Tag: South Korea

Here is an interesting Op-Ed in the Korea Times from a retired ROK Army general on what South Korea should learn from the Iran War:

(……..) There are clear parallels between Iran and North Korea. Both rely on missiles, coercive rhetoric and calibrated escalation to compensate for economic and conventional weakness. Both view nuclear capability as regime insurance. Both assume that external actors will ultimately avoid confrontation due to escalation risks.

The difference is that North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons. That reality does not guarantee safety. It merely raises the stakes.

The true stabilizing factor on the Korean Peninsula is not North Korea’s arsenal. It is the alliance structure anchored by South Korea, Japan and the United States. That structure imposes strategic restraint on all sides because any conflict would be immediate, catastrophic and alliance-driven.

But restraint depends on credibility.

Here is the uncomfortable point the Korean public must confront: the U.S.-ROK alliance is not indestructible. It is sustained by political will on both sides. If South Korea signals that the alliance is conditional, negotiable or politically expendable, Washington will not ignore that signal.

Great powers adjust. They always do.

Some in South Korea believe the alliance can be strategically “tested” — that Seoul can publicly distance itself from Washington, question joint exercises, dilute trilateral cooperation with Japan and still assume the American security guarantee remains unchanged. That is a dangerous illusion. (………)

If Washington perceives hesitation in Seoul, it will hedge. Hedging does not require abandonment. It requires adjustment — force posture changes, prioritization shifts, conditional commitments. And once strategic recalibration begins, it is rarely reversed quickly.

The first costs of miscalculation will not fall on Washington. They will fall on Seoul.

Progressives who advocate engagement with North Korea are not wrong to seek reduced tension. Dialogue is necessary. But dialogue that undermines deterrence credibility invites coercion. There is no historical example in which weakening alliance solidarity strengthened negotiating leverage with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Strategic autonomy is often invoked as justification for recalibrating ties with the United States. But autonomy without substitute capability is exposure. China will not defend South Korea against Northern aggression. Japan cannot replace American extended deterrence. An independent nuclear option would impose severe economic and diplomatic penalties on South Korea. (………)

Testing the alliance for domestic political leverage is not strategic sophistication. It is strategic gambling in an increasingly unforgiving environment.

Korea Times

You can read the whole thing at the link.

Once again North Korea is ignoring Lee’s call for talks because they don’t need anything from South Korea. Currently all their needs are being met by the Russians. Whenever the Ukraine war ends and the flow of money from Russia stops that is when you will see the Kim regime open to talks with South Korea in order to start a new revenue stream:

President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday urged North Korea to return to the negotiating table with the United States and join efforts to shape what he called a “new future,” vowing to work with relevant countries to turn the Korean War armistice into a peace regime.

Lee made the remarks in his first address marking the March 1 Independence Movement at the COEX exhibition center in southern Seoul as the nation commemorated the 107th anniversary of the nation’s 1919 independence movement, a watershed event during Japan’s 1910-45 brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

“Since North Korea is formulating and implementing a new five-year plan, I hope that it will swiftly return to the negotiating table and join us in shaping a new future,” Lee said, stressing that “hostility and confrontation serve neither side’s interests.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

From everything I have been reading the Japanese are actually happy about the reduction in Chinse tourists and the Koreans seem to be happy to have them, so a win-win for everyone:

Tang and his family were among the influx of Chinese tourists who visited Korea during the holiday period, which began on Feb. 15 and ended on Monday.

Beijing and Tokyo have been embroiled in a diplomatic dispute since November, when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that Tokyo could respond militarily to a potential attack on Taiwan. In response, Beijing has advised citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.

Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism estimated that up to 190,000 Chinese tourists visited the country during the nine-day holiday period. The daily average was 44 percent higher than during last year’s holiday window, which ran from Jan. 24 to 29.

The fresh wave of Chinese tourists brought rare optimism to Korea’s retail and tourism sectors, which have been dampened by a consumption slowdown.

In the weeks leading up to the holiday, retailers and tourism operators rolled out intensive marketing campaigns tailored to Chinese tourists, including discounts and gift vouchers linked to Chinese payment platforms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.

