There was a moment on the opening day of President Moon Jae-in’s summit meeting at the White House last week that crystallized the differences between South Korea and the United States in the era of Donald Trump. It came on Friday, after Trump and Moon had made their formal remarks about North Korea and the importance of the US-South Korean military alliance.

Suddenly, Trump cut loose with a critique of South Korea’s economic ties with the United States. “We are renegotiating a trade deal right now as we speak,” he declared to the surprise of many onlookers. He described the Korea-US Trade Agreement (KORUS), signed by the Obama administration and a favorite target of his during his campaign, as a “rough deal for the United States.” “We want something that’s going to be good for the American worker,” he informed Moon.

But the real shocker came inside the White House cabinet room, where Moon and his foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, had been invited to meet the rest of Trump’s team. After making a few welcoming comments, Trump asked Wilbur Ross, his Secretary of Commerce, to speak about trade. With cameras rolling (at Trump’s insistence), Ross lit into Moon and Kang about South Korea’s restrictions on US auto and steel exports.

Ross, who had alienated the German government with a similar lecture a few days before, insisted that Seoul’s administrative “rulemaking” on foreign products affects the “access US companies have to the Korean market,” particularly in manufacturing. There was no mention whatsoever of North Korea or Moon’s desire to resolve the tense situation with his neighbor. But as Moon began to offer his response, CNN quickly cut away, leaving the last word to Trump’s 80 year-old cabinet secretary.

“It all amounted to an unusual display of one-upmanship in a meeting between close allies,” the Associated Press concluded. It was also a stunning violation of protocol: in any other administration, the lead spokesman on foreign policy would be the Secretary of State, a position now held by former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. He, however, has been effectively sidelined, and media stories last week said he was deeply angry over his treatment by the White House.

Yet, as with most confrontations between Americans and South Koreans, there was a hidden undercurrent to the story that was missed by the US and Korean media.

Ross, as Moon must know from his experience as a labor lawyer in Busan, is the same New York capitalist who led the wave of vulture investors who descended on South Korea during the IMF crisis of the 1990s. During that time, foreign companies and private equity funds made small fortunes buying and selling bankrupt Korean companies – including, in Ross’ case, steel manufacturers – while thousands of Korean workers lost their jobs.

In one incident I reported on in 1999, Ross himself helped break a strike at the bankrupt Halla Group. Even though Ross was rewarded by Kim Dae Jung’s Blue House for his efforts during the crisis, many of his victims were left with nothing. Ross left Korea “with a reputation as a swindler who made exorbitant profits out of vulnerable companies,” a Korean economist told The New York Times in 2006. South Korea, of course, has come roaring back since then, and is now the 12th largest economy in the world.

But there was a lesson in Ross’s rant. By pushing his decades-old agenda of forcing changes in the Korean economy, Ross was acting, like Trump and his family often do, on his own parochial concerns and personal financial interests. For a moment, US foreign policy was totally focused on the interests of one rich man. It was a reminder that, despite all the rhetoric about the alliance and their shared interests, South Korea and the United States, and their respective, presidents, are on sharply divergent paths in 2017.

For Moon, the purpose of his visit was to firm up the US-South Korean military alliance and seek common purpose with Trump on North Korea. During the first two days of his trip, he paid emotional visits to the Korean War Memorial and with US Marines who had helped his parents escape from North Korea in 1950. In a major concession on North Korea before the summit, Kang had signalled that the contentious deployment of THAAD – currently delayed by an environmental review – would be eventually approved by Seoul. Moon reaffirmed this policy when he met with US lawmakers and Republican leaders on Thursday.

As a result of his actions, Moon got much of what he wanted. In his meetings with Trump, they agreed to leave the door open to dialogue with North Korea “under the right circumstances,” according to their joint statement. Trump, meanwhile, “supported President Moon’s aspirations to restart inter-Korean dialogue on issues including humanitarian affairs.” He also confirmed South Korea’s “leading role” in creating conditions for peaceful reunification.

Still, Trump made it clear from the start that his unilateral approach was still in play, particularly towards China. One day before Moon arrived in Washington, Trump’s Treasury Department announced new sanctions against China as a way to pressure North Korea, charging four Chinese banks and individuals with laundering money for Pyongyang. But his directive, which was accompanied by a major US arms sale to Taiwan, was widely interpreted “as a shot across the bow not only to Beijing, but also to Mr. Moon, since it emphasizes pressure over diplomacy,” The New York Times commented.

