DRULAP

WASHINGTON — More than six months after a crucial security deal between Washington and some Pacific Island nations was signed into law, key features of the Compacts of Free Association have not been implemented, raising questions in the region about U.S. commitment to its Pacific partners in the face of an increasingly assertive Beijing.

In March, the passage of the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA, extended $7 billion in economic aid over 20 years to three Pacific Island nations: Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Additionally, COFA says Washington provides for their defense and can deny China access to their territorial waters, a maritime area larger than the continental United States.

Since then, however, some parts of the deal have yet to be implemented, including services and health benefits for veterans who live on the islands. Currently, veterans must travel to nearby islands such as Guam or as far away as Hawaii to get the help they need.

“The Biden-Harris administration has failed” to deliver veterans services to these Pacific Island nations, said Arkansas Republican Bruce Westerman, who is chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, during an oversight hearing on COFA this week.

The U.S. State Department also has yet to establish a mandatory new office dedicated to diplomacy with the three islands.

In addition, Washington’s federal programs and services agreement with Palau has not been renewed, and the current agreement expires on September 30. Federal services in limbo range from welfare benefits and food stamp programs to the U.S. Postal Service and veterans’ health benefits.

“Many of our veterans living in Palau are suffering,” Hersey Kyota, Palau’s ambassador to the U.S., told the Indian and Insular Affairs Subcommittee in the oversight hearing, Tuesday. Palau is home to around 20,000 people; with that small population, it has the highest per capita rate of U.S. military volunteers.

Kyota said at least three Palauan veterans have died by suicide since January. “They need medication; they need to travel to Guam or Hawaii, but most of them do not have enough resources to pay for their own ticket,” he said.

Andrew Harding of the Heritage Foundation said the delays play to Beijing’s advantage.

“The implementation process is failing,” Harding told VOA. “If we really want to prove that we are the preferred partner in the Pacific, especially to our COFA partners, we can’t have these types of questions be raised.”

Greg Brown, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said, “This doesn’t look good. Now, it’s hurry up and wait, and who are we waiting for? We’re waiting for ourselves. We’re waiting for the Americans.”

At the hearing on Tuesday, Anka Lee, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, acknowledged the critical need for U.S. engagement with Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

“We know that the PRC is aggressive. They are pushing very hard, and we have to compete with them toe to toe,” he said to lawmakers, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

During the oversight hearing, Taylor Ruggles, the senior COFA adviser at the U.S. State Department, blamed some of the delay on communication issues between the White House and Congress and a focus on rolling out additional embassies in other Pacific Island nations such as Vanuatu. He said there’s an interagency meeting this week to get all the federal agencies together to move the process forward. That meeting, the second this year, is scheduled for Thursday. The first was held in April.

Dr. Miguel H. Lopez, assistant undersecretary for health at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said this week the department would “provide a comprehensive model of care” to Pacific veterans that is equal to treatment veterans receive in the continental United States.

Ambassadors to Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands told lawmakers at the hearing that they received letters from the Veterans Administration Monday night, just hours before the oversight hearing.

“The [veterans] agreement calls for a one-year duration. We’re within six to seven months now, and we have not heard anything,” said Jack Soram, the Federated State of Micronesia ambassador to the United States.

“We don’t have that much time. Veterans need this help,” said Representative Ed Case, a Democrat from Hawaii.
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Pope Francis is in Singapore for the final leg of his tour of Asia and Oceania. It has been the longest and farthest trip of his tenure, taking in four countries and covering more than 30,000 kilometers. He has delivered a message of interfaith harmony throughout, and as Adam Hancock has been finding out, that theme will be prominent during his stay in the Southeast Asian financial hub.
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Seoul — South Korea approved the construction of two nuclear reactors on its east coast Thursday, reversing a previous administration’s anti-nuclear policy as Seoul now works to expand its atomic energy capabilities.

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved permits to build the Shin Hanul 3 and 4 reactors after it “confirmed the safety” of the project in southeast Uljin city.

