It is pretty clear that domestic political concerns are more important for the Moon administration than security concerns:
U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe noted the importance of trilateral security cooperation with South Korea during their talks in New York Wednesday, the White House said. On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump and Abe discussed issues of mutual interest and signed a preliminary bilateral trade agreement. The White House did not elaborate on the discussions on South Korea, but the two leaders are likely to have touched on Seoul’s decision to pull out of a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Here is the latest on the South Korea-Japan spat:
Japan did not ask South Korea for intelligence on North Korea’s recent launch of two “unidentified projectiles” after Seoul ended its military information sharing pact with Tokyo.
Political analysts in Seoul said Sunday the key motivation behind the silence was because it did not want to be viewed as seeking help to acquire classified information after the termination of the pact, commonly known as GSOMIA, Aug. 22.
However Tokyo seems fully capable of monitoring North Korea’s military activities in cooperation with the United States and does not need to work with South Korea, they added.
Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) and Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) have yet to finalize their assessment of the projectiles’ maximum altitude and speed ― two key pieces of information when analyzing the specifications of North Korean missiles or projectiles.
“I think Japan is curious to know about North Korean projectiles last week but does not want to appear to be begging for help from the South,” Shin In-kyun, president of the Korea Defense Network said. “This is why Japan has not asked for related information on the projectiles. It is as simple as that.”
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but maybe the Japanese are not bother to ask the ROK because they already received their intelligence information from the United States?
Via a reader tip comes news that airline tickets between Korea and Japan are supposedly less than $10:
If you’ve ever wanted to travel between Japan and South Korea, there’s no better time than now — air fares are as low as $8.38.
As a trade spat between the two countries drags on, travel between them is dropping — and so are flight prices.
It costs as little as 10,000 South Korean won ($8.38) to fly one-way from Seoul to Fukuoka on budget airline Eastar Jet right now, and only 1,000 Japanese yen ($9.35) the other way.
This is excluding tax and fuel surcharges — but still, added up, the prices are far lower than normal. The Eastar flight from Fukuoka to Seoul costs 7,590 yen ($71) with all the additional fees.
CNN
You can read more at the link, but I looked up the ticket prices on the Eastar website for flights between Seoul and Fukuoka and this is what I got:
It is accurate that Eastar is offering 10,000 won tickets, but the article fails to mention you must have membership with Eastar Airlines and that the ticket does not include the ability to check in bags.
For people with this cheap ticket who want to bring a bag it will cost 10,000 won per kilogram. If someone brings a 10 kilogram check in bag would add 100,000 won to the ticket, so that is where the airline will be making up costs.
Here is another area impacted by the current trade dispute between Korea and Japan, the hiring of South Koreans in Japan:
Song Min-su, a Japanese major in his final year at Hannam University, south of Seoul, has watched in dismay as a dispute between South Korea and Japan over wartime forced labor has spiraled into a damaging political and economic row.
Song, 25, has been pursuing his dream of working in Japan. With historic labor shortages in Japan, he had been confident he would avoid the tough job search many of his peers faced at home in South Korea, where youth unemployment is growing.
But curbs in Japan on the exports of high-tech materials to South Korea have escalated a bitter diplomatic feud between the neighbors, sparking boycotts that have hit the sales of Japanese cars, beer and other goods in South Korea, as well as travel to Japan.
“It will not only get harder to find a job in Japan, but the current sentiment will also make things more difficult to find a job in Korea with the use of my Japanese major,” Song said.
South Korea’s relations with former colonial ruler Japan have long been testy, with Tokyo having cited a dispute over court rulings related to forced wartime labor during World War II as a factor that led to tighter export controls implemented in July.
South Korea responded by stripping Japan of favored trading nation status and scrapping an intelligence-sharing pact.
The dispute has derailed a surge in the hiring of highly educated South Korean graduates by Japanese companies in recent years, forcing job seekers, employment consultants and the Seoul government to rethink Japan as a place to work. (………..)
With unemployment at a 26-year-low, Japan was the most popular overseas place to work for Koreans in 2014 and 2016-2018, figures from Human Resources Development Service of Korea show. Japan was the destination for nearly one-third of 5,783 South Korean graduates who found jobs overseas last year under government programs, more than triple the number seen in 2013.
