Trump-Lee Summit

Security Agenda for Trump-Lee Summit May Renew Abandonment Concerns

First Published August 13, 2025 in The Peninsula Blog of the Korean Economic Institute.

By Daniel C. Sneider, non-resident Distinguished Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University and APP member.

The upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and newly elected South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is shaping up to be a crucial moment in the more than seventy-year-long alliance.

The two leaders inked a vague agreement on trade and investment late last month, which appears to have opened the door to good relations, and President Lee has eagerly sought this meeting to strengthen his legitimacy and demonstrate his diplomatic skills.

But the summit also has the potential to imperil the alliance. While some economic issues remain—not least the U.S. tariffs on automobiles and semiconductors—the meeting is more likely to focus on a range of contentious security issues, including U.S. demands for greater South Korean contributions to defense costs and pressures for South Korea to commit to join military contingencies in Taiwan and subordinate its policies to an aggressive U.S. stance toward China.

All of these issues are now joined under two broad policy umbrellas the Trump administration calls “alliance modernization” and “strategic flexibility.”

Both concepts embody the idea of shifting the alliance away from its sole focus on deterring North Korea toward a broader regional approach that prioritizes confrontation with China, including the use of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in a Taiwan contingency. China is the number one strategic threat to the United States, and allies and partners must “do more,” according to an interim strategic guidance document the U.S. Department of Defense issued in July.

“Strategic flexibility” means that in the event of a clash with China, U.S. military forces based in South Korea will be withdrawn and deployed elsewhere. It demands that South Korea take on the preponderant burden of defense against potential North Korean aggression.

USFK Commander Xavier Brunson recently stated that the “USFK must be able to move to other locations and perform other missions at any time” and that South Korea must “play a great role in responding to North Korea, and USFK demonstrate flexibility to perform other missions.”

General Brunson acknowledged South Korea’s desire to connect any moves in this direction with the completion of a plan to reform the current system of operational control (OPCON), which places South Korea’s military under U.S. command during wartime. OPCON transfer to South Korea has been a long-standing goal for South Korea, particularly under progressive administrations. If the United States shifts its focus, then “the transition of wartime operational control in which South Korea leads the defense of the Korean Peninsula, must also be expedited,” argued the progressive Kyunghyang Shinmun.

But Brunson pushed back against accelerating this process, telling reporters that “taking shortcuts to expedite the transfer of wartime operational control could jeopardize the readiness of the Korean Peninsula’s military.”

This has not stopped the Trump administration from preparing to push for South Korea’s acquiescence to their demands. An early draft of a U.S.-South Korea agreement sets a goal for the upcoming talks to compel South Korea to “issue a political statement supporting flexibility for USFK force posture to better deter China while continuing to deter [North Korea],” according to the Washington Post. This is to be paired with pressures to boost South Korea’s defense spending to 3.8 percent of GDP—up from 2.6 percent last year—and to vastly increase its support for the cost of basing U.S. forces.

Defense planners linked to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have pushed more specific plans to drastically cut the number of U.S. troops based in South Korea from the current level of 28,500 to 10,000. This would be done by effectively removing all ground troops from South Korea, leaving only air units that can easily be deployed elsewhere.

The United States has maintained the right to deploy its forces anywhere, and reductions in troop levels are hardly unprecedented. But in return, the United States accepted the South Korean stance that “it shall not be involved in a regional conflict in Northeast Asia against the will of the Korean people.”

More profoundly, the United States’ plans undermine the basic pledge to defend South Korea in a war—a commitment that underlies the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries. The presence of U.S. ground forces is the famously labeled “tripwire” to guarantee the U.S. commitment.

“The continued presence of US troops at existing levels on the Korean Peninsula is more important than documents discussing ‘strategic flexibility’ or ‘modernized alliance,’” Senior Fellow at the Mansfield Foundation Bruce Klingner told this writer. “Maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea is a tangible manifestation of American commitment to the defense of its treaty partner. As such, they continue to be an integral part of Combined Forces Command and United Nations Command. In a conflict with North Korea, the American public and Congress would not allow a U.S. president to abandon them, particularly after casualties.”

The Trump administration faces resistance not only from South Korea but also from Congress, where support for the U.S. presence on the Korean Peninsula and opposition to downsizing the current troop levels remain strong, even among Republicans. The National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9, prohibits a reduction in the U.S. military posture or a change in wartime OPCON until the secretary of defense certifies to Congress that “such action is in the national interest.” It also directs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Indo-Pacific Command, and USFK to carry out an independent assessment of any such changes.

The North Korea Connection
The push to refocus the U.S. regional presence away from North Korea and toward China could potentially be linked to another sensitive issue shaping the upcoming Trump-Lee summit—relations with North Korea.

Rumors and hints of a resumption of talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have surfaced again in recent weeks. The Lee administration is supportive of such dialogue, as such moves are consistent with its desire to ease tensions with North Korea and revive serious engagement. But such talks are likely to only take place if Trump is heading seriously toward the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea and acceptance of Kim’s demand that North Korea be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state.

“At some point, the ROK is going to pay a price for U.S.-DPRK dialogue if the U.S. under Trump decides to accept North Korea as a de facto nuclear state,” former senior Department of State official and Korea expert Evans Revere told KEI.

