Tag: Japan

One thing North Korea is accomplishing is strengthening cooperation between South Korea and Japan. Will it lead to anything substantive? I guess we will see, but this is a good start:

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to strengthen trilateral cooperation to thwart North Korea’s escalating missile and nuclear threats during a trilateral summit in Cambodia, Sunday.

The three leaders held a flurry of summits among them amid North Korea’s escalating provocations in recent weeks.

“North Korea has been staging more hostile and assertive provocations than ever before,” Yoon said during the three-way summit held on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh. 

“North Korea’s provocations, which were staged at a time when South Koreans are deeply saddened (by the Itaewon crowd crush), clearly show that the Kim Jong-un regime is anti-humanitarian and anti-humanity,” Yoon said. “The cooperation among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan is a strong bastion for defending universal values and achieving peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.”

Biden and Kishida also noted North Korea’s recent provocations threaten the region’s peace and underscored the importance of trilateral cooperation among them.

“North Korea continues its provocative behavior, this partnership is even more important than it has ever been,” Biden said in his opening remarks at the trilateral summit.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This may explain why the political opposition has been recently out pushing anti-Japanese sentiment to get ahead of this announcement:

President Yoon Suk-yeol said, Thursday, he will sit down with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, on the sidelines of multilateral meetings in Southeast Asia later this week amid a series of provocations by North Korea.

“During the multilateral meetings, there will be several important bilateral summits,” Yoon told reporters a day before he leaves for Cambodia and Indonesia to attend meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Group of 20. 

In Phnom Penh, Yoon is scheduled to attend a South Korea-ASEAN summit, an ASEAN Plus Three summit and the East Asia Summit before departing for Bali for the G20 summit on Tuesday.

“A South Korea-U.S.-Japan summit has been fixed and several other bilateral meetings have also been set or are under discussion,” Yoon added. However, he did not elaborate on exactly when the meetings will take place.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Korean left is definitely coordinating to promote anti-Japanese sentiment against the Yoon administration as its tries to improve ties with Japan:

A salute South Korean sailors rendered to the “rising sun” flag of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force at a fleet review touched off an exchange Monday in Seoul between the nation’s defense minister and an opposition lawmaker.

South Korea’s navy attended the Japan International Fleet Review on Sunday in Sagami Bay near Tokyo for the first time since 2015. Eleven other countries, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and India, also sent warships to the ceremony.

Saluting the rising sun flag is equivalent to paying respects to a war criminal, said Jeon Yonngi, a Democratic Party member, during a National Assembly hearing.

The flag for some recalls Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 and its military aggression during World War II, when the Japanese Imperial Navy flew the flag. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has flown the same banner for more than 50 years, according to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

South Korea in 2019 asked the International Olympic Committee to ban the flag at the Tokyo Olympics, suggesting that it recalls for Asians the “scars and pain” of World War II as the swastika does for Europeans, according to a July 23, 2021, report in the Mainchi newspaper.

Jeon at the hearing broadcast by the assembly asked National Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup whether South Korean sailors should have saluted the flag as it passed on a Japanese vessel during the fleet review.

The sailors were saluting the host country warship, “in accordance with international practices,” Lee replied. “Thus, I would like to say it is not that the [South Korean navy] made a salute toward the rising sun flag.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Just another sign of warming relations between South Korea and Japan:

A South Korean naval vessel took part in Japan’s international fleet review on Sunday for the first time in seven years amid escalating nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

South Korea was one of 12 countries, including the United States, Canada and Australia, to take part in the review that took place in Sagami Bay off Kanagawa Prefecture, about 40 kilometers southeast of Tokyo.

Sailors aboard South Korea’s 10,000-ton logistics support ship Soyang saluted toward Japan’s helicopter carrier Izumo carrying Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, as sailors from other participating countries do while passing the carrier.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This would definitely add to Japan’s ability to launch offensive strikes if developed. However, this is something that is going to take many years to develop and build:

Moves are being made to build a submarine to examine the technical issues faced in deploying ones capable of firing long-range missiles, Japanese government sources have said.

The development plan will be included in the National Defense Program Guidelines to be revised by the year-end.

