The South Korean defence ministry said Wednesday’s agreement — which comes four years after a similar attempt failed — would allow it to benefit from Japan’s advanced intelligence-gathering equipment, which includes five satellites, four radar systems, six Aegis destroyers and 77 patrol aircraft.
But the deal was met with stinging criticism from South Korea’s opposition, which called it a “rush job”.
Ms Park’s opponents say the ongoing political scandal has undermined her mandate to push through policy. Some South Koreans also feel Japan has not sufficiently atoned for its wartime atrocities on the peninsula.
“I don’t understand why the government is so hastily pursuing such an agreement. It has been done procedurally wrong,” said Moon Chung-in, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “If a new government relinquishes the agreement, relations [with Japan] will become worse. I just don’t understand it.” [Financial Times]
You can read much more at the link, but leave it to the Korean opposition to claim that 4 years to get this deal done is a “rush job”. What I think has happened is that due to the Choi Soon-sil scandal, President Park no longer has anything politically to lose by signing this deal considering how unpopular she already is.
President Park is so unpopular right now she really has nothing to lose politically any more by signing the long anticipated intelligence sharing agreement with Japan:
South Korea and Japan plan to sign a military intelligence-sharing pact this week to better counter mounting threats from North Korea, the defense ministry said Monday.
The two countries signed a provisional General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) last week, less than a month after they resumed discussions on Oct. 27.
“We are planning to formally sign the GSOMIA on Wednesday upon approval by President Park Geun-hye after it is passed by the Cabinet on Tuesday,” a ministry official said.
Defense Minister Han Min-koo and Japanese Ambassador to Seoul Yasumasa Nagamine are expected to sign it at the defense ministry in Seoul, he said. [Yonhap]
Activists hold a rally in front of the government complex in Seoul on Nov. 17, 2016, to call on the government to stop its push for a formal agreement with Japan on the sharing of military intelligence on North Korea. The two neighbors inked a provisional deal in Tokyo on Nov. 14, despite strong public objection in South Korea. (Yonhap)
This opposition by the Korean left to the ROK-Japan military intelligence sharing pact is not surprising. Japanese Prime Minister Abe could apologize for everything from the Hideyoshi invasion of Korea to World War II and then commit seppuku on top of Mt. Namsan and the Korean left would still oppose this pact simply because the Korean right wants it:
Defense Minister Han Min-koo
Opposition parties Tuesday set in motion a campaign to oust Defense Minister Han Min-koo over a controversial military pact with Japan that was tentatively signed by the two sides late Monday.
Making good on their pledge, the three groups — the Democratic Party of Korea, People’s Party and Justice Party — decided to submit a parliamentary motion to recommend the minister’s dismissal on Nov. 30 and put it to vote at a plenary session slated for Dec. 2.
Its passage is likely, since the opposition bloc controls more than a majority of seats in Parliament.
A provisional deal was reached in Tokyo on Monday evening on the General Security of Military Information Agreement, which aims to enhance cooperation in coping with North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats. It does not require parliamentary ratification.
A previous effort to sign the deal was derailed in 2012 in the face of strong public disapproval in Seoul.
The opposition parties have threatened to unseat the defense minister if he pushes through the deal this time, without public consensus.
The tentative signing came less than two weeks after talks reopened between the two countries on military intelligence sharing. The first working-level meeting was held on Nov. 1. Seoul and Tokyo had made official the negotiation’s resumption on Oct. 27. [Korea Herald]
Via a reader tip to the archive for the US Naval War College Review, I ended up reading an interesting article about how the failed Toyotomi Hideyoshi invasion of Korea from 1592-1598 may have stopped his plans of conquering the Philippines. According to the article the Spanish rulers of the Philippines had problems with Japanese pirates known as “wako” and soon stories of the wealth in the Philippines from these pirates got back to Hideyoshi who had recently unified Japan under his rule:
The Japanese landing on Busan
The earliest written mention of fears of a Japanese invasion in the broadest sense of the word appears in a Memorial to the Council of 1586, in which there is specu- lation within Manila that the Japanese wakō might have greater ambitions beyond mere plunder: they “make a descent almost every year, and, it is said, with the intent of colonizing Luçon [Luzon].”3 That never happened, but in 1591 the first proper invasion scare began when the Philippines entered the consciousness of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98). By means of a series of brilliant military cam- paigns, Hideyoshi had reunified Japan after the chaos of a century of civil war, and he now set his mind on overseas expeditions. The addition of the Philippines to his megalomaniac aims was credited to a certain “Farandaquiemon [Faranda Quiemon]—a Japanese of low extraction,” who induced Hideyoshi “to write in a barbarous and arrogant manner to the governor, demanding submission and tribute, and threatening to come with a fleet and troops to lay waste the country.” [US Naval War College Review]
According to the article the Japanese soldiers were not interested in attacking Korea because it was a poor country compared to the wealth they believed the Philippines had:
There was also a possible motive, because “[i]n Japon there is universal talk of the abundance of gold in this land. On this account, the soldiers are anxious to come here; and are coming, as they do not care to go to Core [Korea], which is a poor country.”
