Tag: United States

It does seem pretty weird that the pro-Park protesters are waving US and Israelis flags which have absolutely nothing to do with the corruption scandal that caused her impeachment:

Controversy is brewing over the use of U.S. and Israeli flags by supporters of the impeached President Park Geun-hye during their weekend rallies that have nothing to do with the countries.

Right-wing groups have organized these rallies to counter much-larger demonstrations demanding Park’s removal from power by the Constitutional Court.

Pro-Park counterprotesters have waved the Korean national flag, or Taegeukgi, at the rallies, which they call “Taegeukgi rallies” themselves. Lately, they have also been bringing U.S. and Israeli flags to the political events.

The participants claim it is a way to show their “patriotism,” but criticism is prevalent that the flags are being misused.

Several protesters, who are mainly in their 60s or older, have been waving the Korean and U.S. flags together in a bid to underscore the Korea-U.S. security alliance against “North Korean sympathizers.”

Some others, who call themselves devout churchgoers, have brought the Israeli flag with a wooden cross and other symbols they think can represent their faith.

But critics said Monday that such expressions may only stir up misunderstandings toward the U.S and Israel as well as Christianity.

The U.S. and Israeli embassies in Seoul were not available for comment.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting theory on why South Koreans hate the Japanese so much:

If South Korea can only weakly legitimate itself through democracy, and with race-nationalism so powerful, Seoul must go head-to-head with Pyongyang over who is the best custodian of the minjok and its glorious 5000 year history. This is a tussle South Korea cannot win, not only because of the North’s mendacious willingness to falsify history, but South Korea’s Westernized culture, massive U.S. presence, rising multiculturalism leading to mixed race citizens, and so on.

The North’s purer minjok nationalism will always have resonance in the South, where for a generation former dictator Park Chung Hee invoked race for legitimacy, 10% of the public voted for an openly pro-North Korean party in the last parliamentary election, and the main left-wing party has consistently equivocated on whether the U.S. represents a greater threat to South Korea than North Korea does.

Enter Japan, then, as a useful ‘other’ to South Korea, in the place that really should be held by North Korea. All Koreans, north and south, right and left, agree that the colonial take-over was bad. The morality of criticizing Japan is undisputed, whereas criticizing North Korea quickly gets tangled up in the ‘who-can-out-minjok-who’ issues raised above.   [The National Interest]

I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but likewise the anti-Japanese hatred is irrational when compared to the Chinese as well.  The Chinese are actively conducting anti-Korean initiatives because of the THAAD issue, have a territorial dispute with Korea, are the chief benefactor of North Korea, a country committed to the destruction of the ROK, and China was the last country to invade the ROK and nearly destroyed it during the Korean War.  Heck the Chinese embassy even sent protestors into the streets of Seoul to beatdown Koreans during the Olympic torch protest.

Despite all of this, hatred is directed towards the Japanese who should be a natural geopolitical ally.  I have always believed that the persistent anti-Japanese sentiment and rotating bouts of anti-US sentiment is because South Koreans know they can protest both countries without repercussions.  As the current THAAD dispute shows the Chinese government does not sit idly by without retaliating against Korea, likewise for North Korea.  If South Koreans push North Korea too much a ROK ship may get sunk or artillery rounds may land in the ROK.  Protest Japan or the United States and little to nothing happens.  That makes both countries easy targets to direct Korean nationalism towards especially for domestic political reasons.

I don’t expect this dynamic to change unless South Koreans are put into a position where they have to forgive and forget with Japan for national security reasons.  As long as the US-ROK alliance this is something Koreans do not have to worry about.

I think it is more than coincidence that the Kim regime decided to interfere with President Trump’s and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s golf game this weekend by firing off this missile:

Pyongyang fired a missile into waters off its eastern coast Sunday morning, the first test-firing by North Korea this year and since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Launched from Banghyon Air Base in North Pyongyan Province at 7:55 a.m., the missile reached an altitude of about 550 kilometers (342 miles) and flew 500 kilometers before splashing into the East Sea, both figures which indicate that it wasn’t an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), said an official from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It appears that the missile was a Rodong medium-range class meant to target Japan, according to another South Korean military source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

The Rodong or Nodong missile is a missile developed primarily to target Japan which is further evidence that the Trump-Abe meeting this week is why they fired the missile when they did.  With that said it is important to keep things in perspective.  The Nodong is a missile they have fired plenty of times in the past and this test firing was on a known test trajectory that safely impacted in the Sea of Japan.  If it wasn’t for the fact that it was North Korea test firing this missile most people would not care.

Here is how President Trump and Prime Minister Abe responded during a hastily called news conference at Trump’s golf club:

United States President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have condemned North Korea’s latest missile launch.

Trump and Abe issued their statements on the North’s surprise ballistic missile launch on Sunday during an unscheduled joint news conference in Florida.