“No factors have been found at the reactor construction site that could cause geological disasters such as subsidence or ground collapse,” it said.

Each reactor will have a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts, and they are scheduled to be built by 2033.

Seoul sought to phase out nuclear energy under the leadership of Moon Jae-in, whose government aimed to make South Korea completely nuclear-free by 2084.

But since Yoon Suk Yeol took office in 2022, his government has ambitions to increase the share of power generated from nuclear energy to 36 percent by 2038, up from the current 30 percent.

The new reactors will “contribute to the development of cutting-edge technologies such as AI by providing a stable supply of clean and reliable energy,” said Sung Tae-yoon, Yoon’s chief of staff for policy.

The development could also “help the country secure reactor construction bids overseas,” he told reporters.

The approval came eight years after Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company first submitted the permit request. The process was suspended in 2017 amid the then-government’s push to reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear energy.

Thursday’s decision was criticized by Korean activist group Energy Justice Actions as an “irresponsible move that threatens the safety of the people, in opposition to the global trend towards an energy shift” towards renewable resources.

The two new reactors will be Uljin’s ninth and tenth, the group said, calling such a concentration a “global rarity.”
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Jakarta — Indonesian President Joko Widodo will from Thursday spend the final weeks of his term in the country’s planned new capital, Nusantara, amid doubts about the continued pace of development of his flagship $32 billion megaproject.

The massive infrastructure undertaking on the island of Borneo has suffered a series of setbacks, including construction delays, land issues, and a lack of foreign investment. This June the two top officials overseeing Nusantara abruptly resigned.

Jokowi, as the outgoing leader is known, reiterated on Thursday that it could be decades before Nusantara is finished.

“It could take 10, 15, or even 20 years,” Jokowi told top military and police officials during a meeting in Nusantara’s recently completed eagle-shaped palace.

“Moving to the new capital is not only about moving to a new building, palace or location,” he added. “But is a change of mindset and working patterns.”

Intended to ease the burden on the congested, polluted and densely populated current capital Jakarta, the parliament in 2022 passed a law to move its capital.

But ahead of the Oct. 20 inauguration of president-elect Prabowo Subianto and Jokowi’s eldest son, vice president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka, doubts have grown about Nusantara’s future viability.

Analysts say the development of Nusantara is unlikely to continue at the same breakneck speed in the next administration.

Prabowo, who ran on a platform of continuing Jokowi’s policies, is expected to prioritize his own signature $28 billion “free nutritious food program” targeting malnutrition and stunted growth in schoolchildren across the world’s fourth-most populous nation.

Jokowi told officials on Thursday that Prabowo had promised to speed up construction.

Located on the eastern side of Borneo island, Nusantara is about 1,200 km from Jakarta.

Nusantara’s presidential palace and its first hotel were recently completed, while housing for state officials, an airport and toll roads are still under way.

On Friday Jokowi is expected to hold his second cabinet meeting in Nusantara and may announce several new investments. 
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MANILA/BEIJING, — The Philippines will stick to its position on Sabina Shoal, it said on Thursday, even while exploring ways to ease tension in the area during “frank and candid” talks with China on managing disputes in the key waterway of the South China Sea.

The Southeast Asian nation’s sustained presence at the feature, aiming to monitor what it suspects to be China’s small-scale reclamation activities has angered Beijing, turning the shoal into their latest flashpoint in the contested waters.

During Wednesday’s meeting of officials in Beijing, China vowed to “firmly uphold its sovereignty” and reiterated a demand for the immediate withdrawal of a Philippine coast guard ship anchored at the shoal since April.

“I reaffirmed the Philippines’ consistent position and explored ways to lower the tension,” Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro said on X, posting a picture of her handshake with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong.

“We agreed to continue discussions on areas of co-operation, especially on hotline mechanism, coastguard cooperation, and marine scientific and technological co-operation.”

