The trickle of ethnic Koreans from Russia’s Sakhalin island continue to trickle back to South Korea:
Twenty-one ethnic Koreans who were taken to Russia’s far eastern island of Sakhalin for forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule returned to their home country Saturday, the foreign ministry said.
A total of 91 people, including the former forced laborers and their family members, arrived at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, under a government support project that will help them get permanent residency here or get dual citizenship if they apply. They all have Russian citizenship.
The average age of the ethnic Koreans who were relocated to Sakhalin during World War II was 88, with the oldest one at age 90.
After a 10-day quarantine, the returnees and their family members will reside in rental homes in Ansan, 42 kilometers south of Seoul, and Incheon, 40 km west of the capital.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Russia has slowly been reducing the personnel in their embassy in South Korea to where now they are down to only two diplomats:
Russia has withdrawn most of its embassy staff in North Korea, a Seoul official said Thursday, as pandemic-driven shortages of everyday commodities and anti-virus restrictions have driven many foreign diplomats out of the impoverished country.
NK News, a media outlet on the North, reported earlier dozens of Russia’s embassy personnel left Pyongyang on Wednesday via train, leaving behind only two diplomats, including Ambassador Alexander Matsegora, and other technicians.
“Russia used to have a large embassy that could originally station around 100 people, but the government understands that most of them have left,” the official at the unification ministry told reporters on the customary condition of anonymity.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they had to use a hand pushed trolley to leave North Korea like the prior diplomats.
A joint Japanese and Russian naval fleet sailed around the main island of Honshu, Japan in response to the international community sailing ships through the Strait of Taiwan. The big difference between this exercise and the international community’s freedom of navigation patrols is that no one from Japan is shrieking about the exercise like the Chinese government routinely does after freedom of navigation patrols. This shows how secure the Japanese government is unlike the CCP which has to shriek after every international military exercise or freedom of navigation patrol to drum up internal nationalism to legitimize their rule:
A combined Russian Navy and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet concluded a sail in international waters east of Japan’s main island of Honshu and split off to their home ports on Saturday, all while being monitored by Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and aircraft during the voyage.
The Chinese ships were Type 055 destroyer Nanchang (101), Type 052D destroyer Kuming (172), Type 054 frigates Binzou (515) and Liuzhou (573) and the replenishment ship Dongpinghu (902). Russian ships were destroyers Admiral Tributs (564) and Admiral Panteleyev (548), corvettes Gromkiy (335) and Hero of the Russian Federation Aldar Tsydenzhapov (339) and the missile range instrumentation ship Marshal Krylov (331).
The combined fleet had entered the Tsugaru Strait on Oct. 18 and since then had been sailing off Honshu. The Joint Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Force issued a release and map on Saturday stating that the joint fleet had sailed through the Osumi Strait that day. Located between the Osumi Peninsula and Tanegashima Island, the strait connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. Following their sail through the Osumi Strait, the ships of the two countries separated at a location 130 kilometers, or about 81 miles, southeast of the Danjo Islands.
USNI News
You can read more at the link.
I believe Putin just like his buddies in Beijing don’t want the North Korean problem solved because it ties up so many U.S. military and diplomatic assets to deal with that would be otherwise focused on them:
Putin made the remark during a virtual session with chiefs of global news agencies at an annual economic forum in St. Petersburg on Friday (Russia time), as the nuclear negotiations between the North and the United States remain deadlocked after the breakdown of the Hanoi summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then U.S. President Donald Trump in early 2019.
“The North Korean nuclear problem is not going to be resolved by pressuring the North and toughening the sanctions against it,” Putin said through an interpreter when asked by Cho Sung-boo, CEO and president of Yonhap News Agency in Seoul to comment on Moscow’s stance on North Korean nuclear issues.
“Only by ensuring the security of its people, and with patience and a careful approach, should we be able to resolve this problem,” he said.
Moscow has favored a phased-in approach to denuclearize the North that would come with reciprocal steps, including a partial lifting of U.N. sanctions, as the regime takes measures to roll back its nuclear program.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Well at least this time the Russians did not violate South Korean airspace like they did earlier this past summer:
Six Russian military aircraft violated South Korea’s air defense identification zone on Tuesday, prompting the Air Force to scramble fighter jets to turn them back, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
An A-50 early-warning aircraft, three SU-27 fighter jets and two TU-95 bombers entered the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) four times between 9:23 a.m. and 2:44 p.m. without prior notice and stayed in the zone for about four hours in total before leaving at around 3:13 p.m., according to the JCS.