Abe said that North Korea’s most recent missile launch is absolutely intolerable, urging the North to fully comply with relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Trump said that he wants everybody to understand and fully know that the United States stands behind its great ally Japan 100 percent.  [KBS World]

Here is how the ROK has responded:

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) denounced North Korea for its latest ballistic missile launch.

Following North Korea’s missile launch Sunday morning, the JCS issued a statement, calling the military action a “grave threat to peace and safety of South Korea and the international community.”

The JCS warned that the Kim Jong-un regime will only see its collapse unless it wakes up from the delusion of nuclear and missile provocations.

The JCS said the missile launch is unacceptable and the military is prepared to immediately respond to any North Korean provocation.

The South Korean military stressed that the missile launch came in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.  [KBS World]

I think the response was handled well by everyone because on the scale of North Korean provocations this is very low and people should not over react to it in my opinion which so far no one is appearing to do.

Can the U.S.-Japan alliance survive Trump? @rosenbergerlm explains. https://t.co/cOfFSAYzTh pic.twitter.com/wFN7qcduOQ

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) February 11, 2017

It looks like out of the all the world leaders so far that have interacted with President Trump, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to be the one that has developed the best relationship with him so far:

With a hug and a handshake, President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened a new chapter in U.S.-Japan relations on Friday with Trump abruptly setting aside campaign pledges to force Tokyo to pay more for U.S. defense aid.

The two leaders appeared to have established a quick friendship during a day of talks at the White House and a flight together aboard Air Force One to Florida for a weekend of golf.

At a joint news conference with Abe, Trump avoided repeating harsh campaign rhetoric that accused Japan of taking advantage of U.S. security aid and stealing American jobs.

It was a welcome affirmation for Japan in the face of challenges such as China’s maritime expansion and North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.

“We are committed to the security of Japan and all areas under its administrative control and to further strengthening our very crucial alliance,” Trump said. “The bond between our two nations and the friendship between our two peoples runs very, very deep. This administration is committed to bringing those ties even closer,” he added.

A joint U.S.-Japanese statement said the U.S. commitment to defend Japan through nuclear and conventional military capabilities is unwavering.

The statement amounted to a victory for Abe, who came to Washington wanting to develop a sense of trust and friendship with the new U.S. president and send a message that the decades-old alliance is unshakeable.

Japan got continued U.S. backing for its dispute with Beijing over islands in the East China Sea that China also claims. The statement said the two leaders affirmed that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan security treaty covered the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link.

This is not a course of action I would recommend at this point considering the other options that have yet to be fully used to pressure the Kim regime and China:

Talk is growing in the United States of the possibility of using military strikes to take out North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities after the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, threatened he’s close to testing a long-range missile apparently capable of hitting the U.S.

Kim said in his New Year’s Day address that the communist nation has reached the final stage of preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile. The remark was seen as a thinly veiled threat that Pyongyang is close to developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the continental U.S.

The threat appears to have stoked genuine fears of security among Americans, with reporters bombarding the Defense Department with questions of what the U.S. is going to do about the North’s missile, including whether it’s going to shoot it down or even launch a preemptive strike before it’s fired.

It also prompted President-elect Donald Trump to send a tweet: “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!”

On Wednesday, a private intelligence analysis firm, Stratfor, even laid out a list of potential targets in North Korea, including the Yongbyon nuclear complex, home to the North’s plutonium-producing reactor and reprocessing facility.

“When considering an attack on North Korea, there are two broad categories of strikes to deliberate. The first is a minimalist strike, specifically focused on dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons program. In this scenario, the United States would engage North Korean nuclear objectives only,” Stratfor said in an analysis piece carried by MarketWatch and, titled, “How the U.S. could derail North Korea’s nuclear program by force.”

“By not launching strikes on other North Korean targets, Washington leaves the door open, if only slightly, for de-escalation if Pyongyang can be convinced that the strike is not part of a regime change operation. What benefits Pentagon planners in this scenario is that a limited strike requires less resources and preparation, enhancing the element of surprise,”

Potential targets in the minimalist strike include the Yongbyon complex, including the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor and the reprocessing plant, as well as the Pyongsan uranium mine that provides fuel for the reactor, and the Pyongsong nuclear research and development facility, known as the North’s “Silicon Valley,” Stratfor said.

“These facilities form the heart of North Korean nuclear production infrastructure. If they were destroyed or disabled, the North Korean nuclear production network would be crippled, set back years at least,” it said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but what anyone thinking of advocating for a limited strike on North Korea needs to answer is what is the response then when the Kim regime retaliates and launches a limited artillery strike on Seoul?  Can you imagine what the reaction will be from the Korean public will be especially if a left-wing President is elected this year?

