3,300 Chinese cruise passengers stage Boycott at South Korean resort amid missile shield row

[Daniel808]

3,300 Chinese cruise passengers stage boycott at South Korean resort amid missile shield row

Dozens of buses and tour guides forced to cancel services as group refuses to disembark at Jeju Island as tensions over THAAD deployment escalate

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 14 March, 2017, 9:02am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 14 March, 2017, 9:52am

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About 3,300 Chinese tourists refused to leave their cruise ship at the South Korean resort island of Jeju on Saturday in a spontaneous protest against Seoul’s decision to deploy a US anti-missile system.

Seoul plans to install the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system as a shield in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. But Beijing is concerned that THAAD will breach its fences, prompting official protests and boycotts of South Korean products.

China’s online boycott puts Lotte in cross hairs amid THAAD row

About 80 tour buses and guides had to cancel their services on Saturday when the Chinese tourists refused to disembark for the scheduled stop at Jeju, South Korea’s Yonhap News reported.

The report said the local travel agency organising the stop was not notified of the passengers’ decision prior to their arrival, and it was the first time that such a large group had refused to disembark at Jeju since the route was opened in the late 1990s.

The 114,000-tonne Costa Serena, managed by Italian firm Costa Cruises, sailed from Fukuoka in Japan and arrived at Jeju at around 1pm on Saturday. It stayed at the island for about four hours before heading off for Tianjin, the trip’s final stop.

A Jeju official was quoted as saying that smaller groups of Chinese tourists had refused to disembark in Jeju in recent days but the scale of this protest was surprising.

The boycott follows Beijing’s orders to mainland travel agencies to stop offering tours to South Korea from last Wednesday, including flights, hotels and cruises.

In line with the orders, Costa Cruises has cancelled 26 sailings to Jeju from the middle of this month to the end of June.


In social media posts, the passengers on the Costa Serena – all staff on a company trip – said the decision not to get off at the island was their own.

Photos and posts by passengers who said they were firmly against disembarking were liked and shared thousands of times. Most of the online comments on the issue were in support of the group’s decision.

“Let’s show the Koreans the power of our unity ... They will understand that their economy is dependent on us,” a Weibo commenter wrote.

In addition to Costa Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruises has announced that it will cancel South Korean port visits by their China-based cruises, citing “recent developments regarding the situation in South Korea”.

The National Tourism Administration last week warned tourists heading to South Korea to “carefully select” their destination.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...-cruise-passengers-stage-boycott-south-korean

What I admire from Chinese people, is their Patriotism and Unity

 

[kankan326]

Reasonable. Korea treats China like enemy. Why would we feed Korea?

 

[terranMarine]

Reasonable. Korea treats China like enemy. Why would we feed Korea?

And South Korea has the boldness to complain how she is suffering from economic losses? China already warned them, severe punishments are to be expected. We have infinite economic sticks to spank those trying to harm China's interests. It's only the beginning, the road ahead is long and painful.

 

[Sully3]

korea needs to stand on its own feet and realise China isn't the real threat.

even now China isn't really supporting N Korea anymore.

 

[shadows888]

korea needs to stand on its own feet and realise China isn't the real threat.

even now China isn't really supporting N Korea anymore.

Korea is just a pawn in the great game between USA and China. No one believes Chinese or Americans give a crap about them.

 

[Oldman1]

korea needs to stand on its own feet and realise China isn't the real threat.

even now China isn't really supporting N Korea anymore.

So people assumed.

 

[dingyibvs]

People need to see below the surface to understand the dynamics underlying the current events. South Korea is not a sovereign Korean nation, it's an American state that happens to be occupied mostly by Koreans. Why? Because the mark of sovereignty is the control of military forces, and the SK military is trained, equipped, and in the time of war, commanded, by the U.S. as per Korean law.

While the Chinese people share friendly relations with the Korean people, the Chinese state does not see the Korean state similarly. What the Chinese leaders see when they look across the 38th parallel is half a million American soldiers of Korean ethnicity, separated from China only by North Korea. This represents the greatest security threat to China after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this is why despite Kim's intransigence China would not allow his regime to fall. If South Korean really want lasting peace on the peninsula, they need to take back control of their military and prove that they're an independent nation. If that happens, China would drop all the animosity and simply let centuries of friendship take over.