In another sign of bilateral dischord that same day, Trump’s national security adviser, former Army general H.R. McMaster, declared that Trump was preparing a list of military options against North Korea. “There’s recognition that there has to be more pressure on the regime,” he told the Center for a New American Security, a Democratic-aligned think tank heavily funded by military contractors.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Trump emphasized how the deepening military relationship with South Korea was good for business. He noted that South Korea is “giving very big orders to the United States for military. They’re buying F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed and buying other military equipment at a level that they’ve never done before, so that’s good.” (he didn’t mention that Lockheed also makes the THAAD system.)

How Moon responded to Ross’s lecture on Korean trade practices has yet to be reported. But it was obvious that Trump’s economic offensive did not go over well with him and his delegation. On Saturday, just before he left for Seoul, Moon told Korean reporters that any talk of renegotiating KORUS was “outside of the agreement” he reached with the White House.

Despite the friction, however, Moon appeared immensely satisfied with his meetings, particularly Trump’s agreement with his dual approach to North Korea and their emphasis on sanctions and dialogue. “Securing President Trump’s support for South Korea’s leading role in fostering a favorable condition for a peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula and resumption of inter-Korean dialogue was a very important achievement,” he told a gathering of overseas Koreans just before he left on Saturday.

US officials and observers were also pleased. “Everyone was expecting a train wreck,” Victor Cha, the top Korea specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Newstapa after Moon’s Friday night speech at the think tank. “But on the contrary, everything went very well.”

Asked if the Korean government’s environmental review of THAAD might present a future problem for the alliance, Cha said the United States was assured by Foreign Minister Kang’s “unequivocal” remarks to CSIS last Monday that Seoul “has no intention to basically reverse” its commitment to THAAD. “That was very important, and cleared the air,” said Cha (he would not confirm or deny rumors that he may be the next US ambassador to Seoul).

In any case, the CSIS speech served as a kind of stamp of approval of Moon by Washington’s foreign policy establishment. There, sitting in the front row, were many of the country’s best known diplomats and national security officials. They included two former Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright; Richard Armitage, Powell’s former deputy at State and a former Pentagon official; former Secretary of Defense William Cohen; and Richard Lugar, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime player in US-Korea relations. Afterwards, President Moon spent nearly two hours meeting with the CSIS board of directors in a “wide-ranging” discussion, according to Cha.

“This was the same crowd that turned out to see Park Guen-hye last year,” noted Sang Joo Kim, the executive vice president of the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a local organization of Korea experts. “But times have changed.”

Moon’s first public appearance at the US Chamber of Commerce provided a dramatic display of the corporate interests driving American policy. Several hundred business people were in attendance, as well as dozens of officials from the Departments of Treasury, State and Commerce as well as the Office of the US Trade Representative.

Many attendees were from the defense industry, including United Technologies, the owner of jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney. Mark Lippert, the former US ambassador who recently joined Boeing Corporation as vice president for international business, was virtually mobbed by admirers of his recent tenure in Seoul. Others wore badges from PhRMA, the huge pharmaceutical industry lobby; AirBNB, the global rental company; and corporate giants CIGNA, Honeywell and Qualcomm. Korean companies Doosan, LG and Samsung were also in attendance.

One of the largest US contingents came from the LNG industry in Texas and the US Gulf Coast. At one table, I met Kathleen Eisbrenner, the founder and CEO of a Texas company called NextDecade, which is building a massive gas liquification plant in Brownsville, TX, with the goal of exporting LNG to South Korea and other Asian markets. Jee Yoon, NextDecades’ business development manager, proudly pointed to the executives at his table from GE, one of the nation’s largest corporations, which has invested in the company.

Two days later, at the White House, Trump announced that Cheniere Energy of Louisiana was “sending its first shipment of American liquefied natural gas to South Korea in a deal worth more than $25 billion.” With Korea Gas in the market for more LNG, the other companies will be cutting similar deals soon. To get there, however, US executives at the meeting said they needed Moon and Trump to take a united stand on North Korea. “The two of them should stand together and say we’re lined up when it comes to North Korea,” Jeff Jones, the director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, was overheard saying. “That will send a strong message.”