“The deeply progressive government in Seoul cannot possibly give the U.S. what it wants — agreement that the ROK will support the U.S. militarily in a China- or Taiwan-related contingency and agreement to allow the U.S. to use Korea-based forces against China,” argues Revere, who is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “And the U.S. does not wish to give the ROK what it wants — an open-ended commitment that Korea-based U.S. forces will be solely dedicated to the defense of the ROK against DPRK aggression.”

Summit Disasters of the Past
The possibility that the upcoming summit could lead to a serious clash is well understood in Seoul, based on past experience and the much-publicized Oval Office encounters between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other world leaders. In the case of South Korea, the 1993 meeting between presidents Bill Clinton and Kim Young-sam and the 2001 summit between presidents George W. Bush and Kim Dae-jung are representative examples of what could happen if things go wrong.

“In both cases, the meeting went badly because of North Korea,” recalls former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Thomas Hubbard, who was a key participant in both summits. “In my mind they went badly because the Koreans failed to prepare carefully and understand where our president was.”

There are lessons for Lee Jae Myung, Hubbard told this writer in an interview. North Korea is not the problem now, as both Trump and Lee want to engage with North Korea. “The issue this time will be security relations, host nation support, and I don’t think anyone really knows where Trump is going to come down on troop levels in Korea. Lee Jae Myung is a progressive who wants to reach out to China but I think he is afraid Trump is going to make demands on troop reductions that will undercut him in Korea.”

Trump’s belief that there is no rationale to keep U.S. forces in South Korea is long-standing and unchanged. It is not hard to imagine a moment in the upcoming summit when Trump will once again raise this issue.

“I never took the strategic flexibility dispute seriously,” says Ambassador Hubbard, “but the danger is we push them too hard on Taiwan, on the relations with China, and at the same time raise questions about our strategic commitment.”

That could put the United States on a slippery slope toward abandoning its ally—something no South Korean leader would want to happen.

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Lessons of War

purchase book

80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
August 11, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

This month the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorated the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in 1945. While the sufferers of the atomic bombs, or hibakusha, aspire to eternal peace without the devastation of nuclear weapons, the gap between their hopes and the reality of world politics has widened. Hibakusha face a challenging task in handing their movement over to next generation, as the sufferers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass away.
 
In Hiroshima, in the Declaration of Peace at the Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6, the Mayor, Kazumi Matsui, introduced a story of an unnamed man who was injured by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. “Building a peaceful world without nuclear weapons will demand our never-give-up spirit. We have to talk and keep talking to people who hold opposing views,” Matsui said, quoting words of the hibakusha.
 
That unnamed man is thought to be Sunao Tsuboi who shook hands and had a short conversation with then U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Hiroshima in May 2016. “Never give up” is the phrase Tsuboi likes to use in his conversations. He once told me that he came to pursue peace and to hate war. Instead of continuing the resentment he held against America after the end of the war, he realized that retaliation would produce nothing. This principle is commonly held by the hibakusha.
 
Mayor Matsui also warned against a growing perception that “nuclear weapons are essential for national defense,” a view that he and many other believe heightens the risk of the use of these weapons.
 
In Nagasaki, Mayor, Shiro Suzu urged in his Nagasaki Peace Declaration on August 9 for the world to take the path to a peaceful future through dialogue with different people. Suzuki pressed world leaders to end disputes that are based on a principle of “force is met with force.”
 
One event at which the world community seemed to meet the hopes of the hibakusha was the award of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, or Nihon Hidankyo. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized that “Nihon Hidankyo has carried out extensive educational work on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. Hence the motto ‘No more Hibakusha.’”
 
However, the reality of world politics has recently visited more disappointments on the hibakusha. Recognizing that it can use its nuclear weapons stockpile to blackmail Ukraine, Russia has continued its war. Commenters have noticed that the invasion by a country with nuclear weapons of another that abandoned nuclear weapons undermines the international non-proliferation regime. Ukraine gave up its status of the world’s third largest nuclear power with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994.
 
A growing concern among the hibakusha is the fact that the nuclear powers are increasing their involvement in international conflicts. Despite efforts to find a peace deal in the Gaza Strip, Israel – widely thought to have nuclear weapons capability – has continued to destroy cities in the region to eliminate a terrorist organization, Hamas. India and Pakistan, both of which are recognized as nuclear powers, exchanged military strikes in May over a terrorist attack in Kashmir.
 
The hibakusha were astonished that the U.S. conducted air strikes in June on three of Iran’s nuclear sites. Aggravating the situation for the hibakusha was U.S. President Donald Trump’s justification for the attacks on Iran as a means of ending the conflict between Iran and Israel. Trump likened the U.S. attack on Iran to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, characterizing the strikes on Iran as “essentially the same thing.” “Nothing has changed 80 years after the war,” said one of the hibakusha.
 
The survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also frustrated with the diplomacy of the government of Japan on nuclear non-proliferation. In their peace declarations, Matsui and Suzuki strongly recommended that the government join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, issued by the United Nations in 2017. The Japanese government has routinely rejected that request because Japan is under nuclear umbrella of the U.S.
 
