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Here is the latest on the pending termination of the GSOMIA:

The United States appears to be heaping pressure on South Korea to retract its decision to end a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo amid North Korea’s continued saber-rattling and specter of tighter security cooperation between China and Russia.

U.S. diplomats have openly voiced concerns over the looming termination of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), seen as a symbolic platform for Washington to expand its trilateral defense collaboration with the Asian allies.

In August, Seoul announced its decision to end GSOMIA in response to Tokyo’s new export curbs seen as political retaliation for last year’s Korean Supreme Court rulings against Japanese firms over wartime forced labor. It will expire on Nov. 23 unless Seoul reverses the decision.

In a recent interview with Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Marc Knapper, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan, urged Seoul and Tokyo to maintain GSOMIA despite their chilled ties.

“Nobody is happy with the situation. Actually not nobody — there are people happy with the situation, but they happen to be in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang,” Knapper said in the interview.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is what President Moon had to say about Japan’s trade restrictions that were implemented this week on South Korea:

President Moon Jae-in slammed Japan’s removal of Korea from its “white list” of trusted trading partners, urging Tokyo to become more “honest” about its reason and to acknowledge its historical wrongdoings on Thursday.  

Moon said that the Japanese government’s recent action was “very regrettable” as he held a cabinet meeting on next year’s budget in the Blue House, noting that Tokyo has “linked historical issues to economic matters,” calling its attitude “very disingenuous.”

Japan on Wednesday removed Korea from its white list of countries given preferential treatment in exports, implementing a decision reached by its cabinet at the beginning of this month.  

The Japanese government has yet to “state an honest reason for its economic retaliation,” Moon said, noting that it has shifted its rhetoric “as frequently as necessary.”

Tokyo’s export regulations implemented since the beginning of July are widely seen as retaliation for Korean Supreme Court rulings last year ordering Japanese companies to compensate Korean victims of forced labor during World War II. The top court acknowledged the illegality of Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over Korea and recognized that the victims’ rights to individual compensation have not expired.  

Japan has yet to officially acknowledge that its economic retaliations are a result of the forced labor rulings and instead has been citing national security concerns and a breach of “trust” as reasons for exports controls on Korea.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

Japan says the trade restrictions were put in place to help prevent illegal exports from South Korea to North Korea. There has been illegal exports to North Korea, but I think everyone knows the real reason for the trade restrictions is because of the threat to seize assets from Japanese companies over past historical issues. That is why Moon is calling the restrictions dishonest.

Moon goes on:

Moon further said that Tokyo “has been never honest” on historical issues, noting that Japan “was the perpetrator behind unfortunate chapters of history” in Korea and many other Asian countries.

The president said that Tokyo claiming the Dokdo islets in the East Sea, which Japan calls Takeshima, is “preposterous” as the islets are considered the first territory “to fall victim to imperial Japan’s aggression.”  

South Korea clearly owns Dokdo, but the Japanese government continues to make claims to it mainly because of the Kuril Islands occupied by Russia. If Japan drops their claim to Dokdo the Russian government could say that since Japan has recognized the ROK occupation of the Dokdo Islets as legitimizing the ownership of that islet, than the Russian occupation of the Kuril Islands after World War II should be legitimized as well.

Moon continues:

He pointed out that this “attitude” of the Japanese government, which distorts history and “neither acknowledges nor repents its past wrongdoings,” only “aggravates the wounds and anguish of the victims.”

Moon said it “is never shameful to remember and reflect on the past,” noting every country has such moments.  

“Recollection and self-reflection about the past can never be completed,” he said, and cannot be “brought to conclusion just by saying that repentance is over because it was uttered once, or that the past is completely over because an agreement was reached once.”

Tokyo claims that a 1965 treaty normalizing bilateral relations with Korea, which provided an economic cooperation fund, settled all compensation matters.

Japan has made multiple apologies and have clearly hit apology fatigue over their historical issues with South Korea. I am still waiting for the Moon administration to demand China and North Korea “repent on its past wrong doings” like he is saying Japan should continue to do. The destruction caused by North Korea and China during the Korean War was far worse than what Japan did during their colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula. Plus China continues to have their economic retaliation in place against South Korea over the THAAD issue.

Also it is interesting that Moon says that since an agreement was reached once doesn’t mean that matter is really settled which how he is likely justifying the withdrawing out of the comfort women agreement reached during the Park Geun-hye administration and demanding more compensation for Japan.

Most people probably felt the relationship with Japan was likely to go poorly once President Moon was elected after much progress during the Park administration was made to normalize the relationship. I don’t think anyone thought the relationship would get this bad though.

President Roh has made plenty of headlines in Korea in the last 24 hours.  First of all North Korea released an official message thanking various world leaders for providing flood relief in the aftermath of the floods that hit North Korea this summer.  Guess who they failed mention?:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has extended thanks to the leaders of 11 countries for their help in flood relief efforts, the North’s state media reported Tuesday, but the name of President Roh Moo-hyun was not included.

"He expressed deep appreciation for their sincere sympathy and warm-hearted comfort," the Korean Central Broadcasting Station said. [Yonhap]

Yes that is right, Roh Moo-hyun who is the world’s largest North Korea apologizer and aid provider couldn’t even get a message of thanks from Kim Jong-il.