But President Moon was looking beyond the confrontation with the North. In his conciliatory speech to the Chamber, he made a strong case for his peace initiatives, arguing that negotiations towards resolving the North Korean nuclear issue would benefit the United States by creating new business opportunities for American corporations.

As the peace process unfolds, Moon promised the Chamber, “you will be able to invest in South Korea with no concerns” and therefore “gain an interest in future investments in North Korea.” It was an appeal to the best of American sensibilities, but it’s difficult to know if anyone listened.

One of the most dramatic contrasts between Moon and Trump was their personal styles of dealing with the press and the public. Throughout the summit, US news coverage was dominated by Trump’s bizarre tweets attacking Mika Brzezinski, a well-known media figure. “Mr. President, do you regret any of your tweets?” one reporter could be heard shouting at Trump as Moon made his first entrance to the White House. The controversy worsened over the weekend, when Trump tweeted a video of himself wrestling with a figure from CNN, the network he disdains and calls “fake news.”

Moon, however, seemed to take delight in his encounters with both the public and the press. During his speech at the Chamber, a crowd of Koreans gathered in front of the ornate building near the White House to welcome him. Some had just come from a separate demonstration at the White House protesting THAAD. Suddenly, President Moon appeared in their midst, shaking hands and greeting his fellow Koreans. One of them was Hana Yang, a former resident of Seoul who had voted for Moon in the last election. “This is an unforgettable memory,” she told me. “We believe he will make our country much better.”

On Saturday, in Moon’s last event in Washington, over 500 overseas Koreans showed up at the Capitol Hilton to hear him speak about his visit. One of them was Haeran Ku, an interior designer from New York. She explained that her father, Ku Ik Kyun, had been an independence fighter and under Park Chung Hee, he was later jailed. When he died at the age of 106, Park would not allow him to be buried in a national cemetery. “So imagine how happy I am that Moon Jae-in is president now,” she told me. “He’s taking all the right steps.”

H.K. Suh, the vice president of the National Association of Korean Americans and a longtime activist from the DC area, said the crowd at the speech was very diverse in comparison to previous visits by Park Guen-hye and other former presidents. “Those supporting the candlelight vigils and the victims of the Sewol were all represented,” he said. “The people were very enthused and energized.” Moon’s primary message, Suh added, is that while the alliance is strong and important, “it’s time now for South Korea to get in the driver’s seat.” As a result, “back home there’s going to be more room for intra-Korea dialogue, with will lead to a reduction of tensions.”

A week of confusion in Washington

By Tim Shorrock

On Monday morning, as military tensions between North Korea and the United States appeared to reach a breaking point, Pyongyang’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho went before television cameras in front of his hotel in New York City.

Incensed that President Trump had followed last week’s bombastic speech to the UN by tweeting that North Korean leaders “may not be around much longer,” Ri told reporters that Trump had “declared war” on his country. If a state of war existed, he added, North Korea reserved the right to “make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”

That, of course, was a reference to the Pentagon’s September 23 flight of US B1-B bombers off North Korea’s east coast, and sparked another round of US media speculation about Kim Jong Un’s military intentions and capabilities. Coming after Ri’s declaration that North Korea was considering testing a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean, they appeared to escalate tensions even more and worried long-time observers of North Korea.

“That’s not the Ri Yong-Ho I know, and I negotiated with him for years,” Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA proliferation expert who met with Ri many times as special envoy to the Six Party Talks during the Bush administration, told Newstapa. Negotiations, not military conflict, “are the only way to resolve” this crisis, he said.

But DeTrani recalled, with some anger, several incidents in the past when the North had taken military action, including its shootdown in 1969 of a US EC-121 reconnaissance plane that killed 31 Americans on board (according to newly released US documents, that incident almost led President Richard Nixon to retaliate with nuclear weapons – but in the end, he did nothing).

DeTrani, who visited Pyongyang several times on behalf of the Obama administration, was one of about 150 people gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential military think tank, to hear an address by South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. In her speech, Kang agreed with US officials who believe that North Korea’s nuclear program has reached, in her words, “a tipping point.”

