President Moon Expected to Confirm the Termination of the GSOMIA with Japan

As I have been saying the Moon administration needs an issue to run on in Parliamentary elections coming up early next year and really the only thing they got is the anti-Japan issue. From their point of view there is currently no reason to resolve this issue:

Washington is putting pressure on Seoul to renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Tokyo ahead of the Nov. 22 notification deadline to terminate the pact, which was signed at the U.S. initiative in 2016. Washington has sent key defense officials to Seoul this week ahead of the deadline. 

President Moon Jae-in will meet U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper this afternoon, according to Cheong Wa Dae. During the meeting, Moon is expected to explain the need to terminate the pact owing to Japan’s unchanged position on its trade restrictions against Korean companies. He is also expected to reiterate “equitable” cost-sharing for U.S. troops stationed in Korea amid ongoing negotiations on this issue. 

With the GSOMIA termination deadline only days away, there is intense media attention particularly on whether Cheong Wa Dae, which has adamantly called on Japan to reverse its trade restrictions first, may shift its stance, given the escalating pressure from the United States to maintain the agreement for the sake of “trilateral security cooperation.” 

However, it is unlikely that the presidential office will reverse its decision in light of Japan’s ongoing trade restrictions and its relentless stance on historical disagreements between the two countries, according to sources. During a Nov. 10 press conference, Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office (NSO), reiterated that Japan should make the first move and justified Korea’s decision to end the pact. “From our point of view, the recent difficulties in Korea-Japan relations were fundamentally caused by Japan,” Chung said. “I believe the Korean people understand that we could not extend the GSOMIA after Japan said that it carried out the trade restrictions because bilateral trust for security cooperation had been harmed.” 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration is blaming Japan for the trade dispute when it was the Moon administration that threatened to seize the assets of Japanese companies to pay World War II forced laborers even though an agreement was signed in 1965 that settled this issue and normalized relations between the two countries.