Tag: US-ROK Alliance

No soon after I post an article speculating that South Korea is pursuing a policy of neutrality here comes President Moon’s trial balloon expert advocating for this exact policy:

South Korea should work together with Australia, Canada and Japan to form regional economic or security frameworks so as to create a new order free from the burden of choosing sides between the United States and China, an adviser to President Moon Jae-in said Friday.

Moon Chung-in, special foreign policy and security adviser, made the remarks during a virtual seminar, stressing that it is very unlikely the tensions between Washington and Beijing will get any better under the next U.S. administration of Joe Biden. 

“The Biden administration will be using a softer tone, but the policy will be as tough as Trump’s. There will be a tougher American encirclement of China, although he might be more selective in terms of technology and economy,” he said in the seminar hosted by the Korean Association for Public Diplomacy. 

“That will put us in an extremely difficult position. It will restore the old ‘bloc diplomacy’ … in the form of a new Cold War,” he said. 

Moon added that a worsening of U.S.-China tensions will make it difficult to resolve the North Korea issue peacefully.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Cold War era strategy worked and served South Korea’s national interest very well.

The OPCON transfer request by the Moon administration has always been a political goal and not a military one, so whether the ROK military is ready or not is mostly irrelevant:

The latest ministerial defense talks between South Korea and the United States have highlighted that the allies are not on the same page on the planned transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, and defense cost-sharing for American troops stationed here.

The disagreement occurred during the 52nd Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, where Defense Minister Suh Wook met with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper. 

South Korea is seeking to regain wartime OPCON of Korean troops from the U.S. by 2022, based on previous agreements that the transition will be made in accordance with the meeting of preconditions, without setting a deadline. To this end, the allies have been utilizing a three-phase verification process of initial operational capability (IOC), full operational capability (FOC) and full mission capability (FMC). However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they failed to fully assess the FOC this year. 

“South Korea will make utmost efforts to meet the OPCON preconditions as early as possible and ensure that South Korea-led combined defense posture remains strong and seamless,” Suh said. 

However, Esper stressed the need for South Korea to acquire the capabilities necessary to meet the requirements.

“Fully meeting all the conditions for the transition of operational control to a ROK commander will take time, but the process of doing so will strengthen our alliance,” Esper said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Even though the bilateral military exercise has been scaled down I suspect North Korea will still complain about it when it is executed:

South Korea on Sunday formally announced it will kick off combined military exercises with the United States on Tuesday, with drills to be scaled down this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.  
   
In a statement, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the allies will conduct computerized combined command post training from Aug. 18 to 28, with “all relevant conditions, such as the Covid-19 situation, comprehensively considered.”  
   
The adjustments made to the drills, which the JCS said would be focused on maintaining the allies’ combined defense posture, signaled a major setback to South Korea’s timetable to retrieve wartime Operational Control (Opcon) of its forces.  
   
Seoul had strongly pushed for the summertime exercises in spite of the ongoing pandemic in order to conduct an assessment of South Korea’s full operational capability (FOC) — a necessary step in the Opcon transfer process which Seoul had envisioned to complete by the end of President Moon Jae-in’s term in 2022.  
   
But this month’s drills would only “partly” feature a rehearsal for how the allied command structure would operate with a South Korean general in command, the JCS said, hinting that the FOC assessment will not be completed. (……)

Military sources said the effective postponement of the FOC assessment this month was owed to U.S. reluctance due to the coronavirus, which has prevented U.S. troops stationed in Hawaii, Guam and Japan from joining the drills. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This poll shows how small the number of Koreans with anti-U.S. views are in the ROK:

Most South Koreans expressed support for the South Korea-U.S. alliance despite ongoing tensions over burden-sharing, a new poll found Monday.

According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 90 percent of respondents said they either strongly support or somewhat support the alliance, similar to the 92 percent in December.

The survey, conducted on 1,000 adults in South Korea from June 23-25, also found that a unilateral withdrawal of American troops from South Korea is likely to undermine public support for the alliance.

That’s because the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea is closely linked to views of the alliance as mutually beneficial.

Eighty-two percent of the respondents said they are very confident or somewhat confident in the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea. Of those who are very confident, 78 percent said the alliance is mutually beneficial.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but unfortunately the anti-U.S. leftists in Korea have a big megaphone which can make it seem they are larger than what they really are.

