Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section on this Friday the 13th.

This is definitely a major issue for DOD employees working overseas that need routine medical care:

Many civilians were caught off guard in October when DHA announced they should make plans to find health care in the surrounding Japanese communities. Limited access to care has created a crisis that puts individuals, their coworkers and their families at risk, according to the post.

The DHA Indo-Pacific region director, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Heck, said in October the agency is mandated by law to prioritize health care for active-duty service members and their families. 

As of Jan. 1, DOD employees like schoolteachers, commissary workers and contractors are limited to urgent or acute care and some specialty clinics at base hospitals. Some U.S. civilian employees of Stars and Stripes fall into this category.

For routine health maintenance and ongoing care for chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease or cancer, they are encouraged to seek Japanese health care providers. The alternative is to rely on space-available appointments after the military hospitals schedule service members and their families.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link. I have used doctors off post while stationed overseas before and the biggest issue is understanding what you are being told because English translation may not be that great depending on the hospital. The other issue is how far some of the hospitals are from the U.S. military base causing increased travel times away from work.

The Korean government is trying to resolved the forced labor issue the same way the comfort women issue was resolved before it wasn’t:

The South Korean government is considering a method to compensate victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor through a public foundation fund rather than direct payment from responsible Japanese firms, officials here confirmed during a public hearing Thursday.

Victims and supporting civic groups, however, strongly protested the move, saying that the issue is not about money but that of addressing past human rights violations of Japan.

The government’s controversial plan was announced during the event held at the National Assembly in Seoul on ways to resolve the thorny issue of compensating victims in line with the Supreme Court’s back-to-back landmark rulings in 2018 against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nippon Steel Corp., respectively. 

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but expect the Korean left to do everything they can to sink this proposal like they did with the comfort women fund. Like the comfort women issue, the forced labor issue is too politically useful for the Korean left to let it get resolved.

The Korean right wants to resolve this issue in order to expand cooperation with Japan in other areas. Japan wants the issue resolved, but only through a private entity as proposed because their official position is that all financial claims were resolved with the 1965 normalization treaty where they paid a $800 million reparation fee to the Korean government who invested that money into the Korean economy and infrastructure instead of individual victim payments.

Considering the nuclear threats the Kim regime has continued to make against South Korea it makes sense to plan for how to respond to their use:

 South Korea and the United States plan to stage a combined military exercise next month under the scenario of use of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, Seoul’s defense ministry said Wednesday in its report to President Yoon Suk Yeol on major policy tasks this year.

Among other plans are holding a 11-day springtime South Korea-U.S. exercise without a break, conducting a final test of a homegrown solid-propellant space rocket and launching the country’s first military surveillance satellite.

Led by the allies’ Deterrence Strategy Committee (DSC), the discussion-based Table-Top Exercise (TTX) is set to take place in the U.S. in the latter half of February, as the two sides agreed to hold it annually at a bilateral defense ministerial meeting in November last year, according to the ministry.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is refreshing to hear a Korean president speak the truth about why the Japanese are increasing their military capabilities instead of demagoguing the issue for political benefit:

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Wednesday that Japan’s moves to bolster its defense capabilities are hard to stop in the face of the threat of North Korea’s missiles.

Yoon made the remark during a joint policy briefing from the foreign and defense ministers, referring to Japan’s recent increase in its defense budget and its inclusion of the “counterstrike” concept in its revised security documents.

“We can wonder how a country adopting a pacifist constitution can do such things, but if there are missiles flying over their heads and the possibility of a nuclear strike, it’s not easy to stop,” he said during the meeting at the former presidential compound of Cheong Wa Dae.

“Japan increased its defense budget because there are IRBMs flying over their heads, and decided to include the so-called ‘counterstrike’ concept in its defense plan,” he said, referring to intermediate-range ballistic missiles that North Korea fired over Japan. “How can anyone take issue with that?”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but DPRK apologists in the Korean left will take issue with anything the Japan does to defend themselves. At least the current Korean President is not one of them.