Group items tagged

South Korea and Japan reached a landmark agreement on Monday to resolve their dispute over Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan’s Imperial Army.

The so-called comfort women have been the most painful legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, which lasted from 1910 until Japan’s defeat in 1945

“We are not craving for money,” said Lee Yong-soo, 88, one of the women. “What we demand is that Japan make official reparations for the crime it had committed.”

A plan to assassinate Kim Jong Un and preparations for a potential nuclear showdown with North Korea were among the trove of South Korean military documents reportedly stolen by Hermit Kingdom hackers.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry did not comment on the alleged hack

South Korea announced in May a “large amount of data” was stolen during a cyber attack that was possibly orchestrated by Kim Jong Un’s rogue regime.

Harry Harris, Washington's envoy to South Korea, has been subjected to heated vitriol on social media and by anonymous netizens for his mustache. That small piece of facial hair has, as Harris put it, "for some reason become a point of some fascination here in the media."

But Harris' 'stache has sparked discussions on topics much bigger than the ambassador himself: the still-raw emotions among many Koreans about the legacy of Japanese occupation; the prevalence of racism in such a homogenous society; and cracks appearing in the future of the decades-old alliance between Seoul and Washington as the two sides attempt to reach a deal on how to cover the cost of US troops stationed in South Korea, amid reports that President Donald Trump demanded a 400% pay increase.

The gist of the criticism is that with the mustache, Harris resembles the reviled Japanese leaders who ruled the Korean Peninsula with an iron fist during the Japanese occupation. Some of Japan's most prominent wartime leaders -- like Hideki Tojo, the Prime Minister who was later executed by a postwar tribunal, and Emperor Hirohito -- had mustaches.

On Thursday, Chung Eui Yong, South Korea’s national security advisor, told a stunned group of journalists at the White House that President Donald Trump had accepted an invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. Like so many other decisions in this White House, this one felt chaotic. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for example, seemed to learn of the decision to hold the meeting, which is planned to occur by May, only after it was made. (He and other administration officials have since downplayed its significance, though Trump on Friday night tweeted: “The deal with North Korea is very much in the making.”) And yet: While one may wish that Trump acted less impulsively, a Trump-Kim summit is a good idea, one that may solve the problem of a truculent North Korea.

It’s also worth remembering that when it comes to North Korea, nukes are hardly the only danger. Even if Pyongyang relinquished its entire nuclear arsenal, it would still possess a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, and could decimate Seoul, South Korea’s capital, with its conventional weaponry. The real problem is not North Korea’s nuclear arms, but its potential willingness to use them, along with the rest of its weapons, in a way that harms U.S. interests.

The reasonable best-case scenario for North Korea is that the Kim regime focuses almost exclusively on staying in power and delivering economic growth to its citizens rather than threatening the United States or its neighbors. (Think something like Vietnam after its 1980s economic liberalization—but with nuclear weapons.) Actually pushing for regime change is risky. A coup could replace Kim with a benevolent dictator who prepares the country for elections and reunification with the South under Seoul—or with a general who decides that launching nuclear weapons at the United States, or selling them to a group like the Islamic State, serves Pyongyang’s interests.

Russia’s relations with many Western nations, including the United States, may be at their worst levels since the Cold War, but its relationship with North Korea is blooming faster than the famously lush flower beds of Moscow’s Alexander Garden.

On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced an agreement to designate 2015 a “Year of Friendship” with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is regarded by much of the world as a pariah state.

Tellingly, news of the Year of Friendship came on the same day that Berlin officials said that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had declined Mr. Putin’s invitation to attend the ceremony. The German government cited Russia’s policies in Ukraine, where the Kremlin has annexed Crimea and backed violent separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, as the reason for her refusal to attend.

North Korean rocket puts object into space, angers neighbors, U.S.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying what it called a satellite, drawing renewed international condemnation just weeks after it carried out a nuclear bomb test. Critics of the rocket program say it is being used to test technology for a long-range missile.

South Korea and the United States said they would explore whether to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea "at the earliest possible date."

It doesn’t hurt either that South Korean authorities ensured testing was essentially free to all and that the country’s single-payer health care system does not disincentivize low-income people from seeking preventive treatment, as is often the case in the United States.

And then there’s the question of leadership. President Trump spun the crisis as a Chinese menace easily dealt with at U.S. borders. He bemoaned his political opponents for inflating a minor threat. And he repeatedly shared inaccurate information and advice to Americans about the reach of the virus and the government’s capacity to reckon with it

Contrast that with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has taken a back seat as health officials communicate twice a day to the public about the state of the outbreak.

North Korea launched a satellite into space Sunday, its state media reported, triggering a wave of international condemnation and prompting strong reaction from an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

Though North Korea said the launch was for scientific and "peaceful purposes," it is being widely viewed by other nations as a front to test a ballistic missile, especially coming on the heels of North Korea's purported hydrogen bomb test last month.

Pyongyang carried out both acts in defiance of international sanctions.

Speaking in South Korea earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump made an impassioned call for China and other countries to pull together to confront the North, which he described as a sinister regime that starved and terrorized its people — a tragic failed experiment in the “laboratory of history.”

Since Mr. Trump first played host to Mr. Xi at his Florida estate last April, he has said he is counting on Mr. Xi to do the right thing with North Korea, alternately praising and prodding the Chinese leader about enforcing tougher United Nations sanctions.

To his frustration, however, Mr. Xi has stopped short of targeting Mr. Kim with unilateral sanctions that would threaten his regime, send refugees into China and raise the possibility of a Korean Peninsula under control of the South, a close American ally.