Here is what one expert thinks of President-Elect Trump’s North Korea strategy:

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appears to lack a plan on how to deal with North Korea even though his administration is set to take off in less than a month, a U.S. expert said Sunday.

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also said in an interview with CBS television that the Trump foreign policy team doesn’t seem to have a full strategy yet on China.

North Korea is “not an issue that Trump knows a lot about,” Glaser said, adding that the concern for the United States is that the North Koreans could pose an existential threat to the homeland if they can make a nuclear warhead that can potentially reach U.S. territory.

“Do we have a strategy that focuses on defense? Do we take a much more aggressive posture against North Korea?” Glaser said, wondering about Trump’s plan. “Some people are raising the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on a missile, if it’s on a launch pad, because we don’t know what’s atop that missile, whether it’s a satellite or a nuclear warhead.

“There may be some discussions about whether we really need to try to cut off trade and harm North Korea’s economy, go beyond sanctions that are really focused on depriving North Korea of weapons of mass destruction,” she said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but North Korea is not an “existential threat to the homeland”.  The Kim regime would need a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons along with the transport erector launchers (TELs) to launch them to be able to destroy a country the size of the United States.  Plus the DPRK’s warhead technology would have to be advanced enough to defeat the US’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.  The Kim regime’s nukes are at best a deterrent that puts a handful of US cities at possible risk if military action is taken to remove the Kim regime.

As far as sanctions they obviously are not working to stop the Kim regime’s WMD programs because of China.  As North Korean diplomat turned defector Thae Yong-ho has already said, the Kim regime understands it can get away with nuclear development because the Chinese will do nothing to stop them.

It is pretty clear that the incoming Trump administration does have a plan, it is just that it is one that is going to focus on China instead of North Korea which Glaser has already pointed out:

“It looks to me like Trump is trying to keep China off balance, to try and signal that he’s not necessarily going to conduct business as usual in the same way that it has been conducted over the last eight years under Obama and that he thinks it can appear that he can gain some leverage by signaling a willingness to confront China,” Glaser said.

Prelude

Between 1966-1970 soldiers stationed on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) came in regular contact with North Korean infiltrators probing US military defenses in what became known as the “DMZ War”.  Two examples of such incidents occurred the morning of August 10th, 1967 when North Korean infiltrators conducted two separate ambushes of 2nd and 7th Infantry Division soldiers:

The events that morning began when a 2nd Infantry Division military working dog by the name of “Blackie”, handled by Specialist Jack L. Tyrrell, were leading a squad sized patrol in the early morning hours.  The patrol was sent out at dusk after a sentry during the night had heard a possible North Korean infiltrator near his post.  As the patrol looked for the infiltrator Blackie smelled something suspicious and headed for a nearby tree.  That is when a North Korean infiltrator sprung out from behind the tree and shot Blackie and SPC Tyrrell.

Ambush Prevented

After the initial firing more concealed North Koreans opened fire on the American patrol.  However, the warning provided by Blackie had given the other members of the US patrol time to take cover.  This allowed the Americans the opportunity to immediately return fire at the ambushers.  The North Koreans realizing that their ambush had been compromised withdrew back towards the DMZ.  The ambush cost Blackie his life, but no other Americans were killed with SPC Tyrrell being the only person wounded.

Work Detail Ambush

However, the ambush that Blackie had prematurely triggered was not the only ambush the North Koreans had planned that morning.  US 7th Infantry Division soldiers from B company 2-31 Infantry Regiment had conducted a woodcutting mission inside the South Korean side of the DMZ that morning before returning to their camp for lunch around 11:45 AM.  The soldiers moved south in a two truck convoy up a small hill in a drizzling rain.  Each truck carried a platoon of US soldiers in the back of it.  As the convoy approached the crest of the hill approximately 3-4 North Koreans appeared on the side of the lead truck and lobbed grenades at it.  One of the grenades landed on the hood of the truck and killed the Platoon Sergeant Philip Boudreaux.

After the initial grenade attack more North Koreans opened up on the lead truck with small arms fire.  In the ensuing ambush two more US soldiers, PFC Donald Craplicki and PFC Jerry Skaggs would be killed.  The fatalities could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the actions of Specialist David Richardson who stood up on the back of the truck and returned fire at the ambushers while the other soldiers jumped out over the side of the truck and into an adjacent ditch to take cover.  SPC Richardson was wounded by grenade fragments and shot twice, but incredibly continued to return fire.  The return of fire from Richardson allowed platoon leader 2nd Lieutenant David Colwell who rode in the second truck to organize a response to the ambush.

