Tag: Japan

People holding up South Korean flags, or “Taegeukgi,” reenact the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919 against Japanese colonial rule in Seoul on Feb. 26, 2016, four days ahead of a national holiday marking the uprising. (Yonhap)

The yearly Takeshima Day nonsense has concluded with nothing much of interest occurring.  I miss the good old days of the Great Dokdo War.  I can still remember the hard days when those of us in Korea had to stock up on food and supplies to survive the initial declaration of war from President Roh.  We made it through multiple cease fires, close calls, and even the failure of the Daemado campaign.  Times had been so desperate that even talk about recruiting North Korea to fight off the evil Japanese Imperialists was announced.  Though the casualties on the Korean side have been heavy at times, through it all the brave defenders of Dokdo have continued thwart the massive Japanese armada descending on Dokdo.  We were also treated back then to such Korean patriots like Flag Eater Man, Chung Dong-young, the Finger Chopping Lady, the Knife in the Gut Man, Weed Killer Man, the Dokdo Riders, and most importantly that great general of all things Dokdo, Bee-Man.  Now all we have is this:

South Korea condemned Japan’s dispatch of a senior government official Monday to a local event aimed at publicizing its claim to Dokdo, a pair of outcroppings in the East Sea.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry stressed that Dokdo is South Korea’s territory historically, geographically, and under international law.

It called on Japan to immediately stop such a territorial provocation and “humbly face up to its history” of aggression and imperialism.

The ministry called in Hideo Suzuki, a minister at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to deliver a message of protest. Lee Sang-deok, director-general handling Northeast Asian affairs at the ministry, had a closed-door meeting with Suzuki.

Earlier in the day, the Shinzo Abe administration sent Yasuyuki Sakai, parliamentary vice minister of the Cabinet Office, to the controversial yearly event hosted by the Shimane Prefecture.

In 2005, the western prefecture, which claims administrative sovereignty over the islets, designated Feb. 22 as “Takeshima Day.” Takeshima is the Japanese name for Dokdo.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

With the completion of the comfort women agreement it would seem that moving forward at some point on the military intelligence sharing agreement would be the next area of cooperation that the ROK and Japan should focus on.  This is especially important considering the increasing security threats from North Korea:

South Korea said Monday that gaining the public’s support is a prerequisite for Seoul to review whether to seek a pact on sharing military intelligence with Japan.

Japan’s Kyodo News reported Sunday that South Korea and Japan seem to hold the view that conditions are ripe for deepening military cooperation, saying that Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Seoul is mulling reviewing whether to clinch a Seoul-Tokyo pact on sharing military intelligence.

In 2012, the two nations initialed such a pact to spur the exchange of information on North Korea. But Seoul suspended its signing due to strong opposition from civic groups, which claimed the deal was inked hastily and behind the scenes.

Seoul’s defense ministry dismissed the report, adding that Han’s remarks meant that various factors should be first taken into consideration.

“Support from the National Assembly and the general public should be prerequisites for the accord to be clinched,” the Defense Ministry said. [Korea Times]

Even if the US helped broker a deal between South Korea and Japan, so what?  It is in the US’s as well as Japan’s and the ROK’s national interests to work together when threats like the one posed by the Kim regime a real issue today:

North Korea claimed Monday that the United States pulled strings on a controversial deal between South Korea and Japan over Tokyo’s wartime sex slaves in a bid to strengthen its alliance with the two countries.

In December, Seoul and Tokyo reached a landmark deal to resolve the issue of Japan’s coercion of Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II. But some of surviving South Korean victims accused their government of failing to obtain Japan’s acknowledgment of legal responsibility and rashly reaching the deal without consulting them.

“The U.S. placated South Korea and Japan and forced them to sit in front of a negotiating table over the issue,” the Korean Central News Agency said. “The agreement was reached, masterminded by the White House which is seeking to use the two allies as storm troops for its control over Asia.”

The North’s claim came as the United Nations Security Council is working on a fresh resolution for stronger sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear test on Jan. 6.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

With Japan developing its own domestic stealth fighter, it makes me wonder how long it will be before the ROK feels they need to develop their own as well:

Japan on Thursday unveiled its first stealth fighter jet, officials said, with the maiden test flight planned for next month.

The defence ministry’s acquisition agency showed off the domestically developed, radar-dodging X-2 fighter at a regional airport near the central city of Komaki.

Its first flight is scheduled in mid-February before delivery to the defence ministry by the end of March next year, the acquisition agency said.