But last month, the Labor Ministry canceled a job fair focused on Japan and Southeast Asia for late September that would have been the largest organized by the government, blaming the strained ties.
Another job expo held by the Korea-Japan Cooperation Foundation for Industry and Technology in mid-July, also with a focus on jobs in Japan, received 20 percent fewer participants than its previous fairs, an official said.
South Korea’s Labor Ministry is planning the second of its biannual global job fairs in November, but instead of focusing on jobs in Japan, as it did last year, it plans to broaden the list of countries.
Japan Times
You can read more at the link, but with already high youth unemployment in South Korea, it seems like the Korean government would rather have people unemployed than working in Japan.
Notice how the family members of U.S. POW’s used as forced laborers in Japan are not launching lawsuits, demanding compensation, and wanting normalization treaties with Japan thrown away:
The daughter of a Marine Corps veteran got an apology from Mitsubishi Materials Corp. during a visit Wednesday to the site of a mine where the veteran worked as a prisoner during World War II.
George Burlage, a member of the 4th Marine Regiment, was captured on Corregidor in May 1942 and spent time in prisoner of war camps in the Philippines and Taiwan before traveling to Japan in a “hell ship” prisoner transport.
The Visalia, Calif., native ended the war working at a lead and zinc mine operated by Mitsubishi Mining in northeast Japan, according to his biography provided by the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.
This week, his daughter Georgianne Burlage, 64, of Denton, Texas, traveled to her dad’s old POW camp, now a tourist attraction called Hosokura Mine Park in Sendai, as part of a trip for eight children of American POWs arranged by the Japanese government.
Some 27,000 U.S. troops were captured by Japan during the war and suffered in hellacious conditions at the hands of their Japanese captors: torture, starvation, disease, exposure and the continual deaths of their brothers in arms. About 40% percent of the POWs perished — 1,115 of them after being sent to Japan to work as forced laborers at more than 100 camps run by approximately 60 companies. (………)
“Officials from Mitsubishi met us and formally apologized to me for what happened to my father,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “That meant a lot to me. They were very gracious.” (…….)
Despite his ordeal, her father hadn’t expressed animosity toward the Japanese people and remained philosophical about his time in captivity, she said.
“They were mistreated but he always said it was 40 months of his life. He didn’t let it ruin the rest of his life,” she said.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
The Moon administration has decided that domestic politics is more important than national security:
South Korea consulted with the United States often and adequately on the fate of a bilateral pact with Japan on sharing military intelligence, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday, as Washington has voiced “strong concern” and “disappointment” over Seoul’s decision to discard the key tool for strengthening trilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia.
“It’s true that the U.S. hoped for the extension of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA),” South Korea’s Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Hyun-chong said in a press briefing.
Thus, he added, it was “natural” for Washington to be disappointed with Seoul’s move, which represents its toughest countermeasure yet against Tokyo’s export curbs.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but what allows the Moon administration to make this decision more easily than it should of, is that they know the U.S. will share with them any pertinent information the Japanese have on North Korea anyway.
This decision allows the Moon administration to show they are “doing something” in response to the trade dispute with Japan, burnish their anti-Japan street cred with the South Korean left, without really giving anything up in return.
I wonder if this is something we will eventually see happen at all South Korean subway stations as well:
To prevent drunken people falling off platforms or being hit by trains, railway operators across Japan are turning benches at their stations sideways to the tracks.
The move is driven by a study that showed that moving them perpendicular to tracks could be the difference between life and death for passengers who have had one too many.
West Japan Railway Co. (JR West)’s Safety Research Institute examined security camera footage in 2014 of 136 inebriated people who fell onto the tracks and made contact with trains.
It found that 60 percent fell after suddenly standing up from benches and elsewhere and then heading straight toward the tracks. The result shattered the common notion that most such accidents are caused by people standing or walking too close to the platform’s edge.
About 25 percent of the accident victims, the second largest number, stood or sat motionless on the edge of platforms and then fell, while only 15 percent tottered and lost their footing.
Asahi Shimbun
You can read more at the link.
