This is what the Japanese media is claiming that the Korean Blue House is claiming is not true:
This photo shows South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha (L), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (C) and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono after trilateral talks in Bangkok on Aug. 2, 2019. (Yonhap)
The United States is committed to maintaining close relationships with both South Korea and Japan, the State Department said Friday amid reports that Washington’s top diplomat expressed his support for Tokyo’s view on the issue of wartime forced labor.
Japanese media have reported that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently agreed with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono’s assertion that all matters of compensation related to Tokyo’s past use of forced labor were settled under a 1965 deal normalizing ties between South Korea and Japan.
KBS World Radio has highlighted a Japanese daily’s editorial that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should repeat apologies about the actions of Imperial Japan:
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to express regret over the country’s past doings in order to improve relations with South Korea.
In an op-ed Saturday, the daily said that Korea should not be given the cold shoulder. It said the Abe administration is regarded as being passive in reflecting on Japan’s past and there lies the indelible distrust Korea has toward Japan.
The op-ed said the Abe government must again clarify its historical views related to the Korean Peninsula in an effort to defuse this distrust.
The commentary went on to propose holding talks for the Japanese government to express its view on history and also at the same time to discuss a renewed assessment by the Seoul government regarding the two countries’ 2015 agreement on the wartime sex slavery issue.
The newspaper cited past statements issued by top Japanese officials in 1993 and 2010 that acknowledged the forced nature of the sexual enslavement and apologized for Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.
The paper said that if Prime Minister Abe demonstrates an attitude respectful of these past statements, Tokyo can be more persuasive in demanding Seoul to keep its promises.
Now what the KBS World Radio article does not say is that the Asahi Shimbun editorial also said that Moon administration should honor past agreements signed between the two countries:
First, he should appreciate and honor the 2015 bilateral agreement on the comfort women issue negotiated by the leaders of the two countries to settle the issue “finally and irreversibly.”
The Moon administration’s argument that the agreement negotiated by then South Korean President Park Geun-hye is flawed does not justify its nullification. If a country breaks such a formal agreement with another, mutual trust cannot be maintained.
Essentially what the Asahi Shimbun editorial states is that each year the Japanese government should recognize the wrong doings of Imperial Japan and that South Korea should honor past agreements signed between the two countries.
This course of action will not work because South Korean leftists and even some on the right like having the anti-Japan issue available to deflect public attention from domestic political issues. For example right now the South Korean economy is doing poorly and the Moon administration’s engagement policy with North Korea is failing. Does anyone think it is any coincidence they are promoting anti-Japan issues right now?
The other problem with this course of action is that there is apology fatigue in Japan. Here is what a seperate editorial in the Asahi Shimbun had to say:
But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again made no mention of such remorse in his speech at the memorial service this year. Abe once used the word in his speech at the ceremony for 2007, when he was serving his first tenure as prime minister.
Ever since Abe began his second stint as prime minister in 2012, however, he has stopped short of referring to Japan’s “remorse” over the war or the harm it caused to neighboring countries.
Instead, he has talked about his strong desire to allow young Japanese to stop apologizing for the past war. In his statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, he said, “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”
But we can build relations with other countries that no longer require such apologies on our part only if our political leaders, our representatives, keep demonstrating their commitment to facing up to dark chapters of our history and reflecting sincerely on lessons from history.
I think it is pretty clear that Prime Minister Abe is trying to normalize the status of Japan and not be a country that is continuously apologizing for the wrongs of Imperial Japan. He probably has correctly deduced that giving more apologies is not going to do anything to change the anti-Japan political dynamic in South Korea where their past apologies have been criticized as being insincere.
The Abe administration now is trying to take a Chinese like approach instead, with economic punishment to see if that will get the Moon administration to comply with past agreements. I guess we will see over time if this has any effect at changing the current political dynamics in both countries.
Russian diplomats in N.K.Officials from the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang and a Russian delegation led by Vice Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov offer flowers at the Liberation Tower honoring the former Soviet war dead in the North’s capital on Aug. 15, 2019, in this photo released by the North’s Korean Central News Agency. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
Here is the latest information on the new weapon system that North Korea is believed to have tested:
North Korea said Saturday that it has tested a “new weapon” under the guidance of its leader, Kim Jong-un, in the launch of two projectiles the previous day.
Kim “guided the test-fire of (a) new weapon again on Friday morning,” the Korean Central News Agency said. “The national defense scientists showed a perfect result in the test-fire, too, and helped cement bigger confidence in this weapon system.”
“It is our party’s goal of defense building to possess invincible military capabilities no one dare provoke and to keep bolstering them,” Kim was quoted as saying. “Everyone should remember that it is the party’s core plan and fixed will for defense building to possess such a powerful force strong enough to discourage any forces from daring to provoke us.”
The KCNA did not provide other details on the weapon, including its name.
The report came a day after South Korea’s military said that the North fired two projectiles presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast. It said that they flew around 230 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 30 km.
Military experts say that the projectiles bear outward similarities to the U.S.’ Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), a surface-to-surface missile system.
Photos released by the North’s media showed missiles that were launched from a transporter erector launcher (TEL) hitting a faraway target on a small rocky islet in the East Sea.