The X-2, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, measures 14.2 metres (47 feet) long and 9.1 metres wide and was built as a successor to the F-2 fighter jets developed jointly with the United States.

Presently, only the United States, Russia and China have been internationally recognised as having successfully developed and flown manned stealth jets, the agency said.

Japan has reportedly spent about 39.4 billion yen ($332 million) to develop the aircraft.  [AFP]

You can read the rest at the link.

It seems like there is some bitterness in Japan over the backtracking in the ROK over the recent comfort women deal:

In this year’s policy speech, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described South Korea as Japan’s “most important neighbor that shares our strategic interests.” Just like last year, though, he omitted “fundamental values” from this sentence.“At the end of last year, Japan and South Korea brought to an end a long-standing issue with our final and irreversible settlement on the issue of the comfort women,” Abe said during the speech, which he delivered to a joint session of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, on Jan. 22. “Since South Korea is our most important neighbor that shares our strategic interests, we will build a cooperative relationship for a new era in order to ensure peace and stability in East Asia.”  […………]

Abe’s decision to describe South Korea as a country that only shares “strategic interests” and not “fundamental values” appears to reflect unpleasant feelings that still remain even after the Dec. 28 settlement of the comfort women issue. In other words, Abe views South Korea not as a friend that shares values but as just a business partner that he must work with in regard to the issues of China’s rise and North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here is another sign of increased ROK and Japanese military cooperation which will hopefully continue to build trust between the two nations.  For those that don’t know DSP satellites have infrared sensors that can detect heat from missile launches or nuclear detonations:

South Korea plans to set up a new military network to share text and imagery information on North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missiles with the United States and Japan this year, the Defense Ministry said Friday.

The military plans to install a Link16 data link, connecting its interface control cell with that of the United States Forces Korea, both in Osan, south of Seoul, showed the ministry’s 2016 policy plan reported to President Park Geun-hye earlier in the day.

The military tactical data exchange network will allow the allies to share text and imagery intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities nearly on a real-time basis.

With the data link, South Korea will be able to gain access to U.S. information collected from its Defense Support Program reconnaissance satellite over the Korean Peninsula.

The move practically means South Korea will have the real-time military data link also with Japan, given the USFK’s Link16 connection with the Japanese military.

“Despite the U.S.-Japan linkage, information sharing will not take place without the agreement from each side and, even if it takes place, it will be confined to subjects on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles,” a defense official said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

This would be devestating to ROK-Japan relations if South Korea backs out of this deal.  It seems the Park administration should have expected to the political opposition to come out against the deal and be willing to take the political flak before signing it:

Hundreds of progressive civic groups launched an umbrella organization on Thursday to demand Seoul and Tokyo invalidate the landmark deal over Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women.

The umbrella organization, which encompasses 383 civic, religious, lawyers’ and students’ groups as well as 300 individuals, announced its plan to campaign against the deal at home and abroad in a press conference held in central Seoul.

“We gathered here to invalidate the agreement, demand renegotiations with Japan and gather public support,” Kim Geum-ok, a representative for the group, said in the press briefing. “We will be at the forefront of the fight to prevent recurrence of inhumane crimes like sex slavery and win legal compensation and formal apology from Japan.”  [Korea Herald]

You can read much more at the link.

A man bows toward the statue of independence fighter Lee Bong-chang at Hyochang Park in Seoul’s Yongsan Ward on Jan. 8, 2016, to mark the 84th anniversary of Lee’s patriotic actions against Japanese imperialism. In 1932, Lee threw a grenade toward Japanese Emperor Hirohito in a failed assassination attempt in Tokyo before being captured and hanged the same year. The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. (Yonhap)

You would think this is something that the Japanese government would try and do on the down low sometime in the future because trying to move this statue now would be political suicide for the ROK government:

Amid an ongoing debate about relocating the statue of a young girl that symbolizes the comfort women – women forced to serve as sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army – from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, there are indications that the South Korean government is shifting to a stricter legal stance on the issue.This appears to be motivated by concerns about criticism from the South Korean public, which has been increasing since the governments of South Korea and Japan reached an agreement about the comfort women on Dec. 28, as well as by a string of remarks by Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida that treat the removal of the statue as an established fact.

This is likely to provoke further conflict between the governments of South Korea and Japan.“Let me make this clear: The statue of the young girl was set up by private citizens, and there is nothing that the government can do about it,” South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Cho June-hyuk told domestic reporters and foreign correspondents at the regular press briefing on the afternoon of Jan. 5.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.