If the development progresses for actual deployment, Tomahawk cruise missiles that the government has approached the U.S. government about purchasing will be an option for the vessel.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Many personnel in USFJ lost their cost of living allowance (COLA) and the falling yen is helping to soften the financial blow for these service members:

 Japan’s plunging currency is softening the impact of inflation on American military personnel stationed in the country, even as the government cuts their allowances.

A dollar bought just over 149 yen on Monday for the first time in 32 years and was hovering around that level Tuesday evening. The yen has dropped 23% against the dollar this year as Japan continues to keep interest rates near zero.

In contrast, the U.S. Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate at each of its past three meetings, most recently in September, bringing the rate to between 3% and 3.25%, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

A higher interest rate is expected to slow inflation, but by promising higher yields it also attracts investment to the United States, which strengthens the dollar compared to other nations’ currencies.

The strong dollar is welcomed by U.S. service members in Japan, most of whomhave hundreds of dollars less to spend each pay period due to cuts in their cost-of-living allowance this month.

Most are no longer receiving COLA — tax-free money to help offset the costs of living in expensive areas overseas — following changes announced by the State Department on Oct. 1.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This line of attack was so predictable from the Korean left:

Nothing is wrong with holding joint military exercises with Japan to cope with the common threat of North Korea, a presidential spokesperson said Tuesday, rejecting opposition criticism that such drills could lead to the stationing of Japanese troops in South Korea.

Rep. Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, has been voicing such concerns while denouncing trilateral naval exercises, which South Korea held with the United States and Japan in the East Sea last week, as a move legitimizing Japan’s Self-Defense Forces as a regular military. 

His point was that such exercises would help advance Japan’s ambitions to become a normal country capable of waging war and South Korea could fall victim to Japan’s renewed militarism and face a fate similar to the 1910-45 colonial rule.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but in a war with North Korea, the ROK is going to need Japanese support so it is best to train for it now. The Korean left seems more concerned about Japan taking over Korea than the Kim regime or China. This argument would be like NATO countries saying they cannot train with Germany because then they would be taken over again by a rising Germany. This argument is stupid just like the Korean left’s argument about Japan.

Cynically they know their argument is flimsy and without merit, but they are just trying to tap into deep rooted anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea to further erode President Yoon’s poll numbers.

A big pay cut is coming to U.S. troops stationed in Japan at the same time prices are rising on just about everything:

Cost-of-living allowance cuts have left U.S. service members stationed in Japan with hundreds of dollars less to spend each pay period, amid a weak yen and rising prices for off-base goods and services. 

Most service members in the country are no longer receiving COLA — a tax-free allowance to help offset the costs of living in expensive areas overseas — following changes announced by the State Department on Oct. 1.

COLA fell to zero this month for troops on Okinawa, home to more than a dozen U.S. bases and the lion’s share of the 55,000 service members in Japan; at Yokosuka Naval Base, homeport of the U.S. 7th Fleet about 35 miles south of Tokyo; and at Yokota Air Base, an airlift hub that serves as headquarters for U.S. Forces Japan.

An online COLA calculator provided by the Defense Department shows that a sergeant stationed at Yokota with six years’ service and two dependents would have received more than $600 in COLA last October. A captain with the same family size and length of service would have gotten more than $800.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see what increasing military cooperation with Japan will do for President Yoon’s extremely low polling numbers:

South Korea said its military will strengthen security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan, including the deployment of “U.S. strategic assets,” after Kim Jong Un’s North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles Sunday.

The provocations, in violation of United Nations Security Council’s resolutions, will strengthen sanctions against North Korea, worsen public welfare and make the regime “very unstable,” South Korea’s National Security Council said in a statement after an urgent meeting to brief President Yoon Suk Yeol. The missiles were launched from the Munchon area in Kangwon province between 1:48 a.m. and 1:58 a.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an email.

The missile tests add to 10 launched by North Korea over the past two weeks. The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier group made a U-turn after one of those missiles flew over Japan. The group returned to waters off the Korean Peninsula and held missile defense exercises with naval forces from Japan and South Korea on Thursday.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it appears the ROK is overselling sanctions making the regime “very unstable”. The Kim regime has shown it knows how to whether sanctions with help from China and Russia plus their criminal activities.