Tag: USFK

This may cause some to wonder if the weather was just good excuse to not provoke North Korea prior to President Moon’s summit?:

The United States and South Korea canceled plans to conduct a Marine amphibious assault exercise as part of joint war games this week due to bad weather, the Combined Forces Command said Wednesday.

The announcement comes days after the allies began annual military drills known as Foal Eagle amid a diplomatic push with North Korea that has sharply eased tensions on the divided peninsula.

The allies are keeping this year’s exercises low-key due to the developing detente with the North after months of saber rattling and missile tests as it made progress in its nuclear weapons program.

The U.S.-led command said the changes to the Ssangyong exercises, which are part of Foal Eagle, were due to bad weather.

The assault exercise, which evokes memories of the World War II invasion of Normandy, had been scheduled for Thursday.

“U.S. and (South Korean) leadership canceled the amphibious landing portion of the training exercise … after weather assessments indicated unsafe landing conditions for servicemembers,” the CFC said in a press release.

Participating units in the air and sea portions will continue training as planned, it said, adding the routine drills are held twice a year to build and maintain fundamental military readiness.

“This was a good call by the on-scene commanders, who must balance readiness and risk — even in a training environment,” said Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of the CFC and U.S. Forces Korea.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

The long awaited joint military exercise has finally begun:

A combined field training of South Korean and U.S. troops got under way Sunday as scheduled, defense officials said amid a nascent peace mood on the divided peninsula.

More than 11,500 service members, including thousands based outside of Korea, plan to participate in the four-week Foal Eagle training, along with around 300,000 South Korean soldiers.

The allies often kick off their largest annual military exercise in late February or early March for a two-month run. This year, however, they waited until the end of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games here.

The duration of Foal Eagle has been shortened to a month, with no major U.S. strategic assets such as supercarriers and nuclear subs expected to show up.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this update on the status of the THAAD site in Seongju:

The setup of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery from the U.S. in southwestern Korea has been on hold since September last year as locals and activists block access to the site.

“There’s been no progress in the construction of THAAD facilities, as well as the quarters for U.S. troops,” who are to operate the battery, a military spokesman told reporters Monday.

Seoul and Washington agreed in September 2016 to deploy THAAD interceptor launchers at a former golf course in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province. The U.S. Forces Korea brought two launchers last April and four more last September.

A USFK source claimed the South Korean government appears to be neglecting the deployment, which has been widely unpopular.

A steel barricade set up by activist groups and locals last April still blocks the road near the THAAD deployment site.

According to police, about 10 locals check passing vehicles in tag teams of two around the clock to block any USFK vehicles or trucks carrying equipment.

Although this is highly illegal, police seem to have done nothing .

“We’ll resolutely clamp down on illegal demonstrations,” a police spokesman said. “But it’s our principle not to stoke upheavals.”

Police have drastically reduced their presence at the site. About 300 troops from four police companies were deployed last September, but now only some 80 are on standby some 4 km away.

The USFK is reduced to running the THAAD battery as if in a field maneuver, on generators fueled by diesel flown in by helicopter.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but resupplying the site by helicopter seems to me to be riskier than by a ground approach.  If a helicopter was to crash I wonder if that will change the situation on the ground any?

Via a reader tip comes this conviction against reporters who disclosed the affair of a USFK civilian worker:

South Korea’s top court on Tuesday confirmed the conviction of three weekly magazine reporters who were accused of publishing an extramarital affair story involving a Korean civilian worker at United States Forces Korea (USFK).

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling, fining them 3 million won ($2,800) each for defaming the worker.

The court rejected the reporters’ claim that their reporting was justifiable in light of people’s right to know and the freedom of press.

It said the disputed story dealt with a “sheer private affair” whose publication did nothing for public interest. The court said the story was published with personal details edited out, but not enough.  [Korea Times]

Can you imagine if the US had South Korea’s defamation laws?  The journalists in America would all be broke from lawsuits.

This may be a blueprint that we may see played again by North Korea in upcoming talks to meet their goal of separating the ROK from the US:

In the late 1980s, North Korea proposed creating a neutral state on the Korean Peninsula that could serve as a buffer zone in the region, declassified diplomatic documents showed Friday.

Then Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev delivered the North’s secret proposal to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan during their summit in Washington on Dec. 9, 1987, according to the documents disclosed by the foreign ministry.

Under the plan, the North wanted to create a federation-style republic consisting of two different governments representing the two Koreas and declare it as a neutral state that could serve as a regional buffer zone, the documents said.