The two had a frank and candid exchange of views, the Philipine foreign ministry said in its statement.

The Sabina Shoal, which China refers to as Xianbin Reef, and Manila as Escoda Shoal, lies 150 km west of the Philippine province of Palawan, well within its exclusive economic zone.

The two nations have traded accusations of intentional ramming of each others’ vessels in a series of clashes last month, just after reaching a pact on resupply missions to a beached Filipino naval ship in the Second Thomas Shoal.

China claims sovereignty over most of the China Sea, overlapping into maritime zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

In 2016 the Hague arbitration tribunal voided China’s expansive and historical claims, a decision Beijing rejects.

The Philippine navy has said it has recently monitored 207 Chinese vessels, including ‘maritime militia boats’ within the country’s EEZ, with dozens observed near Sabina Shoal.
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea Thursday morning, South Korea’s military said, days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to put his nuclear force fully ready for battle with its rivals. 

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a brief statement that the launch took place off North Korea’s eastern coast but gave no details, such as how far the weapon traveled. 

Japan’s prime minister’s office also alerted on its X account that North Korea had launched a suspected ballistic missile, but it did not provide details. 

The launch was North Korea’s first public weapons firing in more than two months. On July 1, North Korea claimed to have tested a new tactical weapon capable of delivering a “super-large” 4.5 ton-class warhead. 

In a speech Monday, Kim said he would redouble efforts to make his nuclear force fully ready for combat with the United States and its allies. He said North Korea faced “a grave threat” because of what he called “the reckless expansion” of a U.S.-led regional military bloc that is now developing into a nuclear-based one. 

Kim has made similar vows numerous times, but his latest threat came as outside experts believe North Korea will perform a nuclear test explosion or long-range missile test-launches ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November. 

Last week, North Korea also resumed launches of trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea. 

Since 2022, North Korea has significantly accelerated its weapons testing in a bid to perfect its capabilities to launch strikes on the U.S. and South Korea. The U.S. and South Korea have responded by expanding military drills that North Korea calls invasion rehearsals. 

Last month, Kim had held off from missile tests or other provocative military demonstrations as the United States and South Korea conducted large-scale summertime military exercises. North Korea issued statements berating the allies for raising tensions. 
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washington — Threats from China, Russia and North Korea have fueled debate in Washington about whether the United States should consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to the Indo-Pacific region, with leading U.S. Senate members expressing opposing views.

Earlier in May, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, put forward a military spending plan that included the idea of redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear arms that were withdrawn from South Korea more than three decades ago.

Another Republican, Senator James Risch, who is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA Korean last month in an email statement that the U.S. should “explore options for returning nuclear weapons to the Pacific theater for the purpose of strengthening extended deterrence.”

The term “extended deterrence” refers to the U.S. commitment to respond in kind to a nuclear attack on South Korea.

Drawing a contrast, Democratic Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday in a phone conference that he didn’t think that U.S. tactical nuclear weapons should be redeployed to the Korean Peninsula, adding that it could provoke a “major response from the Chinese.”

Redeployment of nukes

The U.S. government has made it clear that the U.S. does not plan to redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula.

“We believe that the only effective way to reduce nuclear threats on the peninsula is by curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to VOA last week.

In 1991, the U.S. withdrew from South Korea all of its nuclear weapons, or about 100, according to some studies.

The U.S. has been closely watching the growing military cooperation among China, Russia and North Korea, especially in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has identified the three nations as threats to stability in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

On August 22, the White House confirmed to VOA that a new “nuclear employment guidance” had been issued. The terms of the classified document are not public, but The New York Times quoted two senior administration officials as saying that it “seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.”

“The guidance issued earlier this year is not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in an email to VOA. “We have repeatedly voiced concerns about the advancing nuclear arsenals of Russia, PRC [China] and the DPRK [North Korea].”

Vipin Narang, who recently served as the acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said in an August forum held by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that the United States may need to seek “a change in the size or posture” of nuclear forces to deal with threats from China, Russia and North Korea.

