It appears that Lee Jae-myung wants to Finland-nize South Korea’s relationship between the U.S. and China:

South Korea is torn between the United States and China in their intensifying strategic competition, as Washington is a longtime security ally, while Beijing is the nation’s largest trading partner.

This situation has thereby led South Korea to take a stance of so-called strategic ambiguity, a policy of refraining from any overt actions that would suggest Seoul is taking sides. 

However, calling into question why South Korea should be the one to bear the pressure of choosing between the two superpowers, Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), instead says that it should be the U.S. and China that vie to seek Seoul’s closer cooperation for their own interests. He calls this “national interest-centered pragmatic diplomacy,” and it’s the backbone of his foreign policy platform for the presidential election, scheduled for March 9, 2022. 

“Amid the intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry, South Korea has seen less room to maneuver, but I don’t think we deserve to face pressure to pick a side because we are maintaining strategic ambiguity,” Lee said in a joint interview with The Korea Times, Reuters and the South China Morning Post at the DPK’s headquarters in Seoul, Wednesday.

“South Korea is the world’s 10th-largest economy, while possessing the world’s sixth-most-powerful military, so why should we be pressured to make a choice in accordance with other countries’ interests? I think the situation is coming where we can make decisions independently, putting our national interests first,” he added. “Any thinking that we have to choose between the two is a very disgraceful approach.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it sounds like Lee just doesn’t want to decouple the South Korean economy from China like other countries have begun to do. He just wants to maintain the status quo. Decoupling from China would be extremely painful at first, but Australia’s recent example has shown that it can be done.

I hope everyone has a great and safe New Year’s. I will see everyone in 2022!:

The resilience that Australia has shown against China’s economic retaliation has likely been a major surprise for the CCP. Instead of weakening Australia it has actually strengthened and embolden the country to stand up even more against CCP human rights violations, economic coercion, and territorial expansion:

If the scale of China’s trade coercion against Australia is unprecedented, it also offers an intriguing experiment: What does a sudden economic decoupling from China look like? With China accounting for nearly 40 percent of Australian exports, one might assume the costs of Canberra’s defiance would be grave.

But in fact, the effects have been surprisingly mild. The reason is trade diversion: When a trade barrier is erected, businesses seek alternate outlets for their products. In open international markets, the outcome is rarely the destruction of export industries. Most of the time, trade flows adjust around the barrier.

Coal provides an illustrative example. Once China banned imports of Australian coal in mid-2020, Chinese utilities had to turn to Russian and Indonesian suppliers instead. This, in turn, took Russian and Indonesian coal off the market, creating demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea—which Australia’s stranded coal was able to fill. What’s more, the global energy crunch has pushed up the price of coal, leading Australian coal producers’ export earnings to rise this year—not exactly the effect China had in mind. 

Foreign Policy

You can read more at the link, but for a commodity based economy like Australia has, it is easier to decouple from China. However, for countries that have tech and manufacturing relationships with China it will be harder to decouple because new factories have to be built and new skilled workers have to be trained elsewhere. This would likely be a multi-year process. However, if countries don’t start this process now they could find their economies compromised if China threatens to close them as part of economic pressure to coerce governments to side with them during any future conflict over the South China Sea for example.

He may have lost weight, but he is still morbidly obese by weighing approximately 120 kilograms (264 pounds):

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, seems to be have reached his lowest weight in at least the past few years. 

In a photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Dec. 29, Kim was wearing a black suit with a white button-down shirt and silver tie, while attending a plenary session of the Workers’ Party. 

The photo immediately drew attention, as there was some space between his neck and the shirt. Previously, he has rarely worn button-down shirts and even if he has, they looked very tight around the neck.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) reported in a parliamentary audit in October that Kim had shed around 20 kilograms compared to 2019, when he weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds). 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It seems to me a fairway to handle this is that any information about the site include the fact that Korean forced laborers were used her during the Imperial era. However, this makes too much sense and likely won’t happen:

A government panel proposed Tuesday that a gold mine site on the island of Sado, Niigata Prefecture, be a candidate for the 2023 UNESCO World Heritage designation.

But in a rare move, the Cultural Affairs Agency released a statement saying that the candidate selection by the Council for Cultural Affairs does not mean that the government has decided to recommend the site to UNESCO.

The agency said that the government will consider the matter comprehensively.

Under ordinary circumstances, the Japanese government would submit a recommendation to UNESCO by Feb. 1 next year after obtaining approval from related ministries and agencies and the Cabinet.

As South Korea claims that workers from the Korean Peninsula were forced to work at the Sado mines, however, it is unclear whether the Japanese government will recommend the site for World Heritage listing.

Yomiuri Shimbun

You can read more at the link.

I have said for years that China would not just be a bystander during any conflict on the Korean peninsula and retired USFK General Robert Abrams believes in this viewpoint now as well:

South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense on Monday pushed back against remarks by a former commander of U.S. Forces Korea who said wartime plans against North Korea must account for China’s militaristic influence in the region.

North Korea’s weapons testing demonstrates that it persists as a threat, but the Chinese military also has “to be accounted for in the war plan,” retired Gen. Robert Abrams, who led USFK and U.N. Command until July, said on Voice of America on Saturday.

“It’s not a secret that they have increased their presence in and around the Korean Peninsula since 2010,” Abrams said, referring to China’s military.

“These are indications of things that have to be accounted for in the war plan that the current [guidance] does not contain,” he said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.