In his speeches at the ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Prime Minister Ishiba stressed Japan’s efforts toward “the world without nuclear weapons” not through the 2017 UN treaty, but the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1970. Ishiba also quoted the Hiroshima Action Plan, a plan first proposed by his predecessor Fumio Kishida in a speech to NPT Review Conference in 2022. The plan would preclude the use of nuclear weapons and enhance the transparency of a country’s nuclear development.
 
When we look at the reality of the hibakusha, they are decreasing year after year. Hibakusha who have kept their copies of the Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Handbook, issued by Japanese government, fell below 100,000 in 2024. It means we have fewer and fewer people who can talk about the direct experience of the devastation brought by atomic bombs. How the narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be passed down to future generations is an important – and unresolved – question.
 
In his peace declaration, Matsui urged young people to think less about themselves and more about each other. “Clearly, nations, too, must look beyond narrow self-interest to consider the circumstances of other nations,” Matsui said. This tenet is grounded in the  preamble to the Constitution of Japan, which states that “no nation is responsible for itself alone.” While Hiroshima’s hope for peace is as fresh as ever, the reality of the world, including that in Japan, looks as if the great tragedy of the atomic bombings has been forgotten.

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Japan's Continued War

Behind Japan's political battles, a war over history By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian Studies in Stanford University, the former co-director of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and an APP member. First appeared on Observing Japan, August 5, 2025 Constitutional Democratic Party leader Noda Yoshihiko questions Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru in a 4 August meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives. During their exchange, Noda asked about Ishiba’s plans to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II; Ishiba said he intended to issue a personal statement, though not a formal cabinet statement. Source: CDP The political battles now raging in Japan in the aftermath of the July Upper House election are being waged across many fronts – tax policy, trade, corruption, and at base, a struggle for power. Largely hidden from sight is another, deeper and more long-standing conflict – the war over Japan’s wartime history and its national identity. This dimension of the political battles emerged into the open this past week when the embattled Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru seemed to back away from his plan to issue a potentially landmark statement to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war on August 15. The Japanese media reported last week that Ishiba had changed his mind when faced with fierce resistance from the rightwing of the Liberal Democratic Party, mostly but not entirely followers of the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzō. For these conservatives, the last words on the meaning of the war were uttered by Abe in his seventieth anniversary statement. Fearing what Ishiba might say, they mounted a growing campaign to demand he back off from his plans. “I believe it is unnecessary and will cause unnecessary confusion,” argued Nishimura Yasutoshi, a former Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry and a former senior member of the Abe faction in the party. They are leading the charge to force Ishiba to step down after the election results led to the loss of the majority in the Upper House for the ruling LDP-Kōmeitō coalition. As the Asahi Shimbun put it: Having been dealt a devastating blow in the Upper House election July 20 and facing calls from within his Liberal Democratic Party to resign, Ishiba has chosen not to rankle conservative elements in the party that would take umbrage at a fresh interpretation of Japan’s role in the war. But in answer to a question from an opposition leader in the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives on Monday, August 4, Ishiba left open the possibility he may still issue some kind of eightieth anniversary statement as a personal message rather than a formal cabinet approved document which carries more weight. "We must not let history fade away,” Ishiba replied. “We need to make active and proactive efforts to prevent this from fading away. Regardless of the formality, it is necessary to issue a statement to ensure that war never happens again." The anniversary statement over time The wars over anniversary statements are not new – they are in fact one of the most significant battlegrounds in the fight over Japan’s past. The baseline for Japan’s official view of the war remains the statement issued in 1995 by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, a Socialist who had joined an unusual coalition government with the LDP. For the first time, a Japanese leader not only marked the end of the war but apologized directly for Japan’s aggression and colonization in Asia. He expressed “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” for “tremendous damage and suffering to the peoples of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations” that Japan caused “through its colonial rule and aggression.” From the start this was a target of attack from those in the LDP who embraced revisionist views of the war, regarding it as a justified act of self-defense, of liberation of Asia from Western colonial rule, who focused on Japan’s victimization and condemned apologies as acts of “masochism.” Despite this opposition, which among other things blocked a Diet resolution echoing Murayama’s statement, his clear view remained as the official view. In 2005, when then Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō issued his sixtieth anniversary statement, he very notably echoed Murayama’s language. When it was Abe’s turn in 2015, he issued a statement that carefully stepped around this challenge to rewrite the Murayama precedent. Under clear pressure from the Obama administration and from within Japan, Abe’s own statement does echo key words – “aggression” and “colonial rule” – while also trying to rewrite the narrative about the war. As I wrote at the time, based on my own expertise on the formation of historical memory about the war, in Nippon.com: Abe’s version of events can be read as a justification for Japan’s own imperialism (which he neglects to mention began in the late 1800s with the seizure of Taiwan) and a denial of historical responsibility. But he goes on to acknowledge Japan’s own decisions that led to war (my italics): ‘With the Manchurian Incident, followed by the withdrawal from the League of Nations, Japan gradually transformed itself into a challenger to the new international order that the international community sought to establish after tremendous sacrifices. Japan took the wrong course and advanced along the road to war.’ This version of history will not satisfy many people, including many historians, but it is a step away from the view held by Japanese revisionists, including Abe himself, that Japan waged a war of self-defense and not of aggression, or even more provocatively, that it was engaged in the noble cause of liberating Asia from colonial rule. Since that time, the backers of the revisionist right in Japanese politics have been eager to both protect the Abe legacy but also to correct even the concessions he made at the time. The most ardent advocates of this view of the past include the leader and members of the newly emergent darlings of the right in Japan – Sanseitō, a new party that made a significant showing in the recent election, now holding fifteen seats in the Upper House. Sanseitō* is now well known as a Japanese echo of Trumpian rhetoric – from its slogan of “Japanese People First” to its anti-immigrant rhetoric. But what is less well understood is its passionate advocacy for an ultra-nationalist view of Japanese history, articulated by its leader Kamiya Sōhei and distributed for many years now on his YouTube Channel, CGS or Channel Grand Strategy. The channel features so-called “history lessons” taught by prominent rightwing historians. “A fundamental reason for Sanseitō's rise, I believe, is rooted in the historical perspective shared by its candidates,” wrote historian Fujioka Nobukatsu in the rightwing daily Sankei Shimbun. “Building on the momentum of these study sessions, Sanseitō, established in 2020, has uniquely emphasized the importance of taking pride in Japanese history. It's an approach no other political party has adopted.” Fujioka is a historian and the vice president of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai), the driving force for decades behind revision of Japanese middle and high school textbooks and opposition to what it views as a distorted view of Japan’s past. Sanseitō members have been active in promoting use of their alternative textbooks in Japanese schools. What would Ishiba say? If Ishiba were to deliver his own judgement on Japan’s wartime history in an anniversary statement, what would he say? There are some clear clues to this, clear enough to have fueled the fears of the revisionist rightwing in Japan. Ishiba has made numerous remarks that indicate he shares Murayama’s view of Japan’s aggressive and colonial past and saw the eightieth anniversary as a key moment to declare Japan’s intention not to repeat that past, despite his reputation as a defense hawk. Ishiba was among the most forthright of Japanese politicians in advocating close ties to South Korea based on a recognition of the illegality of Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea. “There’s no need to flatter Korea or to lay out the logic of the past, but we should admit that what was a mistake was a mistake,” he said in a December 2023 interview touting his bid for leadership. “We must redouble our emphasis on the fact that it is vital for this region that Japan and South Korea understand one another and cooperate.” In unscripted remarks to the Global Dialogue organized by the Japan Institute for International Affairs, where this author was present, Ishiba spoke frankly about his desire to mark the eightieth anniversary as a moment for self-reflection about the disaster of the decision to go to war. “It is time for us to revisit and review the war experience,” he said. He called for Japan to understand “how to position itself in the world to create a world with more peace.” The idea that the mistakes that led to Japan’s war and its total defeat should not be repeated is a persistent obsession of Ishiba. As he told the Diet this week: What should we do to ensure that war never breaks out again? It is not simply a matter of expressing our thoughts, but rather of what went wrong. I have strong feelings about what our country will convey to the world this year. Tanzan Ishibashi Perhaps the most intriguing, and least known, clue as to what an unfettered Ishiba would say is his membership, since its beginning in 2023, in a study group dedicated to the life and work of former Prime Minister Ishibashi Tanzan. Ishibashi, also a former editor of the august Japanese weekly Tōyō Keizai, was a long time opponent going back to the prewar era of Japanese militarism and aggressive nationalism. In his brief tenure as PM in the 1950s, he sought to defy the United States and establish diplomatic relations with Communist China. According to Richard Dyck, a longtime resident of Japan and a businessman with a passion for Ishibashi and his work, Ishiba has been a regular attendent at these study sessions. Among the members are also two prominent members of his cabinet and close friends – Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi and Defense Minister Nakatani Gen. At the most recent meeting of the group, according to Dyck, Foreign Minister Iwaya gave introductory remarks along the lines of “the message we get from Ishibashi is that relations in Asia need to transcend nationalism, ideology and history.” From all this we can gain a glimpse into the largely hidden – at least to Western eyes – war over history that still is being fought in Japan and that lies behind, in part, the fate of Ishiba and his government. ### *According to Sanseito Senator Gen Yamanaka's [山中泉] X feed, he and Sanseito founder and leader Sohei Kamiya [神谷 宗幣] will be in Washington, DC in mid-August. Their visit will be arranged by their Washington lobbyist Matthew Martin Braynard who is an all-in MAGA loyalist and J6er. Love to hear from anyone who they visit or who knows how to get ahold of Mr. Braynard. [APC Editor]

But what is the alternative

Ishiba Fighting to Stay in Power

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
August 4, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

Despite pressure from several lawmakers in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is resisting demands that he resign. He is trying to take the initiative in the LDP’s internal discussions on responsibility for the party’s defeat in Upper House election in July. He is also discussing legislation with opposition parties in the Diet. The struggle over LDP leadership is likely to continue into the fall.
 
