Another North Korean soldier has defected:

 A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea in a midnight river crossing in the border area known as the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea’s military said Thursday.

The defection comes at a sensitive time. Efforts by Seoul to improve relations between the two Koreas have been stymied amid stalled U.S.-North Korean nuclear talks.

The soldier was spotted via a thermal observation device in the Imjin River at about 11:38 p.m. Wednesday after crossing a central section of the Military Demarcation Line that divides the peninsula, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The river was swollen from rainy weather, making it difficult for local troops to determine the object in the river was a person until the soldier emerged from the water just before midnight, officials told reporters at a briefing.

The local military unit then sent a team and took the individual safely into custody, they said, adding that no unusual North Korean military movements were detected in the area.

“The man is an active-duty soldier who expressed his desire to defect to the South,” officials said. “Related procedures are underway.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but that is quite a swim getting across the Imjim River during monsoon season. According to Yonhap this was the first defection across the Imjim River since 2010.

I wonder if the Moon administration is trying to use the threat of these sanctions as way to pressure the Trump administration to help resolve the current trade dispute with Japan?:

South Korea is seeking an annual $350 million in trade sanctions against the United States in an Obama-era dispute over tariffs on steel pipes, it said in a World Trade Organization (WTO) filing published on Tuesday.

South Korea went to the WTO in 2014 to challenge U.S. tariffs levied on oil country tubular goods (OCTG), a type of steel piping used in the energy industry.

Washington said its tariffs aimed to stop South Korea exporting the product at unfairly cheap prices. After South Korea won a partial victory at the WTO, the United States had until July 12 to comply with that ruling.

South Korea said the United States had failed to do so and it was seeking sanctions equal to the level of trade harm done.

“Based on available data, this level is estimated at $350 million annually. This amount will be adjusted by applying the annual growth rate of the OCTG market of the United States,” it said in the sanctions request published by the WTO.

South Korea plans to impose the sanctions by putting tariffs on certain types of U.S. goods, which it said it would announce at a later date.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

#North Korea's State Security monitors the social media of #defectors , pressures those with families in the north to not to post anti-North Korean regime information.https://t.co/ETVWYaZBai

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) July 30, 2019

A 2% drop in air travel to Japan is really not that impressive, but airlines are getting themselves prepared in case it gets worse:

Korean airlines are suspending flights and reducing the size of planes on Japanese routes as demand for seats plummets in the wake of a diplomatic-trade dispute between the neighbors.

Asiana Airlines said Tuesday that it will use smaller airplanes on flights to three major Japanese cities – Osaka, Okinawa and Fukuoka – due to the growing boycott in Korea of things Japanese. 

While Airbus 330 planes were used on those routes, the smaller Airbus 321 or Boeing 767s will be used starting mid-September, the company said. 

“While A330 planes can carry some 290 passengers, A321 planes offer 174 seats,” a spokesperson for Asiana said. “Reservations for flights to Japan have fallen by roughly 2 percent year on year at this point, but we decided to change airplane models in case the [diplomatic-trade row] lasts longer.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It seems besides the strategic messaging to Washington, that the Kim regime is continuing prove that their new missile can accurately fly at different trajectories:

North Korea on Wednesday launched two short-range ballistic missiles from its eastern coast, the second such test in six days. 

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the missiles were fired at 5:06 a.m. and 5:27 a.m. from an area around Kalma near Wonsan, Kangwon Province. Both projectiles flew around 250 kilometers (155 miles) at an altitude of approximately 30 kilometers before landing in the East Sea, a JCS spokesman said. 

The first missile to be fired was spotted by Korea’s Master Control and Reporting Center (MCRC) and a Navy vessel equipped with the Aegis Combat System, while the second was detected by the MCRC, the ship and early warning radar. 

While it is not yet known what kinds of rocket were launched Wednesday, they may be similar to those fired on July 25, which are believed to be domestically produced variants of the Russian-made 9K720 Iskander missile system, code named KN-23 by South Korean and U.S. intelligence. (…..)

