Posted on 11/15/2019 1:12:00 AM PST by AdmSmith
Japan and South Korea's "Japan-Korea Military Intelligence Protection Agreement" (GSOMIA) will lapse next Saturday (23rd), Japan-Korea Foreign Ministry will hold a director-level consultation on Friday, and the Japanese side asks whether South Korea is Renewed GSOMIA to make a "wise correspondence."
According to comprehensive foreign media reports, South Korea announced in August that it will not renew GSOMIA, which allows for the exchange of military intelligence between Japan and South Korea. Today, the Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Miyazaki Saki, and the South Asian Foreign Minister of the South Korean Foreign Ministry, Jin Dinghan, started a conversation on related matters in Tokyo. A Japanese official revealed that the talks were constructive but did not make a major breakthrough.
As GSOMIA is about to expire, the Japanese side said that South Korea’s decision not to renew GSOMIA is “less thinking”. A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters: "In view of the current environmental security, (Japan) asked South Korea to make a sensible response."
South Korea insists that if Japan withdraws its export controls on sensitive high-tech materials, they will reconsider renewing GSOMIA.
Tokyo reacted angrily to the rulings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demanding South Korea take “necessary measures” regarding the order saying Seoul was violating an international agreement. It said all outstanding bilateral issues were settled in the 1965 treaty. Although Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon agreed with Abe to resolve the ongoing friction via open dialogue a few weeks ago on a visit to Tokyo, no visible progress has been made so far.
A senior presidential aide said South Korea won't renew the GSOMIA unless Japan withdraws its July decision imposing restrictions on certain exports to South Korean companies.
“Regarding the GSOMIA, South Korea can extend the pact if Japan cancels its earlier retaliatory trade measures. We decided to terminate the GSOMIA, which was a tough decision, because Japan directly mentioned security reasons as the main reason for its imposition of the trade curbs. South Korea therefore had no option but to make the decision,” the aide said.
“If South Korea reverses course without any change in Seoul-Tokyo relations that means our ending of the GSOMIA was not thought through. Actually, this wasn't the case,” he added.
Meanwhile, Esper pressed his South Korean counterpart Jeong to maintain the bilateral intelligence sharing pact.
“The GSOMIA is an important tool by which South Korea, the U.S. and Japan share effective information, particularly in times of war. An expiration of the GSOMIA will have an impact on our effectiveness, so we urge all sides to sit down and work through their differences,” Esper told reporters in a joint press conference at the defense ministry.
“The only ones who will benefit from the expiration of the GSOMIA and continued friction between Seoul and Tokyo are Pyongyang and Beijing,” Esper added. “That reason alone should be powerful enough for us to sit down and make sure we restore our alliance to where it was so we can work together to respond to our common threats and challenges.”
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/11/356_278807.html
This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm is what Japan and ROK are doing.
No progress today https://twitter.com/pxbrqnaZJT1917W/status/1195281087733223425
North Korea Says It Issued Ultimatum to South Over Resort
Kim raised the subject again during his New Year’s speech this year, saying that Pyongyang was ready to restart the projects “without any precondition” while making a nationalistic call for stronger cooperation between the Koreas.
But without a breakthrough in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, the inter-Korean economic projects remain shelved. North Korea in recent months has suspended virtually all diplomacy and cooperation with the South while demanding Seoul break away from its ally Washington and restart inter-Korean economic activities.
https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/north-korea-says-it-issued-ultimatum-south-over-resort
If there is no progress on the GSOMIA case Kim and/or China will win.
It is difficult to find solutions if the involved parties have prestige and are afraid of loosing face.
True:
The South Korean defense minister seems to think that maintaining GSOMIA is my opinion, but the sentence doesn’t think about that at all. The sentence will officially destroy GSOMIA. The US military in Korea will eventually have to leave. That is the promise with North Korea and the final conditions with China. Will South Korea join the Chinese-Russian Allied Forces?
https://twitter.com/care_kaigo/status/1195285608572153856
South Korea wants the ability to pillage Japan’s intellectual property, or they refuse to renew the military intel agreement?