The LDP convened an unofficial Joint Plenary Meeting (JPM) on July 28. A JPM is a forum for internal party discussions but has no authority to decide on behalf of the party. At the unofficial JPM, the LDP Secretary General Hiroshi Moriyama said that, after the party had reviewed its campaign strategy, he would make clear his responsibility for the setback. His statement was widely reported as an intent to step down as secretary general. His resignation would do almost fatal damage to the Ishiba administration.
 
Moriyama meanwhile out-maneuvered anti-Ishiba groups in the LDP. He agreed to convene an official JPM on August 8, which Ishiba’s opponents in the LDP had requested. These lawmakers had been collecting signatures in support of a JPM, but Moriyama’s decision supersedes this effort. The JPM will be held not at the request of anti-Ishiba members, but at the initiative of Moriyama.
 
This means that Moriyama can set the agenda for the JPM on August 8. The JPM is the second decision-making body, after the Party Convention. Article 33 of the LDP Constitution states that a JPM deliberates and decides particularly important issues of party management and Diet affairs. Moriyama has set the agenda of the JPM as “review of Upper House election and revitalization of the party,” excising “replacement of LDP leadership” as an agenda item.
 
The Party Constitution contains no rule for replacing the president at a JPM; instead, it simply says that, in an emergency, the JPM (rather than the Party Convention) can elect a president, when the current president vacates his or her seat. Ishiba has shown no intention to do so. It is unlikely for August 8 JPM to be a meeting for replacing the president.
 
There is another way to replace Ishiba. Article 6 of LDP Constitution provides that a presidential election will be held at the request of more than half of total party Diet members and a representative from each local branch of the party.
 
Anti-Ishiba groups have considered invoking Article 6 and garnering support from lawmakers and local branches. However, the provision has not been invoked since it was added to the constitution in 2002, when former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori stepped down during a prolonged struggle in the party. A presidential election based on Article 6 could damage the party significantly.
 
If Ishiba shows no inclination to step down, it will be hard for LDP members to replace him. “The only way is to explain without escaping,” Ishiba said to reporters after the unofficial JPM on July 28. Ishiba earlier had told opposition leaders in a meeting on July 25 that he would not resign as prime minister.
 
Ishiba is now devoting himself to policies, expecting that implementation of his agenda will be sufficient cause for others to support him remaining in office. Debates in the Diet on August 4 reflected a consensus that Japan must have a written agreement with the United States to reduce tariffs on Japanese cars. Ishiba made it clear that he was willing to formalize such an agreement in Japan’s national interest.
 
A summit meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to confirm the tariff agreement is Ishiba’s fondest wish. The opposition would favor a meeting too, knowing how difficult it would be to arrange. The Anti-Ishiba group in the LDP has a different reason: it would be Ishiba’s last act as prime minister. 
 
Ishiba may also be able to survive by working with opposition parties to find common ground on legislation. The leading coalition, the LDP and Komeito, has agreed with the four major opposition parties -- the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), the Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai), and the Japan Communist Party (JCP) – on legislation to abolish the temporary gasoline surtax by the end of the year.
 
In 1974, the government placed a “temporary” gasoline surtax on top of the ordinary gasoline tax to finance the construction and repair of public roads. More than 50 years on, this temporary measure remains on the books. The opposition parties introduced a bill in the ordinary session of the Diet in June that would have abolished the surtax, but the LDP-Komeito coalition, with a majority in the Upper House, defeated it.  
 
The coalition has now lost that power. LDP and Komeito have joined with the four opposition parties to establish a task group to develop a proposal to eliminate the surtax.   With concessions like this from the LDP-Komeito coalition, the opposition parties spared Ishiba from a no-confidence resolution in the extraordinary session in August.
 
To avoid provoking conservatives in the LDP, Ishiba reportedly walked away from his planned release of a statement on August 15 marking the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II. He has hinted that he may postpone a statement to September or later.
 
August is ordinarily the time for politicians to return home and pray on August 15 for Japan’s war victims. No rest for the weary this year, however. Both Ishiba and his opponents will use the time to rebuild their strategies to eliminate the other. The struggle will intensify in late August when the LDP wraps up its review of the Upper House election.

The Russian-North Korean Alliance

For Moscow, the North Korean Alliance With Russia Takes a Turn

By: Daniel Sneider

This essay first appeared July 29, 2025 in 38 North.

The three-day visit earlier this month of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan marked a noticeable intensification of a strategic relationship between the two neighbors. The sheer trappings of the visit—from lavish treatment at newly opened resort to a tête-à-tête aboard North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s yacht—sent that message. And it was accompanied by other symbols of tightening ties, from renewed rail and air flight links to ballyhooed visits of Russian tourists to the resort and the dispatch of North Korean artificial intelligence (AI) researchers to Russia.

As a result of signing a treaty in June 2024, Lavrov told Russian reporters, “we became allies.” But now there is a “deepening of ties…rooted not only in our geographic proximity but also in our alignment on key issues,” not least on the Ukraine war and on countering American presence in the Indo-Pacific. Lavrov spoke about a “brotherhood of arms,” about Russian readiness to defend North Korea and “jointly resist the hegemonic aspirations of extra-regional players.”

While the war with Ukraine served as the catalyst for this “brotherhood,” as the North Koreans stepped up to provide Russia with crucial supplies of men and material at a moment last year when their campaign was faltering, it is by no means the only driver of their growing bilateral cooperation. Their shared mission to resist Western dominance and the mutual economic and political benefits that are forming between these two countries may serve as a cornerstone for a new world order.