Next Roh was making headlines because he says he won’t raise the nuclear issue with Kim Jong-il during the upcoming inter-Korean summit:

President Roh Moo-hyun said Tuesday that a Korean Peninsula peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War will be the most important agenda item at his summit summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il slated for Oct. 2-4 in Pyongyang. […]

In a hastily arranged news conference at Cheong Wa Dae, Roh, meanwhile, said he won’t raise the issue of the North’s denuclearization seriously at the upcoming inter-Korean summit, noting the nuclear issue has already been in the process of rapid settlement at the six-party talks which also involve the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. [Yonhap]

It is pretty clear now why Roh was so pissed off at President Bush during the APEC meeting because he wanted to center his legacy around being the Korean leader that officially ended the Korean War.  This may be why the inter-Korean summit was delayed so Roh could try and pressure Bush during the APEC meeting to sign a peace treaty with North Korea before they denuclearize.  There is no way Bush or any American president is going to sign a peace treaty with North Korea before denuclearization.  It would be political suicide.  The end of Roh Moo-hyun can not come any sooner for Korea because he needs to go before he causes irrepairable damage to the US-ROK relationship. 

In further inter-Korean summit news, Roh Moo-hyun will not bring up human rights for North Koreans either:

The National Human Rights Commission held a meeting on Monday of all 11 members and vetoed the idea of recommending that President Roh Moo-hyun includes North Korea’s human rights violations on the agenda of the summit with the communist country set for next month. [Chosun Ilbo]

But get this, the NHRC was against the Zaytun deployment to Iraq because they felt it would violate the human rights of Iraqis.  I guess building toilets for Kurds is more of a human right violation than holding hundreds of thousands of people in slave labor gulags. 

Finally Roh made headlines with the removal of his policy planning secretary Byeon Yang-kyoon due to a "close relationship" between him and the disgraced Dongguk University assistant professor Shin Jeong-ah who was exposed as using fraudulent degrees to earn her position:

The prosecution said they have found e-mails that showed Byeon and Shin were personally close, but refused to disclose the content. “We do not disclose private matters which are not directly related to a crime,” they added.  Cheong Wa Dae, which accepted Byeon’s resignation, said Byeon had “close ties” with Shin.  A prosecutor said the two exchanged about “100 love letters,” some of which contained “explicit lines.” [Kim Rahn, Korea Times]

It has not been a good week Roh Moo-hyun, but his upcoming World’s Most Expensive Photo Op should make him feel better as "peace and prosperity" is just around the corner according to Roh. 

It seems like everyone has got something to say about the current nuclear crisis here in Korea. The latest is the New York Times Op-ed from Nicholas Kristof.

North Korea is particularly awkward for Mr. Bush to discuss publicly because, as best we know, it didn’t make a single nuclear weapon during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office (although it did begin a separate, and secret, track to produce uranium weapons; it hasn’t produced any yet but may eventually). In contrast, the administration now acknowledges that North Korea extracted enough plutonium in the last two years for about half a dozen nuclear weapons.

In fairness, Mr. Bush is paralyzed only because the alternatives are dreadful. A military strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites might have been an option in the early 1990’s, but today we don’t know where the plutonium and the uranium are kept, so a military strike might accomplish little – but trigger a new Korean war. To fill the time, Mr. Bush has pursued six-party talks involving North Korea, but they have gotten nowhere.

Basically what I am getting from this is that Clinton appeasement is good and Bush hard line is bad. So what is Kristof’s idea to solve the nuclear crisis? Well here it is:

So what would work?

The other option is the path that Richard Nixon pursued with Maoist China: resolute engagement, leading toward a new “grand bargain” in which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear program in exchange for political and economic ties with the international community. This has the advantage that the best bet to bring down Mr. Kim, the Dear Leader, isn’t isolation, but contacts with the outside world.

A terrific new book on North Korea, “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” by Bradley Martin, underscores how those few glimpses that North Koreans have had of the outside world – by working in logging camps in Russia or sneaking trips to China – have helped undermine Mr. Kim’s rule. Yet Westerners have in effect cooperated with him by helping to keep his borders sealed.

At least China and South Korea have a strategy to transform North Korea: encourage capitalism, markets and foreign investment. Chinese traders, cellphones and radios are already widespread in the border areas, and they are doing more to weaken the Dear Leader than anything Mr. Bush is doing.

Is he suggesting Bush fly to Pyongyang ala Richard Nixon’s 1973 visit to China? Some how I don’t see that happening. As far as engagement this is exactly what the North Korean Human Rights Act is promoting.

As far as South Korea and China wanting to weaken Kim Jong Il, that is ridiculous. China does not want North Korea to collapse due to the masses of refugees that would follow. So they need to keep Kim in power, they just don’t want Kim to develop nukes because they fear Japan doing the same in response. As far as North Korean human rights abusive and aggressive rhetoric, the Chinese could care less.

South Korea does not want Kim’s regime to collapse either because Seoul does not want to pick up the bill of rebuilding the entire country after reunification. Plus the current prospects of cheap labor from the North is appealing to South Korean companies. So obviously both countries just want to keep the status quo with North Korea but would prefer one without nukes.

I also love all the pundits and politicians such as Bill Richardson on TV saying President Bush should negotiate with Kim Jong Il bi-laterally. I just keep thinking that arent’ these the same people that were criticizing President Bush for has uni-lateral (though it wasn’t unilateral) approach in dealing with Iraq? With all the US media coverage you would think the people of Seoul are heading for the fallout bunkers. I am happy to report that I still see people in the streets shopping, driving cars, and going to parks.