Tag: USFK

As I have been saying the suspension of joint exercises with South Korea is something that is easily reversible and can be used as negotiating leverage against the Kim regime:

President Donald Trump will resume military exercises with South Korea if the North stops negotiating in good faith over its nuclear weapons program, the top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

The tempered expectations were markedly different from the optimistic tone set by Trump in a series of tweets earlier in the day.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I think we will know whether North Korea is negotiating in good faith by the Key Resolve exercise timeframe early next year.  If North Korea is not making any irreversible progress towards denuclearization I would expect this exercise would be executed as scheduled.

Forget all the talk about denuclearization on the Korean peninsula following the Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore, the biggest news for me is President Trump announcing the stopping of joint military exercises:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will stop “provocative and expensive” war games with South Korea in a surprise reference to the joint military exercises Pyongyang has criticized as a rehearsal of invasion.

Trump made the remarks during a press conference that followed his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa.

“War games are very expensive,” he said, raising the issue of their cost.

“I think it is very provocative … You have a country that is right next door,” he added, referring to the communist state.   [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but President Moon has previously said that UFG would be scaled down and now President Trump has used to word stopped.  I guess we will see what this all means, but for now it is pretty clear that the August UFG exercise will not happen the way it is normally executed.

If the joint exercises are stopped this is a big win for President Moon.  His left wing base does not support the exercises while the political opposition conservative party does.  So Moon’s base gets what it wants, for now and Moon can tell his political opposition that he was not the one that cancelled the joint exercises, President Trump did.

These joint exercise are important for USFK due to the high change over in personnel on the peninsula which these exercises help to keep personnel trained with their ROK military counterparts.  However, just like everything that North Korea has committed to cancelling joint exercises are easily reversible from the US perspective.  I don’t see President Trump committing to something non-reversible like troop withdrawals from the peninsula until the Kim regime does something non-reversible such as removing nuclear material to a third country for disposal.

It should continue to be an interesting year to see how this all plays out.

There was a horrible accident over the weekend outside of Yongsan Garrison’s Gate 13:

An American family headed to a high school graduation ceremony on Yongsan Garrison was struck by tragedy on Saturday when their car was involved in a fatal collision with a motorcycle.

The crash, which occurred outside Gate 13, killed two people — one American and the South Korean motorcycle driver — and injured another American, garrison spokesman Wes Hayes told Stars and Stripes.

Hayes declined to identify the casualties and said the cause of the crash remained under investigation.

“Our hearts and prayers go out to all the victims of this tragic accident today,” Hayes said.

Many members of the community gathered at a chapel on post after the graduation ceremony to console each other and grieve.

A person at the chapel said the fatality was an American girl who was with her family on the way to watch her brother graduate from Seoul American High School. Her father, a civilian, was reportedly in critical condition.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hat tip to ROK Head Guitard for leaving the below link that shows the aftermath of this accident:

This next video shows the injured American father asking for help:

Condolences to all the family and friends effected by this tragic accident.

It seems too early in the negotiations to commit to any troop cuts within USFK, but if North Korea does take serious measures to eliminate their nuclear program I could see this happening at some point in the future.  I guess we will see what happens once the summit is complete:

Concerns are rising that U.S. President Donald Trump may use reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as a bargaining chip for a denuclearization deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Since taking office early last year, Trump has called for the need to scale down the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), as he believes Washington is not properly compensated for maintaining the troops here.

Trump has, for this reason, urged South Korea to take a bigger share in paying maintenance costs for the USFK during the ongoing negotiation to renew the five-year defense-cost-sharing for the American troops here. Under his “America First” policy, he said Seoul should take on more of the burden when renewing the agreement which expires at the end of this year.

“Less publicly, but still privately, Trump continues to say he does not agree with the argument that U.S. troops in South Korea are strategically necessary, and he thinks the U.S. gets nothing back from paying to keep them there,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin said in a recent column, citing administration officials and those who have had conversations with Trump regarding the issue.

“He (Trump) often asks his generals to explain the rationale for America’s deployments in Asia and expresses dissatisfaction with their answers.”

The White House and Pentagon denied the possibility for Trump to bring the agenda of downsizing U.S. troops to the dialogue table on Tuesday morning when the historic Washington-Pyongyang summit takes place in Singapore.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the UFG exercise this year will be very low key if the Kim regime continues to behave:

South Korea will conduct annual war games with the United States as planned but will avoid publicizing them to facilitate diplomatic efforts over the North’s nuclear weapons program, the defense ministry said Monday.

North Korea has sharply denounced joint military exercises, which it considers rehearsals for an invasion, ahead of an unprecedented summit planned between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore.

“We will be conducting the U.S.-[South Korean] joint military exercises normally in line with annual plans,” ministry spokesman Lee Jin-woo said during a press briefing. “But we’ll refrain from promoting the contents of the joint drills or opening them to the public as best we can.”

The comments came a day after North Korea criticized the South for planning to join upcoming international maritime drills in Hawaii known as Rim of the Pacific and a major joint exercise with the U.S. called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which begins in August.  [Stars & Stripes]

Complaining about the RIMPAC exercise is pretty stupid considering it is held in Hawaii and involves many more countries than just the US and South Korea.

Here is the latest on the future of USFK according to Defense Secretary Mattis:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis says the fate of U.S. Forces Korea is not an issue to discuss with North Korea.

Mattis, who is attending the Asia Security Summit in Singapore, said the issue is not on the table for the North Korea-U.S., nor should it be.

He also vowed efforts to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization(CVID) of the Korean Peninsula.

During a speech at the security summit on Saturday, he said the U.S. will support unrelenting diplomatic efforts for this aim.