Growing Russia-North Korea Cooperation

The massive transfer of North Korean weapons and the deployment of more than 11,000 troops to the Ukraine frontlines is the most visible sign of their alignment. North Korea provided a crucial influx of millions of artillery rounds as well as more than 100 ballistic missiles which have been raining down on Ukrainian cities. It is a two-way street, with sharing of Russian military technology, particularly drones, in return.

Russian oil and food flows freely, effectively nullifying the United Nations (UN) sanctions regime. This is documented in a recent detailed report on “Unlawful Military Cooperation including Arms Transfers between North Korea and Russia,” issued in late May by the 11-nation Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team.

Less strategic, but increasingly important, is the flow of North Korean workers to Russia, also in violation of UN sanctions. According to an investigative report by the émigré Russian journal “The Insider,” some “thousands of North Koreans are entering Russia, posing as students on ‘practical training,’ but instead coming to labor under slave-like conditions.” In the Russian Far East, “North Koreans are very much back,” at levels not seen since before COVID-19, according to a Russian scholar based in Vladivostok, in an email exchange.[1]

Deeper Than Arms

The illicit transfers are significant but there are other shifts in Russian policy that may be even more consequential.

Russia, once a stalwart protector the nuclear non-proliferation regime, has now nakedly endorsed the legitimacy of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, something even China has balked at doing.

Asked by Russian reporters to comment on what conclusions Pyongyang may have drawn from the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the veteran Russian diplomat gave the nuclear status of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) a blanket approval:

The DPRK leadership drew its conclusions regarding national defence long before the recent US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is precisely because those conclusions were made in a timely manner that no serious actor contemplates a military strike against the DPRK today. Nevertheless, we are witnessing ongoing military buildup around the Korean Peninsula, driven by the United States in coordination with South Korea and Japan. We caution against the misuse of alliances and partnerships as tools of confrontation, including any efforts to direct them against the DPRK or the Russian Federation.

The technologies applied by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are a result of efforts by North Korean scientists. We respect the DPRK’s actions and understand the reasons why they carry out their nuclear programme.

While the Russians have avoided direct aid to the North Korean nuclear program, they have cleared the way to assistance and technology transfer to assist nominally civilian satellite development and launch efforts. “The provision of technologies and know-how related to the satellite program is not completely prohibited in the eyes of Russia, since the exploration of outer space, from the point of view of Russia, is the legal right of the DPRK,” wrote leading Russia Korea expert Georgy Toloraya following the Lavrov visit.

Perhaps equally important, the Russians have embraced Kim Jong Un’s policy shift toward abandonment of unification as a goal and opposition to any sustained engagement with South Korea.

“Russia has de facto recognized the legitimacy of Kim Jong-un’s concept of the existence of two separate, unfriendly states on the Korean Peninsula and the rejection of the idea of ​​the unification of Korea, under the slogan of which South Korea has been planning to absorb the North for decades,” wrote Toloraya. The relationship with Pyongyang “lays the foundation for building a new Eurasian security system.”

For Russian strategists, North Korea has now acquired a status that is similar to Belarus, its military and political ally in the West. “This is precisely how the Kremlin sees North Korea these days: as an easternmost strategic bulwark of the Russia-led anti-Western security bloc,” says Igor Torbakov, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Moscow’s backing only serves to reinforce the hardline coming out of Pyongyang toward the US, particularly their fierce rebuff of new overtures from the progressive Lee Jae Myung administration that has come to power in Seoul.

“No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may … pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention and receive international attention, there can be no change in our state’s understanding of the enemy and they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, said this week.

Russia Over China

On the surface, the Russian alliance with North Korea exists in parallel, and even reinforces, the long-standing alliance with China. It may even be seen as a tripartite axis in which all three countries share a goal of reducing the American presence and in countering the security cooperation structure of South Korea, Japan and the US.

But analysts have pointed to signs that Beijing is less than happy with the burgeoning Moscow-Pyongyang ties, avoiding direct comment on them and signaling indirectly their less than enthusiastic response.

“Beijing does not want North Korea to start a war or trigger increased US military deployments to the region, even though it may see North Korea as a useful way to distract the US-South Korea-Japan alliance from its focus on the PRC,” a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War concluded. “Moscow has less interest than Beijing in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula and may embolden North Korea to increase its bellicosity.”

Russian analysts counter that their alliance is a force for stability, not a spur to North Korean adventurism.[2] Russian assistance to North Korea’s conventional warfare capability strengthens the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula and in the Northeast Asian region, they argue.

But Russian experts also provide support to the idea that there is a rivalry with Beijing at work.

Compared to the security ties with Russia, the long-standing alliance with China, formalized in a 1961 treaty, offers little in terms of security and is a faux alliance, argued Russian scholar Artyom Lukin from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok.

“China will likely remain Pyongyang’s main economic partner and benefactor, but there is little reason for Beijing to empower Pyongyang with large-scale military assistance,” Lukin wrote in a paper presented on July 17th to a conference at Seoul National University. “For one, Beijing does not want to antagonize Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo by transferring weapons and military-related technology to Pyongyang.”[3]

Lukin suggests that Chinese interest in North Korea as an ally is waning and that they may even abandon it in favor of South Korea.

