I am sure President Trump understands this, but if a deal is not made the North Koreans will very likely launch provocations next year to pressure the Trump administration into a deal:

 U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he doesn’t think North Korea will engage in hostile acts and interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election, an apparent warning that the communist nation shouldn’t undertake provocations that could hurt his reelection chances.

“I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostilely,” Trump was quoted as telling reporters at the White House. “He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that. But we’ll have to see.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Korean media has been making a big deal about surveillance flights around North Korea and the PACAF commander says these flights are nothing new:

The commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces said Friday that recent surveillance flights around the Korean Peninsula were part of regular operations, refusing to confirm any connection to possible North Korean provocations.

In a telephone briefing from Hawaii, Gen. Charles Brown, Jr. said there has been an increasing number of North Korean missile tests and heightened rhetoric ahead of the end-of-year deadline Pyongyang has imposed for Washington to show flexibility in their denuclearization negotiations.

“I also believe as we get here towards the end of the year and the increase in rhetoric, it’s something we are actually really paying close attention to, not only for this month but into 2020 as well,” Brown told reporters.

“We’re pretty much flying the same way that we’ve been flying for the past year or so, so there’s no real change,” he said when asked if the surveillance flights implied there could be North Korean provocations.

“Our job is to provide some situational awareness and domain awareness to not only our military leadership, but also to our political leadership so they have an understanding of the dynamics of what’s going on within the region, whether it be around the peninsula or any other part of the region,” Brown added. “So, our tempo really hasn’t changed in the course of the past year.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

If politicians in the U.S. want to know what real election meddling looks like they should read this article from ROK Drop favorite Dr. Tara O about the alleged meddling going on in South Korean elections by the Blue House:

A former Blue House inspector Baek Jae-young (백재영) was found dead on December 1, 2019 just hours prior to the time he was due to appear at the prosecutor’s office to answer questions.  He was a key witness in the ongoing investigation about the alleged Blue House manipulation of the election in Ulsan Metropolitan City in 2018.

Baek Jae-young, a prosecutor, was seconded to the Blue House, and worked under Baek Won-woo (백원우) (the same last name, but not related) during the time when the Blue House is suspected of ordering an investigation against the Ulsan mayor Kim Gi-Hyeon (김기현), Liberty Korea Party, during Kim’s mayoral election campaign in 2018.  The grounds for this investigation appear questionable, and while Kim Gi-Hyeon was ultimately found innocent, the investigation appears to have prejudiced voters against Kim, who was ahead in the polls prior to the investigation, and played a role in his defeat.  Other conservative mayoral candidates in the province faced similar criminal investigations.

East Asia Research Center

You can read more at the link, but this alleged election interference in Ulsan is just the latest example of how the Korean left interferes in election. ROK Heads may remember the Druking Scandal to rig online opinion for Moon in the last ROK Presidential election. President Moon’s close friend was sentenced to jail for two years and then quickly let out.

This is on top of the irregularities involving the tablet computer that led to the impeachment of former ROK President Park Geun-hye that caused the last presidential election to occur.

With the USFK cost sharing negotiations currently stalemated, the Chinese may see an opportunity to further drive a wedge between the US-ROK alliance by bringing up the THAAD issue again:

A few hours after Beijing’s announcement that South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha agreed with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to continue to deal properly with the THAAD issue, Seoul’s foreign ministry confirmed the matter was touched on during their talks.

“Regarding the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) issue, yes, the foreign ministers had sessions on the matter,” an official said. Before the announcement, Seoul’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions regarding the specifics of key discussion topics touched upon during the talks.

Speculations are that Seoul maintained “silence” over the THAAD issue because President Moon Jae-in wants help from China to advance his “peace initiatives” on the Korean Peninsula. 

Also, with next year’s general elections looming, Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) want to patch things up by ending China’s retaliation against South Korean industries following the country’s decision to deploy the radar system. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It is pretty clear that Seoul is going to end up paying more, it is just a matter of how much more are they willing to pay:

 South Korea’s top negotiator in defense cost-sharing talks with the United States has said the allies have failed to produce a concrete result in this week’s negotiations as Washington’s demand for a sharp increase in Seoul’s share remains unchanged.

Jeong Eun-bo made the remarks Thursday following the fourth round of talks in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday over how to share the cost of stationing the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea under the cost-sharing accord, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA).

“At this point, we are in a situation where we need to continue to narrow our differences. It is not that we have reached a concrete result,” Jeong told reporters at Dulles International Airport. 

“It is right to say that the U.S. maintains its position,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Long time Korea analyst Victor Cha is making some bold predictions:

But there is bigger storm brewing behind these dark clouds that is threatening to the core of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. It has three components. The first is a nuclear deal with North Korea that is almost certain before Christmas now that John Bolton, the most influential voice in the Hanoi summit’s collapse, is out of the White House. This deal will probably not be a good one, in that its scope will be limited mostly to the Yongbyon nuclear facility; it will not be verifiable; and the U.S. will give too much in lifting sanctions. 

But both presidents Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump, who have both staked so much of their credibility on a deal with Kim, will not just accept a suboptimal deal, but will declare with it an end to hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in the form of a peace declaration. (……)

The perfect storm in the winter of 2019-2020, therefore, is a peace deal with North Korea and a failed cost-sharing negotiation that causes Trump to act on his beliefs. Specifically, his anger over Seoul’s refusal to pay no more than a fraction of the demand, coupled with an end-of-war declaration, will cause Trump to act on his 30-year long instinct to draw down or fully withdraw forces from South Korea. As ludicrous as this scenario may sound to experts, Trump would boast that the deal with North Korea is the “best deal ever” with his good friend Kim Jong-un; that he has ended the Korean War; and that he can now “bring the boys home” because there is peace in South Korea and the “ungrateful” South Koreans do not want to pay for U.S. troops. Moreover, he will tell his political base during the campaign that this move is saving money wasted on foreigners and therefore he is putting “America first.”

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.