The warplanes breached the KADIZ over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, including the country’s easternmost islets of Dokdo and the island of Ulleung in the East Sea; above the southern city of Pohang and the island of Jeju and areas in the Yellow Sea.
But none of the aircraft violated South Korea’s territorial airspace, the JCS said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Via a reader tip comes news that the Russians are holding 80 North Koreans for illegal fishing in Russian waters:
Russia says the ships were engaged in illegal fishing off its coast, and that one of the vessels launched an “armed attack”.
Three Russian border guards were reportedly wounded in a clash.
North Korea has yet to comment on the incident, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry has expressed “serious concern” and summoned the country’s top diplomat.
A spokesperson for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the two schooners were accompanied by 11 motorboats and were spotted poaching near the Yamato Bank, which lies between the Korean Peninsula, Russia and Japan.
Russia says they were caught in its Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from its coast.
MSN
What is ironic about this is that the Russians have done something more provocative than the Japanese have ever done with Dokdo. So are all the Dokdo crazies going to go protest in front of the Russian embassy now?:
South Korean warplanes fired hundreds of warning shots at a Russian military aircraft that entered South Korean airspace on Tuesday, defence officials said, while Russia denied violating any airspace and accused South Korean pilots of being reckless.
It was the first time a Russian military aircraft had violated South Korean airspace, an official at the South Korean Ministry of National Defence said in Seoul.
The incident, which also involved China and Japan, could complicate relations and raise tension in a region that has for years been over-shadowed by hostility between the United States and North Korea.
Two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers entered the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) together early on Tuesday, the South Korean defence ministry said.
A separate Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft later twice violated South Korean airspace over Dokdo – an island that is occupied by South Korea and also claimed by Japan, which calls it Takeshima – just after 9 a.m. (midnight GMT Monday), according to the South Korean military.
Reuters via a reader tip
You can read more at the link, but this is the first time a foreign aircraft has violated ROK air space and warning shots were fired. Despite all the Japan bashing over the years on the Dokdo issue they have never done anything close to this. Don’t forget that the Chinese are involved in this as well. Will any of the so called patriotic Koreans show up and protest in front of the Chinese embassy?
In my opinion this appears to be a planned provocation by the Chinese and the Russians to stir the pot between the ROK and Japan since they both claim the Dokdo islets.
I am surprised that Prime Minister Abe thought a deal over the Kuril Islands would ever be possible with Russia:
Kimio Waki remembers the day in 1945 when Soviet soldiers burst into his home, “machine guns in their hands, and with their shoes on.” He was just 4 years old. “They ransacked the house,” he said. “I’m left with my memory of fear.”
Waki and his family were among of 17,000 Japanese living on the southernmost Kurile islands – known in Russia as the Kurils – when Soviet troops invaded after Japan had announced its surrender in World War II. Over the next four years, all of them either fled or were forcibly evicted.
More than seven decades later, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embarked on a quixotic dream to persuade Moscow to return at least some of the islands, with President Vladimir Putin first dangling – then seemingly withdrawing – the prospect of a deal.
There had been hopes the two leaders might have signed a framework agreement on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, which begins June 28 in Osaka. But that dream has died, experts say.
“A deal to settle the territorial dispute – that’s really not on the table anymore,” said James Brown, an associate professor at Temple University’s campus in Japan.
Instead, Russia is now proposing to deepen economic cooperation by introducing visa-free travel for residents of the Russian island of Sakhalin and Japan’s island of Hokkaido, which lie west of the disputed smaller islands.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but Putin pulled the old okey-doke on Japan by appearing to be open to something Abe really wanted to pursue, but then twist it to try and get something else.
Putin is never going to willingly give back the Kuril Islands because it ensures that the Sea of Okhotsk remains a giant Russian lake by denying undetected submarine access. It also allows easy entry and exit for the Russian Pacific fleet anchored at Vladivostok.