North Korea claims it has hydrogen bomb as U.N. discusses human rights abuses

North Korea has added the hydrogen bomb to its arsenal, state media said Thursday, a development that, if true, would represent a major leap in its nuclear weapons capabilities.

Analysts in recent years have believed that North Korea may have been working toward -- but didn't yet have the capability to produce -- a hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb. It can be hundreds of times more powerful than an atomic bomb.

Leave to the psychoanalysts the question why Korea seems to provoke President Trump to more reckless comments than any other international problem. What the world must live with are the consequences.

He threatened to rip up the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. “It is unacceptable, it is a horrible deal made by Hillary,” he said. “It’s a horrible deal, and we are going to renegotiate that deal or terminate it.” In that same interview, Trump demanded a billion-dollar payment for a high-altitude missile defense system. That demand reneged on an agreement reached by Trump’s own administration, by which the South Koreans provided the land for the system and the United States provided the weapons. It probably will not surprise you to learn that the free-trade agreement was not, in fact, negotiated by Hillary Clinton.

That interview had the unintended effect of helping to boost the more U.S.-skeptical of the South Korean presidential candidates in the May 9 election. In midsummer, speaking at his New Jersey golf retreat without a single South Korean present, Trump promised to visit “fire and fury like the world has never seen” upon North Korea. In September at the United Nations he warned that he might “totally destroy North Korea,” adding “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his region.”

The coronavirus is threatening joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises, prompting officials to consider scaling them back, according to reports on Monday.

South Korea has declared a health emergency as 100 more cases were confirmed Friday

As both countries deal with the virus, South Korea and the U.S. are attempting to negotiate how much Seoul should pay to fund U.S. troops to stay on the peninsula. The talks have stalled, as the last agreement expired at the end of last year. The U.S. is pushing for South Korea to pay more as the current funds from the U.S. are scheduled to run out at the end of March

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s governing party won​ 12 of the 17 races for big-city mayors and provincial governors

The results on Wednesday were a decisive victory for Mr. Yoon, who won the presidential race by a razor-thin margin in March and was inaugurated just three weeks ago. Although this week’s elections were only held at the local level, the results were seen as an early referendum on Mr. Yoon’s performance as leader.

The election​ results were a stunning setback for the Democratic Party. During the last local elections four years ago, it won 14 of the same 17 races for leaders of big cities and provinces.

Beijing would not abandon North Korea

value of supporting North Korea even as it continues to develop nuclear weapons and unleashes new threats to attack the United States and South Korea.

It is doubtful that China will reinforce the United Nations sanctions by imposing penalties of its own

U.S. Prods China on North Korea, Saying Soft Approach Has Failed

The Obama administration warned China on Thursday that its approach to reining in North Korea had “not worked” and said the time had come to end “business as usual” with the country Beijing has supported for the past six decades.

China’s approach to influencing North Korea — issuing warnings while also trying to warm long-strained relations — had proved a failure.

When former president Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea in 2009 on a humanitarian mission to free two U.S. journalists, he delivered strict instructions to his team ahead of their meeting with dictator Kim Jong Il: “We’re not smiling.”

. “You build trust, don’t talk business, establish camaraderie and allow the Trump charisma to steep and marinate to soften them up.”

The two posed for a photo in the Oval Office with Trump proudly showing off the envelope — an image that White House aides promptly distributed to the public.

North Koreans are experiencing widespread hunger and dying of starvation as the country suffers one of the worst food crises in decades as a result of its international isolation and natural disasters that have damaged crops, reducing yields.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to resolve the food-supply problems with better farming equipment and scientific methods

the situation worsened in recent months as a result of its border restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic and floods and droughts last year that hurt its harvests. Last May, North Korea reported its second-worst drought since the country began measurements in 1981, affecting the capital city of Pyongyang and nearby provinces. Over the summer, towns along the border with China flooded after heavy rainfall.    

The United States has moved to ease jitters among conservative South Koreans by agreeing to delay the return of wartime control of the South Korean military to Seoul until its forces are better prepared to deter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats or fight it in a war.

Rather than setting a new target date for the transfer, the allies will now “focus on South Korea achieving critical defensive capabilities against an intensifying North Korean threat,” according to statements from both sides. The allies will negotiate details of the new transfer plan by next fall, they said.

The American military had been scheduled to vacate 653 acres of prime real estate in Yongsan by 2016, relocating most of its personnel there to a new base being built south of Seoul. If the main command post stays on, it will significantly reduce the size of land to be vacated, complicating the city’s plan to build a badly needed municipal park in Yongsan.

Already, the American death toll is of a different order of magnitude than in most other countries. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States has accounted for 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Canada, a rich country that neighbors the United States, has a per capita death rate about half as large

Together, the national skepticism toward collective action and the Trump administration’s scattered response to the virus have contributed to several specific failures and missed opportunities, Times reporting shows:a lack of effective travel restrictions;repeated breakdowns in testing;confusing advice about masks;a misunderstanding of the relationship between the virus and the economy;and inconsistent messages from public officials.

Some Republican governors have followed his lead and also played down the virus, while others have largely followed the science. Democratic governors have more reliably heeded scientific advice, but their performance in containing the virus has been uneven.

President Donald Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House said Thursday, a meeting that would mark the first time a serving U.S. president has sat down with the leadership of the heavily militarized and diplomatically isolated country.

American officials acknowledged that it was unusual for such a face-to-face session to be arranged without an extensive series of preparatory meetings between lower-ranking officials

But a failure by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim to make headway could lead each side to double down on their demands and perhaps heighten the possibility of conflict.