It’s not inconceivable that Beijing might eventually conclude a Korea unified under Seoul—provided it remains friendly or at least neutral toward China—is preferable to a divided peninsula with its constant risk of major conflict. Pyongyang cannot but suspect that, sooner or later, Beijing will throw the Kims under the bus. Regardless of what is going to happen in the future, the 1961 alliance of China and North Korea has long been hollow.

The Russian scholar, a widely cited expert on geopolitics and the region, as well as US foreign policy, also points to another advantage held by Moscow—the close personal relationship between Kim Jong Un and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “Kim feels at ease with Putin, even though he shows due respect to the Russian czar,” he told the South Korean conference. “He will never be comfortable with the Chinese emperor.”

North Korean confidence in their Russian ally may have taken a hit from Moscow’s failure to come to the defense of Iran. But North Koreans may also feel this pact is much more substantial and, in any case, their nuclear capability gives them protection that Iran lacked.

Implications of the Russia-North Korea Alliance

What are the implications of the alliance for the future of the Korean peninsula? Does it make North Korea more adventurous, or more confident in its power? Does it create better conditions for Pyongyang to engage in diplomacy with the United States and Seoul? Or the opposite?

Some analysts have argued that the alliance with Russia is essentially transactional, fueled by Moscow’s need for Korean weapons and soldiers to prosecute the war in Ukraine.

“Most immediately, North Korea’s current level of trade with Russia is unlikely to last after hostilities in Ukraine end,” Andrei Lankov, a respected Russian analyst long based in South Korea, wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. “Indeed, Moscow’s financial flows to Pyongyang could wind down almost overnight. Aside from munitions, there isn’t much of a trade opportunity between the two countries; the two economies are fundamentally incompatible.”

In this view, North Korea, worried about its dependence on China, could then seek ties with the US, even South Korea, responding to overtures from both the Trump administration and the new administration in Seoul.

The deepening of ties and the Russian embrace of Kim Jong Un’s concept of a permanent division of the Peninsula, along with a dramatic reversal of their support for denuclearization, suggest otherwise. For the foreseeable future, Russia has become a backer of a status quo marked by hard lines of division globally, and in Korea. And in its most visionary terms, Russians see this as a cornerstone of their bid to create a viable alternative to the US-led international system.

As Toloraya concluded, “the Russian-North Korean alliance could become a factor in the creation of a new system of security and cooperation in Northeast Asia.”

[1] Daniel Sneider, email exchange with author.
[2] Artyom Lukin, “The New geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula and Beyond: a view from Russia,” (paper presented at Far Eastern Federal University to the CR Life Foundation Special conference “The Global Context Surrounding the Korean Peninsula and Korea’s Choice for Peace,” Seoul, Republic of Korea, July 17, 2025).
[3] Ibid.

Prime Minister Ishiba Holds On

The Struggle to Bring Ishiba Down

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
July 28, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point
 
Despite reaching a deal on tariffs with the United States, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba faces difficulty in maintaining his government. Anti-Ishiba lawmakers in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are expanding their efforts to remove Ishiba from the leadership. Some newspapers reported that Ishiba has already decided to step down. However, since then, Ishiba has repeated that he would continue to fulfill his responsibilities as prime minister. It is not unusual that the LDP replaces its top leader to represent itself as a “new-born LDP” right after serious defeat in an election.
 
Ishiba announced to the press that he would stay on as prime minister after the polls closed on July 20 for the upper house elections. On July 23 in Japan, two newspapers, the Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, however, reported on the front page of their evening editions with huge headlines that Ishiba would step down soon.
 
Yomiuri reported that Ishiba had told one of his aides of his coming resignation on the night of July 22, just before the announcement of an agreement on tariffs between Japan and the United States. “Tariff negotiations are about the national interest. I bet on Akazawa (the top negotiator for Japan). I will explain my responsibility for the defeat in Upper House election soon after the tariff negotiations are settled, but I cannot say I’m resigning so far” Ishiba said, according to Yomiuri. The conversation with the aide seems to be the source of the news of Ishiba’s resignation.
 
The news of a Japan-U.S. tariff deal came in the morning of July 23 Tokyo time. In return for Japan’s pledges to invest $550 billion in the U.S. and to purchase $8 billion of U.S. products, including a 75 percent increase in purchases of U.S. rice, the U.S. reduced the “reciprocal tariff” on Japanese goods from 25 to 15 percent. The Tokyo Stock Market rallied on July 23, welcoming the deal.
 
On the same day, July 23, Ishiba met with three former prime ministers and LDP heavyweights: Taro Aso, Yoshihide Suga, and Fumio Kishida. Observers believe that Ishiba tried to explain his intention to stay on as the prime minister, but those ex-premiers did not support him.
 
According to news reports, Aso concluded that, under Ishiba’s leadership, the LDP cannot win an election, considering the defeats in the Lower House election last October and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election in June 2025. Kishida urged Ishiba to make clear whether he was staying or going. Suga insisted that Ishiba make sure that he does not divide the party. After the meeting, Ishiba said that there was no discussion of his possible resignation.
 