 

[yantong1980]

Not only their military matter only, their elites too have contribute with all of these. At least North Korea under Lil' bad boy Kim won't let what happen in South Korea happen to his country. If North Korea no longer under Kim dynasty, behave, and open their 'door', I can tell this is real independent Korean country. NK have potential but not under current regime.

 

[Keel]

China 1-0 S Korea

 

[samsara]

People need to see below the surface to understand the dynamics underlying the current events. South Korea is not a sovereign Korean nation, it's an American state that happens to be occupied mostly by Koreans. Why? Because the mark of sovereignty is the control of military forces, and the SK military is trained, equipped, and in the time of war, commanded, by the U.S. as per Korean law.

While the Chinese people share friendly relations with the Korean people, the Chinese state does not see the Korean state similarly. What the Chinese leaders see when they look across the 38th parallel is half a million American soldiers of Korean ethnicity, separated from China only by North Korea. This represents the greatest security threat to China after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this is why despite Kim's intransigence China would not allow his regime to fall. If South Korean really want lasting peace on the peninsula, they need to take back control of their military and prove that they're an independent nation. If that happens, China would drop all the animosity and simply let centuries of friendship take over.

QUITE FASCINATING!

THIS is the very first time I ever read exposition like above: "What the Chinese leaders see when they look across the 38th parallel is half a million American soldiers of Korean ethnicity", and I ain't aware of this Korean Law: "In the time of war, the South Korean military is commanded by the U.S."

No wonder many readers (mostly Westerners) in some Western financial blog (alternative media) do mention that both the South Korea and Japan never really be independent, they're indeed the vassal states. Why? Because they have many US military bases on their soils! The same thing happens on the Old Continent as well, some nation is also considered as vassal state due to the many US military bases there. All of these are the legacies of the World War II.

 

[jhungary]

People need to see below the surface to understand the dynamics underlying the current events. South Korea is not a sovereign Korean nation, it's an American state that happens to be occupied mostly by Koreans. Why? Because the mark of sovereignty is the control of military forces, and the SK military is trained, equipped, and in the time of war, commanded, by the U.S. as per Korean law.

Not Since 2003. Today South Korean Military are under South Korean Military Command. With the exception of 8th US Army and KATUSA troop serve with US 2ID. There were about 5000 South Korean Troop out of 495,000 serve under the US Command (majority belong to the Brigade Size troop that augment US 2nd Infantry Division. Other troop augmented 8th US Army stationed in Korea.)

Republic of Korea Army command 3 Field Army. I Army, III Army and Capital Army Command. Those are Korean Internal Troop. Have nothing to do with US Commander or US Forces in Korea.

 

[dingyibvs]

Not Since 2003. Today South Korean Military are under South Korean Military Command. With the exception of 8th US Army and KATUSA troop serve with US 2ID. There were about 5000 South Korean Troop out of 495,000 serve under the US Command (majority belong to the Brigade Size troop that augment US 2nd Infantry Division. Other troop augmented 8th US Army stationed in Korea.)

Republic of Korea Army command 3 Field Army. I Army, III Army and Capital Army Command. Those are Korean Internal Troop. Have nothing to do with US Commander or US Forces in Korea.

Article from 2014. Note that I said that the SK army would be under US command in the time of war.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/south-...emain-fully-under-us-military-command/5410849

South Korea’s Armed Forces to Remain Fully under US Military Command

The South Korean government announced last week the intention to put off once again the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the United States, this time until “the mid-2020s.” Until then South Korean troops will be under the command of an American four star general in the event of a military conflict. The postponement signifies the long term strategy of the ruling conservative party to ensure the fate of South Korean security is firmly fixed to an American occupation force on the Korean Peninsula.

This decision isn’t shocking given the trend of successive conservative administrations. The transfer of South Korean military OPCON was originally scheduled for 2012 based on an agreement by the left-leaning Roh Moo-hyun government. But the deal was put off by the much-maligned conservative administration of the American stooge Lee Myung-bak. Park Geun-hye, current president and leader of the right wing Saenuri (New World) Party (a spin-off of Lee Myung-bak’s Grand National Party with roots in South Korea’s past American-backed dictatorships),promised during her election campaign to carry out the transfer in 2015. Now she has punted the transfer to a time well beyond the reach of her presidency.

Whether South Korea actually goes through with the transfer of OPCON in the next decade will likely depend on whether Saenuri wins another tampered election given their intrinsic attachment to the United States. What is certain is that this is not a question of whether South Korea is capable of managing its own military in the event of war.