Since the North Koreans are already developing this capability it makes sense for the South Koreans to develop the same technology as well:

 South Korea announced Tuesday it has become able to develop solid-propellant space rockets under the new missile guidelines with the United States, saying the deal is expected to help sharply improve the military’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and boost the space program of the private sector.

The allies agreed to lift the decades-old restrictions on Seoul’s use of solid fuels for its space rocket launch, effective as of the day, according to Kim Hyun-chong, deputy national security adviser.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This shouldn’t be surprising news to anyone following the US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

The Pentagon has offered the White House options to reduce American troop levels in South Korea, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the paper said the options were presented in March following a broader review of options for withdrawing troops from around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia.

The White House requested the review last fall, and by December, the Pentagon had come up with broad ideas, it said.

No decision has yet been made to reduce the number of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea from the current 28,500, according to the WSJ.

Yonhap

You can read more at link, but President Trump has already reduced U.S. troop levels in Germany over cost sharing issues and he has been having the same monetary disagreements with South Korea. This report I suspect was leaked to the Wall Street Journal in order to pressure the Korean side that Trump is serious about USFK troop withdrawals.

However, this all may be playing out as Korean President Moon Jae-in wants it to play out. Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down.  If he openly advocated for a USFK withdrawal, that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces.  

This is why President Moon has been saying all the right things that USFK should remain, to include claiming Kim Jong-un understands this as well. However, if troop withdrawals do happen he has political cover to not be blamed for it by claiming President Trump’s monetary demands were unreasonable which is a position likely a majority of Koreans believe.

It doesn’t take an expert to know that the cancellation of the US-ROK military exercise will not motivate North Korea to want to discuss denuclearization when they have no intention to denuclearize:

Amid growing speculation that joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are likely to be called off in a bid to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and appease North Korea, diplomatic experts believe a cancellation as an olive branch to Pyongyang is not a good idea, saying there will be no “reciprocity” from the isolated country.

Currently, the government is in a quandary over whether to cancel the annual drills as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no sign of abating. The exercises will bring hundreds of American troops here, raising concerns over possible new infections.

In addition, further deepening Seoul’s calculations is the possibility of military retaliation from the Kim Jong-un regime, as the totalitarian state describes the exercises as hostile action by the U.S. against the North. 

The government also wants the exercises to be focused on assessing the Korean military’s relevant capabilities on its way to regaining wartime operational control (OPCON) from the U.S. by 2022. Either a delay or a cancellation of the drills could disrupt the timetable for that. 

“If the military exercises are canceled or postponed, it is possible North Korea will relent and agree to an eventual working level meeting, in response to recent U.S.-South Korea requests to resume negotiations. I doubt, however, that the cancellation or postponement of the exercises will motivate the North to resume working-level negotiations, given that it has refused to meet with the U.S. or ROK since late 2019,” Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks, told The Korea Times, referring to South Korea by its formal name, the Republic of Korea.

Korea Times

You can read more expert opinions at the link.

I figured that South Korea would take notice of President Trump’s threat to pull U.S. troops out of Germany. However, I would not be surprised if the Moon administration would welcome removing half of U.S. troops:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he will cut the number of U.S. soldiers in Germany by about half, fueling concerns in Seoul he could make similar reductions to American troops in Korea.    
   
“One of the only countries that hasn’t agreed to pay what they’re supposed to pay is Germany,” Trump said to reporters at the White House in Washington. “So I said, until they pay we’re removing our soldiers, a number of our soldiers, by about half. And then when we get down to 25,000, we’ll see where we’re going.”  
   
Trump claimed that Germany was “delinquent” in payments to NATO and has been treating the United States “very badly on trade.”    
   
He added, “And I’m not only talking about Germany, by the way; I’m talking about plenty of other countries,” without specifying further.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

A temporary deal has been reached to get Korean employees back to work on U.S. bases:

 The United States and South Korea agreed to a $200 million stopgap measure allowing more than 4,000 local base employees to return to work after months of unpaid leave, despite the allies’ failure to reach a broader defense cost-sharing deal.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that it has accepted Seoul’s proposal to fund the labor costs for all South Korean employees of U.S. Forces Korea through the end of this year amid stalled talks on reaching a new contract known as the Special Measures Agreement.

“This decision effectively ends the partial furlough,” USFK commander Gen. Robert Abrams said in a separate statement. “We expect our entire workforce to return back to USFK within the next few weeks.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it appears there is still no long term cost sharing deal that is going to happen any time soon.