Tag: Japan

However, these SOFA holders will now undergo yet another two week quarantine on land:

Seven people associated with U.S. Army Japan who spent two weeks potentially exposed to the new coronavirus on a cruise ship in Yokohama must spend another 14 days quarantined at home, officials said Tuesday.

The Japanese government is expected to release the seven, who fall under the status of forces agreement in Japan, from the ship over the next few days, according to a post on U.S. Army Japan’s official Facebook page. A SOFA defines the legal status of the U.S. armed forces stationed in host countries. It governs uniformed service members, civilian Defense Department employees and their families.

The seven spent two weeks aboard the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship at anchor in Yokohama Bay, after the virus, called COVID-19, was discovered on board as the vessel was en route to Japan.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It figures that the Moon administration would bring up the GSOMIA issue again before April’s parliamentary elections in order to promote anti-Japanese sentiment:

Controversy is resurfacing over the possible termination of a military intelligence sharing agreement with Japan, ahead of the March 1 Independence Day and the April 15 general election. 

Speculation is mounting that the government could ultimately terminate the General Security of Information Sharing Agreement (GSOMIA), given the absence of any significant outcome from bilateral negotiations to remove Japan’s trade restrictions imposed on certain Korean companies last summer. In response to the restrictions, the government announced the termination of the agreement, but held off on this in November to show its commitment to bilateral negotiations to settle the trade dispute. (……)

During a recent press conference, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said that Korea could still consider terminating the GSOMIA depending on what is deemed best for the “national interest.” “There have been talks between the export authorities, but we have still not returned to the situation before July 1 [when Japan imposed the exports ban],” Kang said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it is pretty clear how important April’s vote is for the Blue House. They have changed election laws that will increase the number of unelected left wing parliament seats, covered up the investigations into Blue House corruption, fired the head of Statistics Korea to get better economic stats, has not reached a cost sharing deal with the U.S., and now threatening to cancel the GSOMIA pact again.

The Kim regime is just upset that the Japanese are likely looking at building up capabilities in space militarily to deal with North Korea and China’s growing ballistic missile threat:

 North Korea on Saturday slammed Tokyo’s plan to establish a military space unit, saying the plan is a dangerous and reckless move to make Japan a “military giant.”

“Japan is madly keen on exploiting even the outer space for its sinister purpose of building up ‘defense capacity,'” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang’s official mouthpiece, said in its editorial. “The outer space can never be reduced to a theatre for the state of aggression, the war-thirsty state.”

Japan last year announced that its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) plan to create a military unit specializing in space matters by 2023.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

You can see the racist conspiracy theories that the Chinese government promoted against Ambassador Harris when he was the INDOPACOM commander has been successfully promoted in South Korea as well:

“I am American ambassador to Korea, not the Japanese American ambassador.”

The former U.S. Pacific commander and admiral spoke not out of frustration but as a matter of fact, responding to suspicions of some Koreans that his Japanese heritage might make him biased in Japan’s favor and influence a U.S. stance on matters related to Korea and Japan. He was born to a U.S. military man and a Japanese mother in Japan and he was the first person of Asian descent to lead the Pacific Command.

He said that while serving as Pacific commander, China also once accused him of favoring Japan regarding his stance on Beijing’s hegemonic moves in the South China Sea. He said that not in the U.S. or elsewhere had his eth-nicity been made an issue during his career.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the ambassador’s critics in Korea even accuse him of wearing a mustache to replicate what Japanese colonial governors of Korea once had.

Here is a hit piece from the Hankyoreh describing a USINDOPACOM strategy that doesn’t exist:

A South Korean government official said, “The reason so many senior US officials are visiting South Korea and campaigning hard for a GSOMIA extension is because GSOMIA is just that important to the Indo-Pacific strategy.”

Indo-Pacific Strategy gives Japan priority over S. KoreaThe US’ previous strategy for East Asia positioned the US itself at the center with South Korea, Japan, and Australia acting as “spokes.” Fundamentally, South Korea and Japan were on an equal footing. The Indo-Pacific strategy, in contrast, involves a framework where the US, Japan, India, and Australia form a “quad” hemming China in from all sides, while South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, and others are included as lower-level partners.

Under this framework, the US-Japan alliance becomes upgraded to a global alliance. In pushing through security-related legislation, Japan’s Shinzo Abe administration increased its potential for intervention on the Korean Peninsula by concocting the concepts of “situations of major influence” and “existential threat,” with an eye on direct intervention if war breaks out. Under this system, Japan would need to receive initial military information on North Korean nuclear missile launch activity through GSOMIA to attack preemptively in a scenario of imminent armed attack by the North.