South Korean officials say the U.S. must have control of both American and S.K. military operations to most effectively deter North Korea and maintain coordinated military activities. They insist this would be impossible under a typical alliance system where both nations have independent control of military decisions. Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo told the Wall Street Journal last week, “The most important thing is whether we can really deter North Korea from going to war, and I think we need more time to be able to do so.”

Specifically, officials from the current administration have argued that before a transfer happens South Korea must be able to destroy North Korean missiles on their pads before they are launched (the so-called “kill chain” capability) and also develop their own missile defense program to intercept North Korean missiles. In other words, before they they have operational command, they want to be able to destroy North Korea’s conventional and defensive second strike ability in the event South Korea were to launch a preemptive war. This is a goal that is almost entirely unrealistic and is more akin to total domination than actual deterrence.

Vice Minister Baek also said regarding the non-transfer, “Any possible reduction or pullout of U.S. military troops in South Korea could give a wrong signal to North Korea or other countries in the region…. We should approach this issue very carefully.”

But there is nothing in this that requires American troops to pullout if South Korea took control of its own wartime military command. Indeed, nothing short of physically removing U.S. troops from their perch is likely to have that effect.

The U.S. has at least a handful of unofficial reasons for keeping troops in South Korea, including maintaining a foothold on the mainland of East Asia directed at both China and Russia and padding the budgets of contractors that do everything from supplying the weapons to peeling the potatoes for American troops. South Korean officials may or may not truly believe the delusion that the U.S. is constantly on the verge of sending its “bravest and brightest” home (a laughable concept for the critical-minded), but this notion comes up regularly here in discussions on national security.

In turn, South Korea doesn’t want U.S. troops in-country just to protect against North Korea. This may even be a secondary factor in the overall picture considering North Korea is, bluff and bluster aside, a military power in perpetual decline. The South is far richer and has a much more modern and well-oiled military compared to the North’s crumbling combat infrastructure. The only advantages North Korea has are its manpower–a factor virtually irrelevant in modern warfare–and its still-undeliverable nuclear weapons, which North Korea developed in responseto the threatening posture of the United States.

While it is hard to know exactly how much S.K. officials actually believe of their own anti-North Korean rhetoric, Vice Minister Baek’s allusion to “other countries in the region” is surely significant in that most Koreans still see the U.S. presence as a means to buffer against both China and Japan and view maintenance of OPCON as the way to ensure the U.S. doesn’t leave the peninsula (which is probably why Vice Minister Baek seems to be directly linking OPCON with an American troop pullout).

The crucial issue facing South Korea in this era is how long they can have what the current administration seems to consider the best of both worlds–maintaining strong economic ties with China, the South’s number one trading partner, while remaining, at best, a junior ally of the U.S. as it attempts to preserve military hegemony in the pacific, a policy that antagonizes Beijing. We see South Korea attempting to balance this role on a regular basis as it agrees to purchase the terrible F-35 and the ineffective Global Hawk drone, almost certainly based upon pressurefrom U.S. diplomats, while so far putting off implementing the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, partly because this would represent a serious provocation for both China and Russia (but also because they want their own defense companies to reap the profits of the ongoing conflict with North Korea).

The assumption in South Korea seems to be that this is a tightrope the country has to walk, but it might be useful to consider once again whether or not this is really the case. With the 11th highest military budget in the world, South Korea likely has more than sufficient deterrent capability against any country in the region and there is just too much economic interdependence between China, Japan and South Korea for conflict to ever be a viable option.

Despite this, people in South Korea generally think about national security based two great myths: that the North is still a strong military force, and that the South remains a weak state incapable of taking care of itself against the rest of its regional neighbors. Far too many people in South Korea and abroad believe North Korea will flood over the Demilitarized Zone separating the Koreas or that the region would somehow erupt in chaos by default were the U.S. to lessen its footprint and were South Korea to pursue greater military independence.

This is the case for several reasons. It is a result of the complex of inferiority engendered by Japan’s pre-WWII occupation and centuries of interference by China. It is also a manifestation of the trauma resulting from the horrors of the Korean War, though official South Korean memory has crucially whitewashed the atrocities committed by the U.S. and the South Korean government before and after this conflict. It is also the outcome of continual fear-mongering by the South Korean media. Finally, South Koreans are educated in school and during mandatory military service that South Korea shook off Japan and the North, achieved great economic development, and became a free and democratic state thanks to U.S. protection and friendship–a simplistic narrative that is full of exaggeration and outright falsehood.