Friday’s firing came six days after North Korea flew two projectiles believed to be short-range ballistic missiles, though the North said later it tested a “new weapon.” It also was the sixth such launch since late July.
North Korea’s version of ATACMS is assessed as one of its three newly-developed weapons, including a large-caliber multiple launch guided rocket system and short-range missiles known as KN-23s, its version of the Russian Iskander.
Here is some more Korean media criticism about the US-ROK cost sharing talks from Oh Young-jin in the Korea Times:
U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) is under attack not by enemy but by its own commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
Trump is prioritizing the size of the bill host Korea pays toward upkeep and is indulging himself in an unwarranted bromance with the head of the enemy.
The risk is bringing confusion to the mission and raison d’etre of the peacekeepers and freedom fighters who have stood ready for decades to throw down their lives to help protect Koreans from North Korean invasions and assert a U.S.-led balance of power in the region where interests of big powers often clash. So a blow to the USFK credibility is feared.
Already, Trump’s first defense secretary, James Mattis, the soldier of the soldiers, called it quits over Trump’s acts of belittling the allies, calling them freeloaders being piggybacked by the U.S., and his boss’s readiness to sleep with enemies like the North’s young dictator Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
One commentator wondered aloud whether if Korea pays what the U.S. reportedly demands, it would make GIs mercenaries that work for money with no regard to common cause and purpose.
First of all hardly any soldier in USFK even knows or cares about the on going US-ROK cost sharing talks. Secondly if and when a new deal is struck it is not like USFK soldiers are getting a cut from whatever the Korean side pays.
Regardless of how much Korea pays it makes absolutely no difference to the average USFK soldier and thus it is total hyperbole to claim that USFK soldiers would begin feeling like mercenaries because the ROK pays more for the upkeep of the alliance.
In the next few days we should be seeing if the GSOMIA between the ROK and Japan will be extended:
President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 74th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, at the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan, Thursday. AP-Yonhap
President Moon Jae-in’s move to offer an olive branch to Japan prompted expectations on the extension of a bilateral military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan amid an escalating power game between the neighboring countries.
Stressing that Seoul and Tokyo have continued to engage in security and economic cooperation with Japan, Moon said Thursday, “Better late than never: if Japan chooses the path of dialogue and cooperation, we will gladly join hands. We will strive with Japan to create an East Asia that engages in fair trade and cooperation.”
Moon’s remarks at the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, during the 74th Liberation Day celebration, came eight days before the deadline to notify Japan on whether to extend the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). The pact is a symbol of trilateral security cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States in the region against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, amid a series of North Korea’s launches of alleged new types of short-range missiles in recent weeks.
New flag on DokdoCoast guard members stationed on South Korea’s easternmost Dokdo Islets hoist a new national flag on Aug. 16, 2019, replacing the one damaged by torrential downpours due to the now-extinct Typhoon Krosa. (Yonhap)
Apparently the North Koreans are not fans of President Moon’s peaceful reunification strategy:
North Korea on Friday launched a pair of unidentified projectiles into the East Sea while deriding South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s call for inter-Korean cooperation in his Liberation Day address Thursday.
According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the rockets were fired Friday morning at 8:01 a.m. and 8:16 a.m. from an area near Tongchon, Kangwon Province. Each of the projectiles flew a distance of approximately 230 kilometers (143 miles) with a peak altitude of 30 kilometers at Mach 6.1, the JCS said.
No determination has yet been made to what kind of weapon was tested, but the speed and distance covered suggested the same type of short-range tactical ballistic missiles believed to have been tested Aug. 10.
This marked the sixth time Pyongyang conducted such tests in just under a month and the eighth time this year. The tests are ostensibly protests of joint exercises between the United States and South Korea.
In this round, the launches were accompanied by a statement released by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC), one of the North’s agencies in charge of inter-Korean relations, that pilloried South Korea’s president without mentioning him by name.
Calling his Thursday speech on the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule on “foolish” and a “citation of spiritual slogans,” the statement, attributed to a CPRC spokesperson, said Moon’s labeling of the North’s weapons tests as “worrisome acts” were “reckless remarks.”
“Even at this moment, there go on in South Korea joint military exercises against the DPRK,” the English-language statement continued, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name: the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. “Does [Moon] have any face to talk about dialogue atmosphere, peaceful economy and peace-keeping mechanism?”
The release scoffed at the central idea in Moon’s address – the building of a “peace economy” through inter-Korean cooperation – saying the notion would “make the boiled head of a cow provoke a side-splitting laughter.”
You can read more at the link, but what the Kim regime is essentially saying here is that if peaceful reunification is going to happen, it is going to happen on North Korean terms, not South Korean.
This is what reunification on North Korean terms looks like, it means a peace treaty that leads to the withdrawal of USFK, North Korea does not denuclearize, and South Korea carries the burden of rebuilding North Korea’s infrastructure, modernizing their military, and funding the Kim regime’s lavish lifestyle.
There will be no political or social openness in North Korea in return, instead the ideological indoctrination will be strengthened by the “victory” over the Americans by getting them to withdraw and the tribute the South Korean “puppets” are paying to Kim Jong-un in preparation for North Korea’s final victory over the South.
