General Dempsey was in town and supposedly the word THAAD was never uttered one time:
The military chiefs of South Korea and the United States met Friday in Seoul to talk about a range of defense issues, though Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the hot potato issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, was not discussed.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the American JCS, paid a visit to the National Cemetery Friday and then to the Korean JCS in Yongsan, central Seoul, where he had a discussion with his Korean counterpart Adm. Choi Yoon-hee and other JCS members. Dempsey was on the second day of a three-day visit to South Korea
During the talks, the two top military officials discussed the transfer of wartime operation control, measures to strengthen the combined defense posture of the two countries and also the future of the alliance. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The Stars & Stripes has this sad story of a sailor trying to find this daughter who disappeared with her mother in Japan 40 years ago:
James Walker with his Japanese girlfriend, Tomie, and daughter, Kim at their apartment near Atsugi in 1969. Walker lost touch with his Japanese family after being sent to Vietnam. Nearly four decades later, he is still searching for them. Courtesy James Walker
It’s been 45 years since James Walker went to war in Vietnam, leaving behind his daughter and her mother in Japan.
The young sailor thought they’d be reunited once he got back from deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany. When the letters he wrote to his young family were returned marked “wrong address” Walker realized something was wrong. Almost four decades later, he’s still searching for them. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but hopefully Mr. Walker is able to find his lost daughter.
The United Nations is once again highlighting North Korea abysmal human rights record which includes the kidnapping of up to 200,000 foreign nationals:
The UN Human Rights Council on Friday strongly criticised North Korea for the “systematic abduction” of foreigners, after a UN investigation found the country had snatched up to 200,000 foreign nationals.
The resolution, he told the council, was “intended to bring down the system and ideology” of his country.
The adopted text decried North Korea’s “systematic abduction, denial of repatriation and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons, including those from other countries, on a large scale and as a matter of state policy”.
A UN-mandated investigation issued a searing report in February 2014 accusing North Korea of committing human rights violations “without parallel in the contemporary world”, including the abductions of an estimated 200,000 foreign nationals from at least 12 countries.
Most of them were South Koreans left stranded after the 1950-1953 Korean War, but hundreds of others from around the world have since been taken or disappeared while visiting the secretive Stalinist state. [AFP]
Shown is a capture of CCTV footage released by the Korean Cultural Center in Tokyo on March 26, 2015, on an arson attack on the building in downtown Tokyo earlier in the day. (Yonhap)
This is another example of the rise of China where they are continuing to get nations to join AIIB which is a competitor to the western led World Bank:
South Korea on Thursday became the latest American ally to announce its intention to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank despite Washington’s qualms about the Chinese-led regional development bank.
The South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance said in a statement that Asia needed a new regional source of development money like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank because the existing multilateral lenders, like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, could not meet the demand for infrastructure investment funds in the region.
The United States has expressed misgivings about the proposed regional lender, which it sees as a threat to the Washington-led World Bank. American officials have also worried that the new bank would lack governance and transparency in enforcing lending, environmental and labor standards.
But in its statement, the South Korean ministry said a founding membership in the regional bank would help expand the country’s influence in the international banking sector. It also said membership would help its companies win deals in large-scale construction, telecommunications, transportation and other development projects in the region.
“Our government, together with its allies, has been urging China to improve its plans for the bank so that its governing structure and safeguards will meet international standards,” the ministry said. “We have seen significant progress in that regard.” [New York Times via the Marmot’s Hole]
You can read the rest at the link, but this is also another example of how South Korea’s balances their relationship with China and the US. They prioritize economic issues with the Chinese and security issues with the US.