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link, but if Japan was about to face a nuclear missile attack they don’t need the GSOMIA because the US would inform them. The biggest attribute of the GSOMIA is creating a mechanism where the ROK and Japan can work together.

As far as what the Hankyoreh describes as the USINDOPACOM strategy, I have read their strategy and it mentions nothing of what the Hankyoreh is claiming. You can read the USINDOPACOM strategy at this link.

It appears that the media in Japan is pushing the 5x times greater spending narrative for U.S. troops just like the Korean media:

Japan’s government on Sunday denied a report it had been asked to fork over five times as much as it now pays to support United States forces stationed in the country.

Kyodo News reported Saturday that Japan had rejected a request for the funding increase that was delivered by John Bolton, then national security adviser to President Donald Trump, when he visited Tokyo in July.

Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono refuted the report, according to a transcript of a Sunday press conference posted on the Defense Ministry’s website.

In Japan’s fiscal 2019 draft budget, about $1.8 billion has been earmarked to host U.S. forces, which include more than 50,000 servicemembers, mostly stationed on Okinawa. Japan would have to pay more than $9 billion annually if it had acceded to the request, Kyodo reported.

The talk about cost-sharing echoes news from South Korea, where U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday called on the government to increase its share of the cost to support 28,500 U.S. troops stationed on the divided peninsula.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but this is called negotiations. I am sure the U.S. side gave a big number to start out with that will be reduced over time to amount both sides can live with. What will be interesting to see over time is the difference in reactions between the Japanese and Korean governments over this issue.

As I predicted there was no way that the Moon administration was going to reverse course on withdrawing from the GSOMIA. Promoting anti-Japanese sentiment is literally the only issue his party has to run on for the parliamentary elections coming up early next year. Reversing the decision on the GSOMIA would have been a major loss of face for the Moon administration:

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday he will try to persuade Japan to “smoothly” resolve the dispute over the two neighbors’ military information-sharing arrangement, according to the presidential office.

During a 50-minute meeting with Esper at Cheong Wa Dae, Moon explained his government’s basic position that it’s “difficult to share military information” with Japan, which has imposed export restrictions against South Korea for a stated reason that Seoul is not trustworthy as a security partner, Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung said.

In late August, the Moon administration decided not to renew the General Security of Military Agreement (GSOMIA) and it’s slated to expire as of next Saturday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the pending termination of the GSOMIA:

The United States appears to be heaping pressure on South Korea to retract its decision to end a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo amid North Korea’s continued saber-rattling and specter of tighter security cooperation between China and Russia.

U.S. diplomats have openly voiced concerns over the looming termination of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), seen as a symbolic platform for Washington to expand its trilateral defense collaboration with the Asian allies.

In August, Seoul announced its decision to end GSOMIA in response to Tokyo’s new export curbs seen as political retaliation for last year’s Korean Supreme Court rulings against Japanese firms over wartime forced labor. It will expire on Nov. 23 unless Seoul reverses the decision.

In a recent interview with Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Marc Knapper, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan, urged Seoul and Tokyo to maintain GSOMIA despite their chilled ties.

“Nobody is happy with the situation. Actually not nobody — there are people happy with the situation, but they happen to be in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang,” Knapper said in the interview.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I seriously doubt the Moon administration will cut any deal with the Japanese on the forced labor issue because what will the Korean left campaign on in the Parliamentary elections next year? They need this issue as a distractor from the economic woes facing the country and the Cho Kuk corruption mess:

 From creating a fund to compensate victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor to entrusting a civilian panel with addressing the thorny issue, a flurry of proposals are raising cautious hope for a thaw in frosty ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

Diplomatic circles, scholars and media in both countries have put forward the ideas while Seoul and Tokyo have been exploring a diplomatic off-ramp — or at least a path for de-escalation — through a series of high-level or working-level talks in recent months.

“These proposals illustrate the resilience of the Seoul-Tokyo relationship at work, when both countries apparently feel fatigued about their ties having long been on a collision course,” Nam Chang-hee, a professor of international politics at Inha University, said.

This week, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Seoul and Tokyo are weighing the idea that the government and companies in South Korea, with the participation of Japanese firms, set up a fund under the name of “economic cooperation,” not as compensation for forced labor.

Seoul’s foreign ministry rejected the report as “untrue,” while reiterating its “openness” to searching for a solution “acceptable to the victims and people of both countries.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what I think is going on is that each side trying to create the appearance that they are the ones that are being reasonable by trying to work towards a solution knowing full well one will not be agreed upon.