The North also called for the two Koreas to sign a nonaggression treaty and replace the current armistice with a peace treaty, while suggesting the new entity would join the United Nations under a single name.

In addition, Pyongyang sought to scrap all agreements or treaties reached with third parties deemed to be running counter to their pursuit of reunification, a demand interpreted as a way to put pressure on Seoul to walk away from its mutual defense treaty with the U.S.

The North suggested the two Koreas reduce the number of their respective troops to fewer than 100,000 as a step toward building a peace mood and called for the withdrawal of any nuclear weapons and foreign troops from the peninsula, apparently targeting U.S. troops stationed in the South.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this shows the Kim regime has long tried to separate the ROK from the US.  Their nuclear weapons program is just the latest attempt to make this happen.  Their nuclear weapons program that can threaten the US is being used as a bargaining chip to separate the US from South Korea and then seek a confederation on North Korean terms.

It looks like President Trump’s steel tariff may force the South Koreans to agree to ultimately pay more for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance:

South Korea may agree to shoulder a larger burden of the cost of stationing U.S. troops on its soil as part of the two nations’ deal on trade, a former White House official said Monday.

Victor Cha, who served as Asian affairs director on the National Security Council of George W. Bush, raised the possibility shortly after Seoul announced a tentative deal with Washington on amending their free trade agreement and exempting the Asian nation from new U.S. steel tariffs.

“If there is any tacit issue linkage with this agreement, we might expect to see South Korea agreeing to a higher burden sharing obligation in ongoing negotiations on a new Special Measures Agreement where the U.S. is pushing for South Korea to pay larger share of costs for stationing U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula,” he wrote in a commentary for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is currently senior adviser and Korea chair.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Just another example of how newspapers are going extinct:

The final edition of the Morning Calm, the last surviving Army newspaper in South Korea, ran off the press Wednesday evening.

A peninsula-wide institution, the biweekly Morning Calm detailed the lives of soldiers from Busan in the south to Camp Casey near the Demilitarized Zone.

It went the same way as many struggling newspapers in a wired world of instant shares and likes when Eighth Army commander Lt. Gen. Michael Bills declined to renew its contract this month.

Closing the paper will give public affairs staff more time to focus on local news and communicate with communities online, Camp Humphreys spokesman Bob McElroy said.

“They all felt that the time they devoted to the paper would be better used to focus on their communities rather than producing articles and photos that were outdated by the time the paper came out every two weeks,” he said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but here is the link to the 8th Army website which I would hope will be updated significantly if the PAO is no longer publishing a newspaper.

I would think US military families would be taking this year’s Focused Passage training a little more seriously than in year’s past:

The U.S. military plans to hold a regular noncombatant evacuation drill in Korea next month under the scenario of a crisis here despite markedly eased tensions.

The Focused Passage training will take place from April 16-20, when South Korean and U.S. troops stage a massive combined combat exercise called Foal Eagle, according to the Stars and Stripes newspaper.

It’s aimed at ensuring U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) service members and families are prepared to evacuate designated noncombatants in case of a conflict on the peninsula.

Around 200,000 American civilians are said to reside in Korea.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

4-Star General Vince Brooks to step down from RoK-US Combined Forces Command in July or August per Joongang for "personal reasons." Brooks made his decision known to DoD sources and let his acquaintances know that he'll be leaving in the 2nd half of 2018.https://t.co/JtU0aqTPVT

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) March 15, 2018

It appears the Kim regime is positioning its self for talks with President Trump.  Wanting a peace treaty that would lead to the withdrawal of USFK has been a long term goal of the Kim regime:

North Korea on Wednesday slammed the ongoing negotiations between South Korea and the United States to renew their deal on defense cost sharing, claiming that South Koreans want the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the peninsula.

The North’s claim comes ahead of a planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and its leader Kim Jong-un that would be held by May. It fuels speculation that the North may seek to strengthen its bargaining power ahead of the talks, experts say.

The North has long insisted that the some 28,500 American forces stationed in South Korea should be pulled out for peace. Analysts said that Pyongyang might seek inter-Korean unification by force if U.S. troops are withdrawn.

The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North’s ruling party, condemned Seoul and Washington’s latest talks on defense cost sharing, claiming South Koreans are the ones who hope for the troops’ withdrawal.

“What South Koreans want is an unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South, an unwelcome guest that poses a threat to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula,” the newspaper said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.