That would be pretty impressive if South Korea becomes one of the first countries to secure and trade deal with the Trump administration. With that said what will be interesting is if it stays in effect when a new President takes over Korea:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described high-level trade talks with South Korea in Washington on Thursday as “very successful,” noting that Seoul came with its “A-game” and anticipating that the allies will discuss “technical terms” as early as next week.
Bessent made the remarks in an interview with CNN, after he and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer met with Seoul’s Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok and Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun for their “two-plus-two” trade consultations at the Department of the Treasury.
“We had a very successful bilateral meeting with the Republic of Korea today. We may be moving faster than I thought,” Bessent said, referring to South Korea by its official name.
“We will be talking (about) technical terms as early as next week as we reach that agreement on understanding as soon as next week. So the South Koreans came early. They came with their A game, and we will see if they follow through on that,” he added.
Another example of the growing trilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia:
The defense chiefs of South Korea, the United States and Japan signed a document on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF) on Sunday , Seoul’s defense ministry said, in a move solidifying their continued commitment to three-way security cooperation against North Korean threats.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Minoru Kihara, respectively, inked a Memorandum of Cooperation on the framework in Tokyo amid their deepening security cooperation in response to the North’s persistent nuclear and missile threats and growing military alignment with Russia.
Its an election year and it is pretty clear the Biden administration wants Kim Jong-un to behave, so offering talks may be an attempt to do this:
The top U.S. envoy to the U.N. will reaffirm America’s “ironclad” security partnership with South Korea and its openness to “unconditional” dialogue with North Korea during her visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas next week, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
On Tuesday, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield plans to pay a visit to the DMZ, after which she will have a roundtable with North Korean escapees. She is set to arrive in Korea on Sunday as part of her East Asia swing that will also take her to Japan.
“The message that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield will send by visiting the DMZ is that the security partnership with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan is ironclad. She wants to obviously go to the DMZ to get a firsthand look at the situation there,” the official said in an online press briefing. ROK is the abbreviation for South Korea’s official name.
I feel horrible for the surviving child that saw his parents and sibling gun down in front of them:
Three members of a Korean American family were among the deceased victims of a weekend shooting spree at an outlet mall in Texas, a South Korean diplomatic mission said Sunday.
The couple in their 30s and their three-year-old son were shot to death in Saturday’s rampage at the mall in Allen, while another child of the couple was injured and is being treated at a hospital, according to the South Korean Consulate in Dallas.
The shooting has left at least eight people dead and seven others injured, according to CNN.
The gunman, identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, was killed by a police officer who was at the mall for an unrelated issue. The motive behind the killings remains unclear.
What I find interesting about his shooting is the media has been focusing on how he is an alleged white supremacist without mentioning the irony of judging by his name he is Hispanic. The focus really should be on is that this guy has long had mental issues. He was kicked out of the Army back in 2008 after only 3 months of service due to mental health issues. So how is a guy too unstable to stay in the Army allowed to buy a gun?
It looks like South Korea will not be providing any lethal military aid to Ukraine:
U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby speaks during a press conference at the Korean press center in Washington D.C., Tuesday (local time). Yonhap
A discussion on the Ukraine war will be included on the agenda of the upcoming summit between Presidents Yoon Suk Yeol and Joe Biden, but the U.S. will not ask Korea to provide military aid to Kyiv, a high-ranking U.S. official said, Tuesday (local time).
“We absolutely had every expectation that the war in Ukraine will be discussed as a part of this state visit, but we certainly would not speak for President Yoon and for any additional support he may or may not be willing to provide,” U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said at a press conference with Korean press.
“Every nation has to decide for itself whether or not it will support Ukraine and to what degree it’s willing to support Ukraine. Some nations provide advanced lethal capabilities, some nations do not. We respect those sovereign decisions,” he said.
I have hard time believing that Russia was ever going to “attack” Japan like this Newsweek report is claiming. An attack on Japan would trigger the US-Japan alliance which would lead to an overwhelming military response that would crush whatever attack Russia launched. With that all said, after what we have seen of the Russian performance in Ukraine, the Japanese military could probably defeat any Russian attack without American assistance:
Russia was preparing to attack Japan in the summer of 2021, months before President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an email featuring a letter from a whistleblower at Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), shared with Newsweek, reveals.
The email, dated March 17, was sent by the agent, dubbed the Wind of Change, to Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human-rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net, and is now exiled in France.
The FSB agent writes regular dispatches to Osechkin, revealing the anger and discontent inside the service over the war that began when Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24.
You can read more at the link, but what I can believe is that Russia may have been determining the likelihood of succeeding with a provocation against Japan such as sinking one of its naval ships. This would put Japan in tough spot because their constitution would not allow them to undertake offensive operations and thus the Japanese government would turn to the U.S. for support.
This would also put the U.S. in a tough spot because the Biden administration would have to determine if taking offensive action against Russia is worth it in response to a sunken Japanese ship. Putin would likely bet no offensive military action would be taken and instead toothless sanctions and sternly worded letters would be issued. The lack of a response from the U.S. would have put a strain on the U.S.-Japan alliance which is what their ultimate goal may have been. Additionally sinking a Japanese ship would be a morale boost for the Russian Pacific Fleet. I wonder if Putin wishes he would have initiated a provocation against Japan instead of his current disastrous war in Ukraine?