Let the South Korean plicks go it on their own.
A bit off subject but what happened about Japan’s missing F-35?
Thanks AdmSmith.
Not a good thing.
And the worst part is the dispute that South Korea is using to hang up this agreement with Japan is not even over the military sharing agreement or anything related to it. The current Leftist president of South Korea is using a separate issue as his excuse for scuttling the military intelligence sharing agreement. For this he gets to sound, to his fellow South Korean Leftists as “hard on Japan”, while it is North Korea who will benefit from the agreement with Japan being scraped. It shows Moon’s priortities are 100% political interests and not truly South Korean national interests.
This could work:
Wonder if there is a deal to be made here. US reneges on outrageous defense sharing cost demands, South Korea agrees to continue GSOMIA, and Japan resets relations with South Korea. Basically back to status quo.
https://twitter.com/benjaminaengel/status/1195546034815942656
A first step:
Japan has approved the first export of liquid hydrogen fluoride, one of the key materials under restriction to South Korea, to the neighboring country since it tightened related controls in July, industry sources said Saturday.
Tokyo has recently given the green light to a Japanese firm to export liquid hydrogen fluoride to South Korea in the first such case since Tokyo imposed tighter regulations on exports to Seoul of materials that are critical for the production of semiconductors and flexible displays.
Under the new rules, Japanese companies are required to apply for an individual license to export the materials to South Korea, a process that can take up to 90 days.
Other materials crucial in chipmaking and digital screen production — fluorinated polyimide, etching gas and photoresist — earned approval for export in August and September.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191116002200325
China appears to have been caught with its pants down after a state-run magazine accidentally published details of its top secret new weapon.
On Friday, just hours before the expected expiry of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), South Korea said it would reverse its earlier decision to scrap the pact. At the same time, the two sides agreed to resume talks between senior officials over stricter export measures Japan imposed on South Korea earlier this year.
Hideki Okuzono, associate professor of Korean studies at the University of Shizuoka, said Japan and South Korea avoided the worst-case scenario of a further escalation of their diplomatic row. But the neighbors still need to tackle two tough issues: Japan’s export control measures covering key items for South Korea, and the wartime labor compensation issue, Okuzono said.
“Negotiations on those issues will start from now,” he said.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/23/national/politics-diplomacy/gsomia-lives-whats-next-japan-south-korea-ties/
Both Japan and ROK has to step back otherwise there will be an escalation again. If what is written in the newspapers in South Korea the case is not closed.
https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/17425576/
They are describing the decision as a winning for Japan only, the Japan card is unfortunately living its own life.
The U.S. withdrawing from Korea might cause a change of mind in Seoul. And withdrawing from Japan might do the same with Tokyo.
Yes, but then it is too late, the consequences are really bad for all of us.
It looks like it might be inevitable. Korea isn't going to meet the U.S. demands for more money and I don't imagine the Japanese will be much more amenable.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
South Korea and Japan traded fresh barbs on Monday, just days after agreeing to salvage an important intelligence-sharing pact, highlighting the fragile ties between the former wartime foes and allies of the United States.
Officials from each side criticized or contradicted comments made by other and in media about whether Tokyo had apologized over what Seoul said was an inaccurate weekend statement about the agreement.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-japan-idUSKBN1XZ09
Where are the adults?
Japan and South Korea will hold senior-level talks on Dec 16 to discuss Tokyo’s export restrictions, Japanese Trade Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama said on Thursday (Dec 5). Speaking to reporters, Mr Kajiyama repeated Tokyo’s stance that Japan could address the issue of its export controls once South Korea takes appropriate action on its own management of export controls.
Japan in July put export curbs on materials used to make semiconductors, threatening the global supply chain of chips, a pillar of the South Korean economy.
Translation: We are OK to change our mind if you change your the mind, but we will not be first.
This article describes many of the problems that should be addressed to solve the trade dispute:
“The problem is that there is not an obvious way out and things have gone too far for either side to back down,” Dujarric said. “I do not believe this is going to get to the point where the two countries will actually be fighting each other, but this is going to take a very long time to heal.”
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