Internal opposition to Ishiba’s prime ministership has spread in the LDP. Some lawmakers formerly affiliated with the Motegi faction, one of the anti-Ishiba powers in the party, started collecting signatures of LDP lawmakers to request a Joint Plenary Meeting of Party Members of Both Houses of the Diet (JPM), an official meeting which can elect new president.
 
The LDP held an unofficial meeting of Diet members on July 28, rather than call a JPM. Ishiba asked for support to continue his presidency to implement the tariff deal with the U.S. While his appeal seemed to fall on deaf ears, many participants wanted the party to identify who was responsible for the disastrous results of the Upper House election. LDP Secretary General, Hiroshi Moriyama, stated that he would do so after the LDP’s review of the election finishes in August. There still is the possibility to hold a JPM, as there have been many requests to do so.
 
Anti-Ishiba groups in the LDP have redoubled their efforts to remove Ishiba. Four leaders of the former (now-disbanded) Abe faction -- Koichi Hagiuda, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Hirokazu Matsuno, and Hiroshige Seko – met at a faction reunion on July 23. One of the finalists in the election for president of the LDP last September, Sanae Takaichi, met with Aso and Nishimura to ask for their support.
 
Some local branches of the party, including the Tochigi Branch led by Toshimitsu Motegi and the Nara Branch, which is the home of Takaichi, submitted requests for the renewal of LDP leadership. After receiving complaints from some local organizations, the LDP Youth Division made the same request.
 
Reshuffling LDP leadership would not, however, address the policy issues behind the party’s recent losses. For example, the kickback scandal was one of the main reasons for those losses. “Who ruined the LDP?” Ishiba asked his colleagues, insisting on his authority to lead the country. Ishiba seems to think that he has at least three responsibilities in the coming weeks: 1) to conclude all the details in the tariff negotiations with the U.S. and related measures for Japanese business sectors; 2) to deliver his own message on August 15 at the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II; and 3) to lead the Tokyo International Conference on African Development ((TICAD 9) in late August.
 ,jap
There is a speculation that Ishiba will step down after completing this agenda. The usual process of replacing an unpopular LDP prime minister is a growing demand for his resignation, a request for a presidential election, and the emergence of new leaders to replace the prime minister. If Ishiba steps down this fall, he will be added to the list of ordinary leaders who held a short term.
 
Once a new LDP president is elected, leaving the prime minister to declare his cabinet’s resignation en masse and both Houses elect new prime minister. If the Houses elect different people, the winner in the Lower House becomes the prime minister. Now, it is uncertain that a LDP candidate will win, given that there is no majority of the leading coalition in both Houses.
 
However, the opposition to Ishiba has some unusual elements. One is that the driving forces for his replacement are the very ones responsible for losing the election. Most lawmakers in the LDP, and not just the members of the former Abe faction, were reluctant to refuse donations from companies to guarantee the transparency of political fundraising. Another element is the absence of alternative contenders to replace Ishiba. The next leader must have the ability to manage negotiations with opposition parties in the Diet. Ishiba has proven his ability to do so; it is not apparent who else in the LDP could take this on.
 
On July 25, a large demonstration was held near the prime minister’s official residence to support the continuation of the Ishiba government. Participants shouted “Hang in there, Ishiba!” and “Don't resign!” Although there have been frequent protests against incumbent prime ministers, especially during Shinzo Abe’s administration, it is highly unusual that a crowd would gather to chant in favor of a prime minister retaining his position. Encouraged by these supporters, Ishiba must consider how to define his continuing “responsibility” as prime minister.

Monday Asia Policy Events, August 4, 2025

BOOK TALK: M.G. SHEFTALL, AUTHOR OF THE EMBERS SERIES “HIROSHIMA: THE LAST WITNESSES” AND “NAGASAKI: THE LAST WITNESSES.” 8/4, 5:45-8:30pm (JST), 4:45-7:30am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. Speaker: M.G. Sheftall, Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural History and Communication, Shizuoka University; Research Fellow, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto. Fee. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3TszaSw

SCHRIEVER SPACEPOWER SERIES: LT GEN DEANNA BURT. 8/4, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Mitchell Institute. Speakers: Jennifer Reeves, Senior Resident Fellow for Spacepower Studies, Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence, Mitchell Institute; Lt. Gen DeAnna M. Burt, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber, and Nuclear, United States Space Force. 

THE FUTURE OF EUROPEAN DEFENSE. 8/4, 11:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Foreign Policy LIVE. Speakers: Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs, Goldman Sachs; Ravi Agrawal, Editor in Chief, Foreign Policy. 

ASSESSING NORTH KOREA’S “20×10” REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS. 8/4, 8:00-9:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Stimson Center. Speakers: Rachel Minyoung Lee, Senior Fellow, Korea Program and 38 North, Stimson Center; Martyn Williams, Senior Fellow, Korea Program and 38 North, Stimson Center; Iliana Ragnone, Research Associate, Korea Program and 38 North, Stimson Center; Moderator: Jenny Town, Senior Fellow and Director, Korea Program and 38 North, Stimson Center.