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The Pentagon confirmed Monday that major U.S. military exercises this summer in South Korea would be suspended, following President Trump's decision.
'We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should,' Trump told reporters after his meeting last Tuesday with Kim in Singapore. 'But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it's very provocative.'
foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/18/pentagon-confirms-halt-august-war-games-with-south-korea.html
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Pentagon Confirms Halt of War Games With South Korea
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @02:46PM (4 children)
Depends.
I have long wondered why South Korea and Japan keep offering to be the battlegrounds for the (back then) upcoming nuclear war between the USA and North Korea.
If the talks between North and South Korea turns gets better results than the talks between NK and the USA, he may end up wanting to restart the exercises, but getting a no from the other parties to the exercises.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday June 20 2018, @03:22PM (3 children)
In a word, history. For a second, add nationalism.
The Korean Empire was annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1910. It was ruled by Japan for the next 35 years, until the loss in WWII.
Occupiers, even with the best of intentions, are still occupiers, and that's what the Japanese were. There were abuses, atrocities, humiliations to fill many books, and many more were never written down. This is a rough time for any nation that's gone through it. So out of that time you have a lot of national prejudice developed, where before there was relatively little. But also you have two different ways that the Koreans are coping with this. Some of them go full resistance mode. They capture weapons and take to the hills and find ways to fight back. Others stay where they are and try to preserve something like their normal life under the new order that's been imposed by the Japanese.
If we skip ahead to WWII the first group (or their descendents) have managed to take back about half their country from the Japanese, operating from China, with US support. They were expecting full liberation of their country, shocked and outraged when this was not permitted. Instead the government in the south, previously considered a Japanese puppet, was rehabilitated and embraced by the US. That's why partition happened. That's why there was a war.
All of this results in much bad blood, between Japanese and Korean, as well as between north and south.
You can't understand this if you can't shift your point of view and look at the situation from each perspective in turn. You can't begin to understand the situation if you're partisan about it. You have to understand that no group sees themselves as the villains.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @08:57PM (2 children)
You left out the USSR's role in all this.
The USSR declared war with Japan, conveniently right after we had already gone nuclear. Instead of saying "no thanks, too late" we let the USSR grab a few islands from Japan (which is a sore point in Japan to this day) and then let the USSR administer half of Korea. It's the same mistake we made in Germany, letting the USSR administer a big chunk of it. When we decided to put these countries back together and let them run their own affairs, the USSR said "no".
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday June 20 2018, @11:22PM (1 child)
Oh, I left out volumes. It's necessary, else I would never post, and if I did no one would read it.
"we let the USSR" [...] "then let the USSR"
This all assumes that the USSR was under our control. To put it plainly, it was not. It's quite possible that the converse was closer to the truth, though still not true. The guy in the White House at the time idolized "Uncle Joe" Stalin, and so did many of his key supporters, and he certainly wasn't interested in confronting him. But even if he had been more hostile, or suppose somehow we suddenly got Patton as President - what then? Invade the USSR, really? That wasn't going to fly politically or materially. Nor would it have been wise. The Soviet Union destroyed itself with its own peace-time economic failures. Giving them excuses to stay on war-time economic footing only played into their hands.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:05AM
Hitler damn near defeated Stalin. We shipped all sorts of shit over there to ensure history went down a different path. We provided trucks, aircraft...
We didn't need to do that. We didn't need to hand over part of Germany and part of Korea. Of course, the USSR didn't need to be so damn evil.
North Korea is essentially a creation of the USSR, assisted by us being dumb enough to hand it over.