The Spanish sent an ambassador to Japan that met with Hideyoshi and explained to them the might of the Spanish Empire around the world. Hideyoshi was apparently not very impressed, but instead of focusing on invading the Philippines he attacked Korea first:
The Philippines remained on high alert for four years after Harada’s visit, and during that time the Spanish authorities closely monitored Hideyoshi’s military expedition against Korea. It was launched during the summer of 1592 and rapidly changed from being a blitzkrieg success to a long and painful retreat. The Korean campaign revealed a major Japanese weakness in naval warfare and support, and one of the main reasons for Japan’s eventual defeat was that the Korean navy severed Japan’s lines of communication between Busan and the Japanese island of Tsushima.21 The encouraging lesson was not wasted on Manila. If Hideyoshi could not control the Tsushima Strait, how could he ever contemplate sending an invasion fleet as far as Luzon?
As his Korean incursion dragged on, Hideyoshi grew increasingly suspicious concerning the activities of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in Japan. An active persecution of Christianity followed, and Japan’s first martyrs died in February 1597. One of them, Fray Martin of the Ascension, wrote a letter to the governor of the Philippines as he was on his way to his execution. It includes what he had heard about Hideyoshi’s intentions toward the Philippines. “It is said that next year he will go to Luzon, and that he does not go this year because of being busy with the Coreans.”22 Martin also commented on the invasion route, whereby “he intends to take the islands of Lequios and Hermosa [Ryukyus and Taiwan], throw forces from them into Cagayan, and thence to fall upon Manila, if God does not first put a stop to his advance.”
The rest of the article goes on to describe other failed schemes by the Japanese to invade the Philippines during the years of the Tokugawa dynasty. However the article concludes that Hideyoshi likely had the best opportunity to conquer the Philippines had he not focused on Korea:
Of the three schemes for invading the Philippines between 1593 and 1637, the vast armies at Hideyoshi’s disposal in his 1593 plan could well have succeeded against the meagre garrison of Manila had he not been humiliated already in Korea by a woeful lack of naval support. Two seaborne attempts against Taiwan in 1609 and 1616 were also failures, and an annexation of the Ryukyus in 1609 was to be contemporary Japan’s only overseas gain.
So how different would East Asia have looked if the Japanese were successful in capturing the Philippines instead of invading Korea?
It seems to me it would have caused a major war with Spain because I doubt they would have sat back and let the Japanese hold onto to the Philippines. Considering Spain’s naval might they would have been able to deny the Japanese resupply by sea and eventually recaptured the Philippines. I think Spain then would have brought the war to Japan and devastated any remaining naval capability they had and likely loot various port cities until they were satisfied they had gotten enough revenge against the Japanese.
I think the aftermath of such a war with Spain would have caused the invasion of Korea to never happen. Would Korea’s course of history have been significantly changed by this course of events?
If Tokyo can keep some of their political leaders from making controversial statements about the comfort women and Dokdo issues maybe the negotiations this time will actually get completed:
The South Korean government on Thursday announced it will resume negotiations on a sensitive military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan for the first time in four years to better respond to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile threats.
“North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and launched over 20 ballistic missiles this year alone, and its nuclear and missile threats are escalating by the day, so our security situation is becoming more critical,” said Moon Sang-gyun, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, as he announced Seoul’s decision to restart talks on signing a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Tokyo.
A meeting of the National Security Council at the Blue House was convened earlier in the day to reach the decision to resume negotiations.
Sealing a bilateral intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan has been a sensitive issue for Korea in the past, and efforts to negotiate a GSOMIA between Seoul and Tokyo were halted since June 2012, when negotiations broke off.
A deal to share information with Tokyo fell apart at the last minute amid domestic outcry over the secretive nature of the closed-door negotiations and ongoing bilateral tensions and mistrust over unresolved historical and territorial disputes with Japan stemming back to colonial rule.
South Korea has continued to hesitate to sign a bilateral GSOMIA to share intelligence directly with Tokyo, though it agreed to a trilateral information-sharing arrangement with Washington as an intermediary in December 2014.
“The decision to resume talks that would allow the two countries to exchange military intelligence came in the face of unprecedented nuclear and missile threats from North Korea,” said Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam in a press conference in Tokyo Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Lim held a trilateral meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama to discuss a coordinated response to the threat posed by the North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Sugiyama said Japan will “sincerely respond” to the decision to resume GSOMIA negotiations. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Any tri-lateral cooperation like this good between the US, ROK and Japan:
The destroyer USS McCampbell sails with a South Korean ship in waters off the Korean Peninsula on Oct. 15, 2016. The McCampbell will join Japanese and South Korean forces Oct. 22-23 in an exercise focused on detecting and stopping ships carrying weapons of mass destruction. Christian Senyk/U.S. Navy
The United States, Japan and South Korea will practice detecting and stopping ships carrying weapons of mass destruction during a sea exercise this weekend.
The trilateral exercise comes in light of North Korea’s continued work on its nuclear weapons and missile program, South Korean defense officials told reporters in Seoul on Thursday.
The maritime interdiction operation will be held Saturday and Sunday in international waters south of South Korea’s Jeju Island, Yonhap News reported.
The sea services also will conduct search and rescue exercises aimed at rescuing personnel on disabled ships, the report said. [Stars & Stripes]
A group of citizens holds a regular Wednesday rally calling for the Japanese government to make an official apology for Japan’s past wrongdoings against women in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2016. Some 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers in front-line brothels during World War II. The victims are euphemistically called “comfort women.” (Yonhap)
