Tag: United States

Some further good news for South Korea is that President Trump is not putting any new restrictions on the country and instead focusing on Europe:

The United States may “re-evaluate” its travel warning for Korea and consider an early lifting of restrictions as the new coronavirus situation in the country improves, U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

Trump announced in a national address that the United States will be suspending most travel from Europe for 30 days starting Friday at midnight, to protect against the coronavirus pandemic. The entry ban excludes Britain and also exempts U.S. citizens and permanent residents.  

“At the same time, we are monitoring the situation in China and in South Korea,” said Trump. “And, as their situation improves, we will re-evaluate the restrictions and warnings that are currently in place for a possible early opening.”  

The U.S. State Department has a travel advisory of Level 4, the highest in its four-tier system, urging Americans not to travel to Daegu, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Korea. It has a Level 3 alert for the rest of Korea, urging Americans to “reconsider” visits to the country. Korea has in place in its airports a multi-tiered health screening of individuals flying to the United States, as requested by the Trump administration.  

Trump said in his speech that the European Union “failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots” and that as a result, “a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but members of the Korean government instead of making racist comments about U.S. Ambassador Harry Harris should instead be thanking him because he probably made the recommendation to not add any travel restrictions on Korea.

It is pretty clear that domestic political concerns are more important for the Moon administration than security concerns:

U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe noted the importance of trilateral security cooperation with South Korea during their talks in New York Wednesday, the White House said. On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump and Abe discussed issues of mutual interest and signed a preliminary bilateral trade agreement. The White House did not elaborate on the discussions on South Korea, but the two leaders are likely to have touched on Seoul’s decision to pull out of a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

1/The important part is not in the headlines. Moon held a cabinet meeting at KIST, and Cho Kuk was there. Moon & Cho were pressuring KIST to say Cho Kuk's daughter did an internship there, when she didn't. Cho's daughter claimed she was an intern there…https://t.co/3HLgzX52J4

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) September 11, 2019

The newly appointed U.S. Secretary of of Defense is in Seoul and he has quite a full plate of issues to discuss with his ROK counterparts:

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper arrived in South Korea on Thursday for talks that are expected to focus on a series of requests Washington has been making to Seoul, including a greater financial contribution to the cost of stationing American troops here.

Also expected to be on the agenda for Esper’s talks with South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo are the U.S. initiative to secure the shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz and Washington’s wish to get a military information-sharing pact between the South and Japan renewed.

Esper landed at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, from Mongolia for a two-day visit as part of his five-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific region, which includes stops in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, according to defense ministry officials. It is his first overseas trip since taking office last month.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but trying to get the ROK to pay significantly more for US troop upkeep will be extremely challenging. Also getting the ROK to contribute any serious naval commitment to the Strait of Hormuz will likely be challenging as well considering the relatively good relationship the ROK has with Iran. The ROK could look at this issue as that Iran is not messing with their energy shipments so why give them excuse to by supporting the U.S. on this issue?

Other issues to be discussed is the GSOMIA that South Korea has threatened to end with Japan over the current trade dispute and Seoul OPCON transfer. I would think the OPCON transfer should not be contentious considering Seoul wants the transfer, but the GSOMIA issue may be challenging.

Like I said the Secretary Esper has a full plate working these challenging issues with the ROK.

This is a good idea to not only discourage travel to North Korea, but also put a process in place to detect a intelligence collection threat that could be coming to the U.S.:

Any South Korean who visited North Korea after March 2011 will no longer be able to visit the United States visa-free, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The U.S. government said it is putting new restrictions on its Visa Waiver Program, or VWP, for citizens of 38 countries including South Korea who have visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia or North Korea. 

Under the VWP, South Korean citizens are eligible to visit the United States visa-free for up to 90 days as long as they register through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization at least three days in advance. 

This is no longer an option for South Koreans – or citizens of the other 37 countries – who have visited the North. While they will be allowed to visit the U.S., they will have to obtain a visa from a U.S. consular office.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This would seem to be in line with President Trump’s call for Japan to do more militarily in support of the US. However, this is not going to go over well in South Korea:

The defense ministry on Thursday voiced strong opposition to an alleged push by the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) to include Japan as an official member, saying that, according to U.N. Security Council resolutions, Tokyo is not entitled to such status.