Chinese tourists have traditionally been big spenders, according to Korean tourism industry officials. The most recent government data shows that the average spending per Chinese visitor to Korea reached $1,622 in 2024, compared with the overall foreign visitor average of $1,372.

Even the Korean government has been pulling out all the stops to encourage more spending by Chinese group tourists. On Feb. 15, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Chae Hwi-young visited Myeong-dong, one of Seoul’s main shopping and tourism districts, to inspect facilities for foreign visitors, and called for efforts to foster a more welcoming atmosphere.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Why do the Russians keep coming if the ROK isn’t giving them refugee status? It makes me think they are using the refugee process to buy time and once it is denied fly to another country to start the process all over again to buy more time:

This file image, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows the justice ministry’s headquarters in Gwacheon, just south of Seoul. (Yonhap)

Russians made up the largest share of asylum seekers in South Korea for the third consecutive year in 2025 amid the war in Ukraine, justice ministry data showed Wednesday.

According to the annual data of asylum seekers, 2,026 Russians applied for refugee status in the country last year, accounting for 13.8 percent of the total 14,626 applicants, followed by 1,462 Indians and 1,216 Kazakhs 

The 2025 tally marked a sharp drop from 4,546 Russian applicants the previous year, but Russians have held the largest share of asylum seekers by nationality since 2023.

In 2023, Russia recorded 5,750 applicants — a fivefold increase from a year earlier — in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

A ministry official said the conflict is believed to have had an influence on the number of Russian applications, noting the country’s conscription efforts due to the war.

But no Russians were granted refugee status last year, the official said. South Korea granted the status to 135 people, including 75 Burmese in 2025 alone.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Back in the day when I was growing up we called two friends living together roommates, not molecular families:

Last year, South Korea surpassed 8 million single-person households for the first time.

According to data released in December by the Ministry of Data and Statistics, 8.045 million households were made up of just one person, up from 7.166 million in 2021, bringing the share of solo households to 36.1 percent, the highest level on record. The proportion has climbed steadily, crossing 30 percent in 2019 and 35 percent in 2023, with Seoul posting the largest concentration of people living alone.

As the country’s single-person households reach record levels, “Two Women Living Together” arrives as both an intimate memoir and a subtle social argument about how people might live and care for one another outside the institution of marriage.

Co-written by Kim Ha-na and Hwang Sun-woo, two friends who decided in their 40s to buy a home together rather than marry, the book chronicles their decision to grow old together under one roof.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but this article truly demonstrates why South Korea has one of the world’s lowest birthrates.

South Korean Ambassador to the US Kang Kyung-wha (left) and Korea Heritage Service Administrator Huh Min attend an event installing a plaque at the consular section building of the Korean Embassy in Washington on Monday to mark the historic building as the site of the Asian country’s first-ever embassy. (Yonhap)

You would think the Korea would have prioritized getting this deal done months ago considering how impatient Trump notoriously is on issues like this:

The top diplomats of South Korea and the United States will hold talks in Washington this week, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, amid uncertainties over their trade deal after U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning of a tariff hike.

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will meet one-one-one with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday (local time) to discuss efforts toward implementing the summit agreements reached between Trump and President Lee Jae Myung, including the trade deal, the ministry said.

Cho is visiting Washington to attend a U.S.-led ministerial meeting on critical minerals supply chains, set for Wednesday.

The upcoming talks between Cho and Rubio are their first meeting since Trump threatened to raise the reciprocal tariff on South Korean goods to 25 percent from 15 percent, citing a delay in Seoul’s legislative process required to move the trade deal forward.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Another sign of improving relations between the ROK and Japan. Hopefully we continue to see positive cooperation like this between two countries that should be natural allies:

South Korea and Japan agreed Friday to resume joint naval search and rescue exercises for the first time in nine years as they seek to strengthen defense cooperation, according to the defense ministry.

The agreement came as Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back and his counterpart, Shinjiro Koizumi, met at the Yokosuka base of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force to discuss regional security cooperation and ways to deepen the two nations’ defense cooperation and exchange.

“Both ministers concurred on activating personnel and unit exchange to boost mutual understanding and trust between the South Korean military and the Japanese Self-Defense Force,” the ministry said in a joint press release, mentioning the resumption of the joint drills for humanitarian purposes as an example.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.