeju International Airport for hours, some even days, before returning to China.
“A number of tourists were refused entry for various reasons, and detained [at the airport],” the Beijing News reported on Sunday. “The room contained simple facilities, like electric outlets, and had no bed or blankets.”
The Chinese paper reported that a Chinese citizen surnamed Zhang and his wife were detained at the airport because they could not provide papers for their accommodation reservations at the island.
The paper added that over 100 Chinese tourists were detained at Jeju International Airport during the national holidays, staying at most five days. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
President Duterte is now saying that he will maintain the alliance the Philippines has with the US, but will not allow any more military exercises:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday his country would maintain its existing defense treaties and its military alliances, adding to uncertainty and confusion over the status of security ties with the United States.
It an apparent break from a weeks-long torrent of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte suggested defense alliances would continue and his foreign policy was to “realign”, but reiterated joint exercises with U.S. troops, a decades-old tradition, would be stopped.
Part of the re-alignment has been overtures toward China and Russia, which Duterte has spoken highly of and plans to visit in the weeks ahead, starting with China from Oct. 18-21.
“We need not really break or abrogate our existing treaties because they say that it could provide us with the umbrella,” Duterte said in a speech to the coastguard personnel in Manila.
“We will maintain all military alliances because they say we need it for our defense.”
It was not immediately clear who Duterte was attributing the comments to when he mentioned “they” in his justification for maintaining ties. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but could you imagine if Trump was to become President what the back and forth between these two would look like?
A group of citizens holds a regular Wednesday rally calling for the Japanese government to make an official apology for Japan’s past wrongdoings against women in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2016. Some 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers in front-line brothels during World War II. The victims are euphemistically called “comfort women.” (Yonhap)
The ROK must have gotten all the intelligence they could out of this guy before leaking to the media that he has defected:
A high-level North Korean official in charge of state surveillance defected to the South in 2015, a government source said.
The South Korean source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the official was a director-level member of Pyongyang’s state security department, Yonhap reported on Wednesday, local time.
The high-ranking defector was in charge of identifying trends in public sentiment among the residents of Pyongyang, the capital where the country’s elite reside.
“It is believed in interviews with [South Korean] authorities the official said public sentiment [about the North Korean leadership] in Pyongyang is ‘heated,'” the source stated.
The term “heated” is used to convey negativity about the Kim Jong Un regime, the source explained.
It is highly unusual for North Korean state security department personnel to flee the country, and the defector, identified as “A” in the Yonhap report, is believed to have left with confidential information on the Kim regime, and the leadership’s surveillance methods critical to maintaining control of the population.
The defector reportedly told South Korean government interviewers members of his bureau were uncomfortable with Kim’s rule, and after watching “others bounce,” state agents are “bouncing,” or exiting the regime. [UPI]