The significant feature of Wednesday’s test was the missile’s low peak altitude of 30 kilometers. South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo at a security forum Wednesday said that South Korean and U.S. intelligence saw in the North’s newest tests “different indicators” than before.

Analysts said Pyongyang may have deliberately chosen to test a variety of trajectories for its KN-23 missile system since May in order to send a message to Seoul and Washington that it possesses the capacity to evade their most sophisticated antimissile defense systems.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the article once again discusses how the KN-23 can fly lower than the engagement altitude of THAAD. The ROK military rightfully countered that they have Patriot missile batteries that can engage this threat.  

THAAD was never meant to be a magic bullet that engages all threats on the peninsula. THAAD engages targets at higher altitudes than Patriot. One of the main reasons it was deployed was because of the threat of lofted trajectory missiles that North Korea was testing that the Patriot batteries could not engage.

This article in The Diplomat really articulates why Japan and South Korea are having their current bitter trade dispute:

To understand why a free trade-dependent, rules-upholding country is apparently willing to undermine the rules of free trade with one of its most important trading partners, it may be useful to divide rules, norms, laws, treaties – the “stuff” of international order – between the content of what they regulate, e.g. trade, and the attributes that make them meaningful, e.g. mutual acceptance, reliability, and finality. In an ironic twist, Japan is using a particular subset of international rules, norms, laws, and treaties (specifically regulating trade) to fight for a common understanding that rules, norms, laws, and treaties (but especially those concerning historical issues) ought to be mutually accepted, reliable, and final once signed.

Even if the agreement reached in years or decades prior is not the preferred agreement of the current generation, there needs to be an acceptance of those agreements as constituted. Perhaps the only silver lining in all of this is that a liberal president rules in South Korea and a conservative prime minister leads Japan — “To forge an enduring deal,” Glosserman emphasizes, “this combination is what you need.” After having been burned twice – once after reaching an agreement with a dictatorship and once after reaching an agreement with a democratically-elected conservative administration – an agreement reached with a democratically-elected liberal administration may have greater weight in Japanese estimations of its future durability. But as Japan has abided by (would have abided by) these past agreements, Tokyo wants to see the initiative for another attempt come from South Korea.

Japan’s trade restriction on exports to South Korea is not Tokyo’s optimal policy, and it is not a long-term solution to Japan’s historical issues with South Korea. It is a desperate attempt by one country trying to get its valuable economic and security partner to commit to putting the relationship of today and the relationship of the future ahead of the issues of the past.

The Diplomat

You can read the rest at the link, but it is clear that the Japanese government’s patience has reached its limit on the ROK government backing out on signed deals that a new administration does not like.

With that said I don’t know how President Moon can back down now considering how strongly he has pushed anti-Japanese sentiment for domestic political purposes since he was elected. This leads me to believe this could drag on for quite some time.

Especially important for those who think are in a online romance with senior military leaders.

I’m married to the love of my life @ConnieAbrams . News alert: She is alive and well and remains the center of my universe.

Scammers will say anything to steal $$ from you. https://t.co/UEvHk4OgMZ

— Robert Abrams (@DogFaceSoldier) July 30, 2019

Considering that last year the US negotiators had to fight to get the ROK to pay $879 million for this year’s upkeep, I don’t expect them to pay $5 billion next year:

South Korea and the United States have agreed to conduct discussions in a “reasonable and fair” way on how to share the cost for the upkeep of American troops here, a foreign ministry official here said Tuesday.

The two sides talked about the upcoming negotiations over Seoul’s share of the cost for the stationing of the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) for next year, when U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton visited Korea last week, the official said.

The local daily JoongAng Ilbo reported that Washington has tentatively decided to request that Seoul pay US$5 billion under a renewed bilateral cost-sharing arrangement for next year, more than a fivefold increase from the previous year.

“When U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton was visiting Korea on July 23 and 24, South Korea and the U.S. agreed to have consultations over the sharing of the defense cost in a reasonable and fair direction,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it would have been interesting to see the face of Moon administration officials when John Bolton dropped the $5 billion number.