Growing threats

In South Korea, there is growing uneasiness about the U.S. capability to protect South Korea from North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile weapons.

North Korea’s state Korean Central News Agency on Sunday released a photo showing the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, inspecting a new 12-axle transporter erector launcher (TEL), which could be used to launch a new, longer missile to potentially attack the United States. The next day, in a speech celebrating the country’s founding anniversary, Kim vowed to increase the number of nuclear weapons “exponentially.”

Amid these geopolitical tensions, U.S.-based experts appear to be divided about whether the U.S. should redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula.  

Richard Lawless, former deputy undersecretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security, said the idea that South Korea would be intimidated by China, Russia or South Korea from even beginning a discussion on the subject with Washington “is failed logic.”

“Many Americans continue to fail to appreciate the threat of North Korea and China, typically playing down the latter.”

Robert Peters, a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA Korean via email that he supported the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea.

“I’m concerned about the credibility of our deterrent in the face of North Korean nuclear expansion and Chinese nuclear breakout,” Peters said, adding that stationing nonstrategic nuclear weapons within the theater gives the U.S. president “far more optionality when crafting a deterrence message during times of acute crisis or conflict than if he or she could rely solely on strategic nuclear weapons.”

Opposing views

But Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, said he was against redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons.

“Placing such high-value weapons in a static, fixed bunker makes a very tempting preemptive target for North Korea,” Klingner told VOA Korean on Tuesday via email. “During a crisis, it could even lower deterrence by making Pyongyang more likely to initiate a preemptive attack on the bunker prior to the weapons being deployed on mobile launch platforms.”

Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said he didn’t support the redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea.  

“From a strictly military standpoint, the U.S. can enforce extended deterrence with nuclear-armed submarines and long-range bombers that North Korea cannot defend against,” Samore told VOA Korean on Tuesday via email.

“Politically, redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea would be controversial with some Korean political parties and the Korean public and would increase tensions in the region, especially with China and North Korea, and even between South Korea and Japan,” Samore said.

Sydney Seiler, who until last year was the national intelligence officer for North Korea on the U.S. National Intelligence Council, told VOA Korean via email Tuesday that “there is a consensus among [U.S. and South Korean] leaders and their senior national security advisers that such a redeployment is unnecessary at this time.”   

The Chinese Embassy in Washington told VOA in an email Tuesday that the Chinese “firmly oppose any country’s attempt to use the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue to harm China’s strategic security interests.”  

“It is hoped that the U.S. can abandon the cold war mentality and hegemonic logic, adopt a rational and responsible nuclear policy, stop nuclear sharing, extended deterrence, expanding nuclear alliance, and other negative moves, and play a constructive role in maintaining regional and global peace and stability,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said Tuesday in a written statement via email, responding to an inquiry from VOA Korean.
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ISLAMABAD — Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and neighboring Turkmenistan on Wednesday marked the resumption of work on a long-delayed gas pipeline designed to run through the two countries, Pakistan and India.

The estimated $10 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, or TAPI, project is designed to annually transport up to 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas from the southeastern Galkynysh field through the proposed 1,800-kilometer pipeline.

Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund of the de facto Taliban government traveled to the Turkmen border region of Mary and joined top leaders of the host country to inaugurate construction of a vital section of the TAPI project. It is intended to link the city of Serhetabat in Turkmenistan to Herat in western Afghanistan.

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov joined and addressed the ceremony via video link. “This project will benefit not only the economies of the participating countries but also the entire region,” he said.

Taliban authorities declared a public holiday in Herat, the capital of the province of the same name, to mark the occasion, with posters celebrating the TAPI project plastered across the border city.

Initially signed in the early 1990s to provide natural gas to energy-deficient South Asia, the TAPI project has faced repeated delays due to years of Afghan hostilities, which ended in 2021 when the then-insurgent Taliban recaptured power as all U.S. and NATO forces exited the country.