While soldiers in the second truck took cover Colwell crawled up the hill to the first truck to check on the status of the soldiers. After helping to get wounded soldiers in the ambush zone out of the truck and administering first aid he ran back down the hill to order a soldier to run to a nearby outpost to request reinforcements.  Other soldiers in the second truck then pushed forward to return fire at the ambushers.  The firefight lasted about 30 minutes before the North Koreans withdrew back across the DMZ.  No North Korean bodies were found, but US soldiers reported seeing some of the ambushers shot and blood was later found at the scene.

The aftermath from the ambush left the US with 3 soldiers killed in action, 16 more wounded and one ROK Army Korean Augmentee to the US Army (KATUSA) also wounded.   2LT Colwell would later go on to be recognized with a Bronze Star for his actions that morning.  I could find no record of Specialist Richardson being awarded any valor medals, but it seems like he would have been a great candidate as well.

Ambush Aftermath

A few days after the ambush the United Nations Command officially protested the aggression during the 253rd meeting of the military armistice commission.  During the meeting the UNC spokesman Major General Marvin Demler blasted the North Korean delegation for the deadly attacks.  North Korean spokesman Major General Chung Kuk-pak had the audacity to claim that if any UN soldiers had been killed it was because they shot each other by mistake.  Later in the meeting Maj. Gen. Demler responded to the North Korean subterfuge by saying, “My colleagues and I agree that the proper assessment of this situation is that every ass likes to hear himself bray.”  Demler continued to say that the UNC would “hunt down and kill or capture all North Korean communist intruders.”  Despite Demler’s tough talking the North Koreans would go on two weeks later to launch an even more deadly ambush on Camp Liberty Bell that left 4 soldiers dead and 26 wounded to further escalate the growing DMZ War.

Click the below link for more DMZ Flashpoints articles:

Have you wondered how many illegal Korean immigrants there are in the United States? According to the Korea Times the number of Korean illegal immigrants has actually been declining in recent years and has dropped to 160,000 people:

Trump reaffirmed his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.

“After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people, but we are going to make a determination on that,” he said.

Early this month, the Pew Research Center estimated that 160,000 Koreans were in the U.S illegally.

The center said the number of illegal Korean immigrants in the U.S. had risen steadily since 1990 to a peak of about 200,000 in 2010 before declining moderately to 190,000 in 2011 and 180,000 in 2012. [Korea Times]

For those that have visited the Yushukan Museum located adjacent to the highly controversial Yasukuni-jinja Shrine, there is definitely an alternative history of World War II taught in Japan. The majority of people in Japan do believe that the Imperial Japanese militarism was a great folly, but there are people who believe the history taught at the Yushukan Museum that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was to preempt an American attack on Japan and liberate Asian people from western colonialism:

The Pearl Harbor attack that led the United States into WWII is normally a historical footnote in Japan, rarely discussed on anniversaries or in depth at schools.

That changed when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced he would visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama on Dec. 27 to offer “comfort to the souls of the victims.”

Most Japanese today view the war as a great folly. The clause in Japan’s constitution that renounces the nation’s right to wage war has taken root so deeply that even new, restrictive laws allowing Japan to defend its allies were viewed with suspicion last year.

However, some divergent perspectives over history remain among two of the world’s closest allies.

Americans are taught that the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked sneak attack.

The view among some Japanese, and particularly among some otherwise pro-U.S. alliance conservatives, is that a Western economic embargo forced Japan’s hand.

By 1941, Japan controlled large parts of China and other parts of Asia. In July, its military occupied parts of Southeast Asia, including a key port in what is now Vietnam.

The U.S., Britain and The Netherlands responded by freezing Japanese assets in their countries, which included access to most of Japan’s oil supply.

“Indeed, the oil embargo cornered Japan,” Emperor Hirohito said in an audio memoir recorded shortly after the 1945 surrender. The memoir was found in 1990 by the Bungei Shunju magazine and then translated by The New York Times.

“Once the situation had come to this point, it was natural that advocacy for going to war became predominant,” Hirohito said. “If, at that time, I suppressed opinions in favor of war, public opinion would have certainly surged, with people asking questions about why Japan should surrender so easily when it had a highly efficient army and navy, well trained over the years.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the best book I have read about the period before the attack on Pearl Harbor is Eri Hotta’s: Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy.  I highly recommend ROK Heads read this book to really understand why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese had opportunities to keep parts of their Chinese and Korean colonies if they would withdraw from other areas of China and Southeast Asia as demanded by the US and its allies. How different would things be today if Japan had been allowed to continue the colonization of Korea and parts of China?

There was actually a lot of dissenting opinions in Japan, but the militarists eventually were able to convince enough people they could replicate the success of the Russo-Japanese War with a decisive naval victory against the US at Pearl Harbor.  As history has shown the bombing of Pearl Harbor became one of the great misjudgments in military history.

Regardless of the history involved it is good to see Prime Minister Abe finally make the visit to Pearl Harbor and hopefully put an end to any remaining hard feelings about World War II.