Ultimately OPCON transfer is a matter of sovereignty. There is no more critical issue for a nation than deciding whether and how to engage in military combat. Even the most apolitical of South Koreans instinctively know this and are often surprised when they hear their government doesn’t even officially control its own military.

Conflict is only more likely if the South continues to insist on linking its defense with the American goal of perpetuating hegemony in the region. The U.S. could quite easily drag the South Koreans into a conflict in the Pacific if a conflagration erupted between China and Japan (and Taiwan), over the Senkaku-Diaoyu island dispute, where the U.S. has agreed to assist Japan even if they provoke the conflagration. This is categorically outside the interests of South Korea, but such are the perils of collective security, especially in a region where the U.S., through the San Fransisco treaty of 1951, specifically decided to leave post-WWII island ownership in the pacific unresolved in order to maintain “strategic ambiguity” and “manageable instability” to justify their ongoing military presence.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The question is not whether South Korea is militarily prepared for independence; it is whether or not the South Korean people are mentally prepared to shake off the ruling elite in their country to become an independent nation and avoid going down with the sinking American ship.

Stuart Smallwood is an MA in Asian Studies graduate from Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea. Currently based in South Korea and working as a Korean-English translator, his articles and essays have appeared in Global Research, the Hankyoreh, and East Asia: Comparative Perspectives. His website is Koreaandtheworld.com and he can be reached by email at koreaandtheworld.com[at]gmail.com

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Stuart Smallwood, Global Research, 2014
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[jhungary]

Article from 2014. Note that I said that the SK army would be under US command in the time of war.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/south-...emain-fully-under-us-military-command/5410849

The OP Piece mentioned OPCON - Operational Control, having operational control is not the same as under their command...........The OP Piece is wrong to link OPCON to Theatre Command.

A Full Combat Command would have Tactical Control, Operational Control and Strategic Control over a unit.

US retain Operational Control in of ROK Army in times of war means they can organise their ranks and equipment (What we called Table of Organisation and Equipment or TO&E), how equipment is going to be used and men power is going to be used within ROK Army, that is the only thing US control in time of War. Lacking Theatre Tactical and Overall Strategic control mean US general cannot tell their ROK counterpart how to fight a battle or to set strategic objective.

The only ROK soldier under Direct US command would be the KATUSA soldier, they were part of 2 ID and 8th Army. Other than that and the JSA troop near the DMZ, they were under UN Control.

 

[Roybot]

I don't know why the Chinese are complaining, I thought their advanced Missiles could penetrate any missile defence?

 

[samsara]

This is extraordinary. Earlier, countries and people used to oppose when other country was aiming some offensive weapon against them. But in a new development, if you defend yourself even then country will oppose. It is very funny how china oppose south Korean defense shield. This means that they should keep their country open for North Korea to strike with Nuclear weapon.

What a silly remark like those dumb folks at neighborhood coffee table.

So do you think Russia is funny too when it complained heavily the BMD installation at Romania and Poland... said to be against nuke threat from "Iran" (however hilarious this "Iran" excuse is)... and not only complained but Russia said it will take necessary military measures to deal with both installations in ROM and POL!
The latest development Norway is seriously considering to take part into the USA BMD umbrella in the Arctic near the Russian border, and of course Russia does complain heavily and will retaliate if Norway proceeds with this plan. (See: Russia Warns Norway 3/23)

Is Russia funny too?

More about the "funny" things:

CCTV 4 中文国际 – FOCUS TODAY 今日关注 20170228
乐天执意挺“萨德” 中国坚决反对！

This whole segment is dedicated to: Lotte - THAAD - ROK

• "THAAD" system deployed by US and ROK severely damages regional strategic balance
• Being deployed in Seongju, "THAAD" never includes Seoul into protection scope actually
• "THAAD" deployed in ROK will help US build global anti-missile defense system
• "THAAD" deployed in ROK will put all regional countries under US surveillance
• "THAAD" system in ROK may become immediate target for strike during wartime
• China's northeastern, northen and eastern regions are covered by "THAAD" radar
• Russia: If US insists on acting obstinately, Russia will consider taking countermeasures
• China has lodged solemn representations TWICE to ROK on the latest situation

What a shallow, hollow post of yours! If you have no idea about what are the underlying issues, then better be quiet.

~~~~~~~
"There is no fool worse than active fool. So many words, so little content." - Russian saying