While Turkmen leaders Wednesday pledged to enhance bilateral ties between Ashgabat and Kabul and carry forward the TAPI project, experts remain skeptical that the gas pipeline will become operational soon. They cite funding issues, U.S.-led Western economic sanctions on Afghanistan and the international community’s refusal to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government over restrictions on Afghan women’s rights.

Islamabad’s persistent diplomatic and military tensions with New Delhi are also considered a significant obstacle to the materialization of the TAPI project.

According to officials of the participating countries, Pakistan and India, each one plans to purchase 42% of the gas exports, and Afghanistan will receive the rest. Kabul will also earn around $500 million in transit fees annually.

Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan deteriorated after the Taliban takeover over terrorism concerns. Islamabad complains that Kabul shelters and facilitates fugitive anti-Pakistan militants to orchestrate cross-border terrorist attacks from Afghan sanctuaries, charges the Taliban reject.
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SEOUL/NEW DELHI — Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, is cutting up to 30% of its overseas staff at some divisions, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. 

South Korea-based Samsung has instructed subsidiaries worldwide to reduce sales and marketing staff by about 15% and the administrative staff by up to 30%, two of the sources said. 

The plan will be implemented by the end of this year and would impact jobs across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, one person said. Six other people familiar with the matter also confirmed Samsung’s planned global headcount reduction. 

It is not clear how many people would be let go and which countries and business units would be most affected. 

The sources declined to be named because the scope and details of the job cuts remained confidential. 

In a statement, Samsung said workforce adjustments conducted at some overseas operations were routine, and aimed at improving efficiency. It said there are no specific targets for the plans, adding that they are not impacting its production staff. 

Samsung employed a total of 267,800 people as of the end of 2023, and more than half, or 147,000 employees, are based overseas, according to its latest sustainability report. 

Manufacturing and development accounted for most of those jobs and sales and marketing staff was around 25,100, while 27,800 people worked in other areas, the report said. 

The “global mandate” on job cuts was sent about three weeks ago, and Samsung’s India operation was already offering severance packages to some mid-level employees who have left in recent weeks, one of the direct sources said. 

The total employees who may need to leave the India unit could reach 1,000, the person added. Samsung employs some 25,000 people in India. 

In China, Samsung has notified its staff about the job cuts that are expected to affect about 30% of its employees at its sales operation, a South Korean newspaper reported this month. 

Big challenges 

The job cuts come as Samsung grapples with mounting pressure on its key units. 

Its bread-and-butter chip business has been slower than its rivals in recovering from a severe downturn in the industry that drove its profit to a 15-year low last year. 

In May, Samsung replaced the head of its semiconductor division in a bid to overcome a “chip crisis” as it seeks to catch up with smaller rival SK Hynix in supplying high-end memory chips used in artificial intelligence chipsets. 

In the premium smartphone market, Samsung is facing stiff competition from Apple and China’s Huawei, while it has long lagged behind TSMC in contract chip manufacturing. And in India, which earns Samsung around $12 billion in annual revenue, a strike over wages is disrupting production. 

One of the sources familiar with the plans said the job cuts were being made in preparation for a slowdown in global demand for technology products as the global economy slows. Another source said Samsung is seeking to shore up its bottom line by saving costs. 

It was not immediately clear if Samsung will also cut jobs in its headquarters in South Korea. 

One of the sources said Samsung would find it difficult to lay off workers in South Korea because it was a politically sensitive issue. Conglomerate Samsung Group, of which the electronics giant is the crown jewel, is the country’s biggest employer and plays a key role in its economy. 

Job cuts could also stir labor unrest at home. A South Korean workers’ union at Samsung Electronics recently went on strike for several days, demanding higher wages and benefits. 

Shares in Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s most valuable stock, are trading at their lowest level in 16 months on Wednesday, as some analysts cut their profit estimates for the company recently, citing a weak recovery in demand for smartphones and personal computers.
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