Tag: Russia

Chinese Academic Provides Recommendation on How China Should Respond to Ukraine Crisis

A Chinese academic Hu Wei is the vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor’s Office of the State Council has written an article that has been translated into English that provides some good analysis on how China should react to the current crisis in Ukraine. Ultimately He advocates for China breaking from Putin:

China should achieve the greatest possible strategic breakthrough and not be further isolated by the West. Cutting off from Putin and giving up neutrality will help build China’s international image and ease its relations with the U.S. and the West. Though difficult and requiring great wisdom, it is the best option for the future. The view that a geopolitical tussle in Europe triggered by the war in Ukraine will significantly delay the U.S. strategic shift from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region cannot be treated with excessive optimism. There are already voices in the U.S. that Europe is important, but China is more so, and the primary goal of the U.S. is to contain China from becoming the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific region. Under such circumstances, China’s top priority is to make appropriate strategic adjustments accordingly, to change the hostile American attitudes towards China, and to save itself from isolation. The bottom line is to prevent the U.S. and the West from imposing joint sanctions on China.

US-China Perception Monitor

I highly recommend reading the whole article at the link.

Russia Adds South Korea and Japan to List of Unfriendly Nations

This is a list South Korea and Japan should be proud to be part of:

Russia has designated South Korea as an “unfriendly” nation after Seoul joined international sanctions against Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine, according to local reports Monday. 

The Russian government released a decree that South Korea is included on its list of “unfriendly states” that “have carried out unfriendly actions” against Russia, its nationals or entities, Moscow’s state news agency TASS reported. 

The United States, European Union states, Japan and several other nations that have imposed or joined sanctions against Russia following its attacks on Ukraine were also labeled as unfriendly states subject to restrictions imposed by Moscow.

Yonhap

You can read more at the list.

North Korea Blames U.S. for Russian Invasion of Ukraine

North Korea has commented for the first time about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it is about what you would expect, Russia has done nothing wrong and it is all the U.S.’s fault:

North Korea spoke on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the first time three days after the first attack. North Korea defended Russia and criticized the United States. However, Pyongyang did not specifically mention the details of Russia’s invasion and did not voice its views in an official statement released by the government, but instead released a comment by a researcher at the Society for International Politics Studies, implying the North’s complicated calculations behind the latest incident.

On February 26, the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released on its website a post arguing that the U.S. should not tear down the foundation of international peace and stability in the name of Ri Ji-song, a researcher at the Society for International Politics Studies. Ri wrote that in every region and country that the U.S. intervened in, seeds of discord were being sowed and relationships between nations were deteriorating. He argued that this trend was being established like a principle and that this was the current international order. He further criticized, “The root cause of the Ukrainian crisis also lies in the high-handedness and arbitrariness of the U.S. which has held on solely to the unilateral sanction and pressure while pursuing only global hegemony and military supremacy in disregard of the legitimate demand of Russia for its security.” Ri cited comments by global media and experts and claimed it was no coincidence that they found the fundamental reason for the Ukrainian crisis in the “imbalance of power in Europe due to the unilateral expansion of NATO and its threat as well as the grave threat to the national security of Russia.”

Kyunghyang Shinmun

You can read more at the link, but notably no where in the statement does North Korea actually mention that Ukraine was invaded by Russia.

President Moon Strongly Condemns Russian Invasion of Ukraine

With things escalating in the Ukraine it makes me wonder if North Korea will be asked by the Russians to start a provocation cycle to split U.S. attention between two theaters?:

President Moon Jae-in addresses a meeting of the National Security Council at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Feb. 22, 2022, in this photo provided by his office.

President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that Ukraine’s sovereignty must be respected and South Korea will join efforts for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Moon made the remarks during a National Security Council meeting convened after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of troops to two breakaway regions in Ukraine after recognizing their independence.

“Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he said. “Countries around the world must come together and work for a swift and peaceful resolution to the situation in Ukraine. South Korea will actively participate in these efforts as a responsible member of the international community.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Chinese and Russian Navies Complete Exercise with Transit Around Japan

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.

Korean Families Look to Find Relatives Lost During World War II on Sakhalin Island

This seems like an almost impossible task for Korean families members trying to find out what happened to their relatives that were conscripted to work on Sakhalin Island during World War II:

South Korean Shin Yun-sun shows photos of her 92-year-old mother, Baek Bong-rye, during an interview at her house in Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, July 29, 2020. Shin, 75, has spent decades pestering government officials, digging into records and searching burial grounds on Russia’s desolate Sakhalin island, desperately searching for traces of a father she never met. Shin wants to bring back the remains of her presumably dead father for her ailing mother. Japan’s colonial government conscripted Shin’s father for forced labor from their farming village in September 1943, when Baek was pregnant with Shin.

Historians say Japan forcibly mobilized around 30,000 Koreans as workers during the late 1930s and 1940s on what was then called Karafuto, or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

They endured grueling labor in coal mines and logging and construction sites as part of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy, which became heavily dependent on conscripted Korean labor when Japanese men were sent to war fronts.

Families thought their loved ones would return when Japan’s surrender in WWII cemented the Soviet Union’s full control over Sakhalin.

Soviet authorities repatriated thousands of Japanese nationals from Sakhalin. But they refused to send back the Koreans, who had become stateless after the war, apparently to meet labor shortages in the island’s coal mines and elsewhere.

Moscow’s attitude hardened further after Communist ally North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950; most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin had come from the South.

South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin since. But people like Shin who lost track of their relatives long before then have seen little progress.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but there are descendants from these Korean forced laborers that still live on Sakhalin Island that organizations sponsor to visit Korea.

Russian Diplomat Claims Kim Jong-un Unhappy with Defector Groups Depiction of His Wife

The Russians are alleging that the human rights activists sending of balloons with vulgar pictures of Kim Jong-un’s wife is what caused the recent uproar:

A Russian diplomat on Monday suggested that North Korea likely retaliated against defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in South Korea after recent leaflets contained obscenely edited photos of first lady Ri Sol-ju.

Speaking to TASS Russian News Agency, Russian Ambassador to Pyongyang Alexandre Machegora said the North Korean leadership and citizens were furious over leaflets sent on May 31 containing content that was deemed vulgar and insulting.

Days before demolishing the Gaeseong liaison office, the North’s ruling party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said plotting to harm the regime’s supreme dignity is more threatening than Seoul and Washington’s joint military drills.

Pyongyang’s retaliation is also believed to have been triggered by posts in the online communities of some defector groups in which individuals claimed to be buying ​items used by COVID-19 patients to send to North Korea to spark a pandemic that would cause Kim Jong-un’s regime to collapse.

KBS World Radio

I doubt this because the defector groups have been sending unflattering material of the Kim regime for a long time without this reaction. My theory is that the Kim regime was just looking for a convenient excuse to start a provocation cycle to pressure the Moon administration. The Kim regime behaved and did what it could to help the Korean left win April’s parliamentary elections and now wants to cash in by pressuring the Moon administration to unilaterally drop sanctions.

Korean Independence Fighter Identified from 1922 Photograph

I think Ambassador Harris should troll the Korean leftists by growing out his mustache to look like Choi Jin-dong:

In the black-and-white photo, two men wearing mustaches pose proudly in military uniforms with guns at their waists. The taller man on the left has been confirmed as independence fighter Hong Beom-do. But the identity of the short and stout man standing next to Hong has been shrouded in mystery for decades. Recently the identity of the mam was confirmed to be independence fighter Choi Jin-dong. / Courtesy of Ban Byung-yool

You can read the whole story about how Choi Jin-dong was identified at this link. The picture was taken in Moscow during a communist conference and the guns both are wearing were actually gifts from Lenin.