According to sources, the UNC is seeking to include Japan as one of the UNC’s “sending states,” a move likely to inflame public sentiment in South Korea amid renewed historical tensions with Tokyo.

Should Japan obtain the membership, it would pave the way for its military involvement in the event of an armed conflict on the peninsula — a scenario unthinkable for many Koreans who harbor grievances stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.

Except for South Korea and the United States, the UNC currently has 16 sending states that are to provide combat troops, equipment and other forms of support in case of a contingency on the peninsula.

The sending states include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy and New Zealand. They have posted contingents at the UNC to support its operations centering on the observance and enforcement of the armistice that halted the 1950-53 Korean War.

“Japan did not participate in the Korean War, so it cannot serve a role as a sending state,” Col. Roh Jae-cheon, the deputy ministry spokesman told a regular briefing, citing U.N. Resolutions 83 and 84.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It seems a bit premature from President Moon to declaring peace in our time:

 President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that North Korea and the United States have effectively declared an end to their hostile relations with the symbolic weekend meeting between their leaders at the inter-Korean border.

Although they did not sign any document, their action was tantamount to a “de facto declaration of an end to hostile relations and the beginning of a full-fledged peace era,” Moon stressed, speaking at a Cabinet meeting.

He was referring to a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Sunday.

Yonhap

President Moon might want to wait until next year to see if this is still the case because Kim Jong-un has previously said the regime is giving until next year for sanctions to be dropped. The Trump administration does not seem like it is going to drop sanctions without real denuclearization. I guess we will see what happens.

This news should not be a surprise to anyone:

Democratic lawmakers in the United States, including some running for the White House, say there’s little in President Donald Trump’s diplomatic track to convince them that his meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (gihm jung oon) may lead to a nuclear breakthrough.

Trump is coming under criticism for what Democrats see as his affinity for authoritarian leaders such as Kim and they are skeptical that the Trump-Kim sit-down at the Demilitarized Zone may amount to anything more than a photo opportunity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer says “dictators seem to get elevated and people who believe in democracy not.”

Former Obama Housing Secretary Julian Castro, a presidential candidate, wonders why Trump appears keen to raise Kim’s profile when, according to Castro, Kim hasn’t abided by past commitments about the North’s weapons programs.

And Sen. Bernie Sanders, also a 2020 candidate, says he’s not opposed to sitting down with America’s adversaries, but he tells ABC’s “This Week” that “we need real diplomacy” and he hasn’t seen that under Trump

Associated Press

This is coming from the people who supported President Obama when he flew to Cuba with his whole family to hang out with the dictators there. I doubt President Trump’s engagement with North Korea is going to get them to denuclearize, but the claims from his critics sound more like “since Trump is for it, I must be against it” instead of any reasoned policy position.

Here is an update on the military family that has been trying to adopt their Korean niece in order to give her citizenship in the United States:

That was when the former Army lieutenant colonel and his wife Soo Jin were informed by the Federal District Court of Kansas that their adopted daughter Hyebin will be deported back to South Korea due to U.S. immigration law that cuts off the age when foreign-born adopted children can become naturalized U.S. citizens at 16.
The Kansas court ruled that Hyebin must return to Korea after she finishes earning her chemical engineering degree at the University of Kansas, which she will do in December. Schreiber and his wife are appealing through the 10th District Court of Appeals, though they are not optimistic about their chances of winning.
“We have no delusions that everything’s going to come out like a flowing bed of roses,” Schreiber told the Military Times. “We’ve always planned for two courses of action. So it was never something that we thought, ‘Yeah, things are going to work out the way we wish they would come out.’”
The immigration policy that is forcing Hyebin to leave the U.S. is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A spokeswoman for USCIS told the Military Times via email that “it is USCIS policy not to comment on ongoing litigation, nor will we speak to individual cases due to privacy concerns.”

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but this is a really tough case because LTC Schreiber missed the cut off date because he deployed to Afghanistan. When he came back to do her citizenship he found out it was too late for Hyebin to receive citizenship.

I am a bit surprised she not able to get a work visa sponsored by an employer considering she is about to graduate with a chemical engineering degree.

What is amazing about this is if she was a child of illegal immigrants she would be allowed to stay, but since she is a daughter of American citizens she will likely get deported.