South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo also spoke at the summit and said the South will not pursue North Korea’s collapse or Korean unification through absorption or any artificial means, and vowed to gradually ease inter-Korean military tensions.   [KBS World News]

You can read more at the link.

As I have long said the long term goal of the Kim regime is to get USFK off of the peninsula and the ongoing nuclear negotiations appear to be trying to advance that effort:

Joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are likely to become a key topic at the denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea.

The Rodong Sinmun, the North’s mouthpiece newspaper, published an op-ed article claiming the drills as a major source of security concern in Northeast Asia.

“It is an international practice for two negotiating sides to refrain from any military activities,” the article said.

“When the U.S. deploys strategic nuclear weapons during the joint military exercises with South Korea, all the ongoing dialogue momentum will return to the original state.”  (…..)

The regime last week threatened to cancel a planned summit between Trump and Kim, expressing anger over the Max Thunder joint air force exercises.

As the drills ended their two-week run last week, the regime ramped up criticism of the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercises between Seoul and Washington, annually held sometime around August.

“South Korea is making a fuss that it does not have plans to downsize UFG drills in August,” the propaganda newspaper said. It said the exercises are the root cause of breaking up peace and stability on the peninsula, urging their suspension in line with the ongoing dialogue momentum.  [Korea Times]

You can read more more at the link, but cancelling Key Resolve, UFG, and other joint exercises will impact the readiness of USFK.  These drills are especially important in a theater where many of the US troops rotate out in a year causing constant turnover.  North Korea appears to be trying to get the ROK to advocate to the US to cancel the upcoming UFG exercise.  If the ROK pushes hard to cancel the exercise this will likely cause tension within the US-ROK alliance which is what the Kim regime wants.

There is a new curfew policy that was recently implemented by the 2nd Infantry Division:

A 2nd Infantry Division policy memo published Tuesday says soldiers are required to be on base, at a residence or inside a hotel room by the new deadline, instead of the U.S. Forces Korea standard of 1 a.m. followed until Monday.

The curfew, which officials called a “readiness recall,” still ends at 5 a.m.

2ID did not identify any specific incident that sparked the change to the policy, but said readiness of the unit’s 12,000 troops was its main concern. South Korean police outside of Camp Casey and Camp Humphreys said Wednesday they had not noticed a significant increase of incidents involving U.S. personnel.

“The recall readiness time was moved one hour earlier in order to ensure that the division is consistently and completely in compliance with the U.S. Forces Korea readiness recall policy,” 2ID spokeswoman Lt. Col. Junel Jeffrey told Stars and Stripes Wednesday.  [Stars & Stripes via a reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but the change by one hour to a midnight curfew is not the biggest issue I see with this memo.  The policy memo also states that commander must account for 100% of personnel to the 2ID command staff on non-duty days by 12:30 AM.

It seems to me requiring servicemembers to sign in to the CQ desk each night would be the easiest way of doing this.  However, a 12:30 AM report time hardly gives units any time to consolidate a report after curfew which means people would likely need to sign in earlier than the curfew time.

I would be interested to hear from 2ID servicemembers in the comments section on how they saw units meeting this requirement over the long holiday weekend.

Here is another likely example of the Moon administration sending their left wing activists groups to advocate against USFK on their behalf:

South Korea is shouldering 73 percent of the cost for stationing U.S. troops here, a civic group claimed Tuesday, citing data from the governments of both nations.

Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK) said South Korea covered 72.6 percent of the costs for keeping 28,500 U.S. troops here in 2016, after analyzing defense expenditures of both South Korea and the U.S.

According to official announcements by Seoul and Washington, the total costs of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) presence here add up to around $2 billion (2.17 trillion won), of which South Korea pays 42 percent.

However, the civic group stated taking into account the sites South Korea provides for military bases, the percentage rises above 70 percent.

The group said South Korea paid around 3.39 trillion won in direct and indirect expenses for the USFK last year, according to data from the defense ministry.

Direct costs paid by South Korea for the USFK were 1.81 trillion won. This included 944.1 billion won in costs paid under the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), 666.7 billion won in expenses for relocating personnel to Pyeongtaek and 184.3 billion won for repairing military facilities. Also included in the expenses were managing the Korean Augmentation To the United States Army (KATUSA) and conducting environmental studies on bases.

Indirect costs totaled 1.57 trillion won ― most of which accounted for South Korea providing land for U.S. military use. The civic group said the land value exceeds 1.16 trillion won.

It also looked into expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense to reach the conclusion the cost-bearing ratio is 72.6 to 27.4.

“The U.S. government must stop forcing South Korea to raise its portion of costs, and must immediately return accumulated funds and illegally reaped interest earnings,” the group said.

It also demanded the U.S. stop calling for Korea to cover more costs of deploying U.S. strategic assets and maintaining a THAAD battery here.  [Korea Times]

By not including the cost of deploying US strategic assets to the peninsula this totally discredits what this group is claiming.  They are more than happy to include indirect costs for Korea in their analysis, but not indirect costs for the US military.  Imagine how much their analysis would change if the cost of an aircraft carrier or stealth bombers when they are deployed to the peninsula is included.  Better yet what about the cost of all the space based assets that USFK uses to protect South Korea that they get the benefit of and don’t have to pay for?

Someone at the Pentagon involved in the cost sharing talks should run all these numbers to counter what the left wing group SPARK is putting out.

A group of people stages a rally in front of the Foreign Ministry in downtown Seoul on May 21, 2018, calling for revision of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and denouncing U.S. forces for the environmental contamination of U.S. bases in South Korea. (Yonhap)