“Pyongyang seems fast approaching its stated goal of having nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of targeting the continental U.S.,” she said. As President Moon Jae-in warned CSIS during his visit to Washington in June, she reiterated that “there cannot be another war on the Korean Peninsula” and pledged to take “public diplomacy and outreach” to “a whole new level.” Kang’s appearance seemed to solidify CSIS’s role as an unofficial liaison between Washington and Seoul. That relationship could become official when Victor Cha, CSIS’s Korea Chair, is named US ambassador to South Korea, as expected.

But given the policy differences between Moon and Trump and the constant disagreements within the US administration itself about how to deal with North Korea, it’s easy to see why Ri and the North Korean leadership might be confused about America’s intentions.

Their confusion was apparent on Tuesday, when the Washington Post reported from Switzerland that senior North Korean officials “have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime.” As one of those Republicans told the Post, “their number-one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out.”

Among the Americans contacted were Bruce Klinger, a former CIA analyst who runs North Korea programs for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and Douglas Paal, who once worked as an Asian analyst for the Reagan and Bush administrations. Paal chaired a meeting last week at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where two Japanese experts warned that the Abe government must be included in any US negotiations with North Korea (I covered it for Newstapa). Neither Klinger or Paal accepted Pyongyang’s invitation, according to the Post.

At another CSIS seminar on Tuesday, Sue Mi Terry, a former senior Korea analyst for the CIA who was the Korea Director for President Bush’s National Security Council, said she met with North Korean official in Sweden this past summer. While they said de-nuclearization was “off the table,” Terry said, the officials “were willing to meet to discuss a peace treaty.” But that idea has been rejected by the US government, largely because it’s seen as a strategy to “get the US to pull out troops” from South Korea, she said. But she was critical of Trump’s tweets about North Korea and his rhetoric at the UN, which she called “counterproductive.”

At the CSIS forum where Kang spoke, there was more talk of Trump’s UN speech. “It’s very important to lower the temperature,” said Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State who in 2000 became the highest-level US official to ever visit Pyongyang. She took issue with US officials and pundits who claim that the Clinton administration’s 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea was a failure. Under that agreement, North Korea “made no new fissile material, no ICBMs and no missiles,” she said. During her talks with former leader Kim Jong Il, she added, Kim said “we could keep US forces in South Korea.”

Trump’s rhetoric has also raised concerns for US public. On Monday, CBS News published a new poll showing that 53 percent of Americans were concerned that Trump might act too quickly “and start an unneeded war in Korea.” According to CBS, “a majority disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the [North Korea] situation, and more voice concern that the U.S. would go to war too quickly than too slowly.”

A week of confusion in Washington

By Tim Shorrock

On Monday morning, as military tensions between North Korea and the United States appeared to reach a breaking point, Pyongyang’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho went before television cameras in front of his hotel in New York City.

Incensed that President Trump had followed last week’s bombastic speech to the UN by tweeting that North Korean leaders “may not be around much longer,” Ri told reporters that Trump had “declared war” on his country. If a state of war existed, he added, North Korea reserved the right to “make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”

That, of course, was a reference to the Pentagon’s September 23 flight of US B1-B bombers off North Korea’s east coast, and sparked another round of US media speculation about Kim Jong Un’s military intentions and capabilities. Coming after Ri’s declaration that North Korea was considering testing a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean, they appeared to escalate tensions even more and worried long-time observers of North Korea.

“That’s not the Ri Yong-Ho I know, and I negotiated with him for years,” Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA proliferation expert who met with Ri many times as special envoy to the Six Party Talks during the Bush administration, told Newstapa. Negotiations, not military conflict, “are the only way to resolve” this crisis, he said.

But DeTrani recalled, with some anger, several incidents in the past when the North had taken military action, including its shootdown in 1969 of a US EC-121 reconnaissance plane that killed 31 Americans on board (according to newly released US documents, that incident almost led President Richard Nixon to retaliate with nuclear weapons – but in the end, he did nothing).

DeTrani, who visited Pyongyang several times on behalf of the Obama administration, was one of about 150 people gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential military think tank, to hear an address by South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. In her speech, Kang agreed with US officials who believe that North Korea’s nuclear program has reached, in her words, “a tipping point.”

“Pyongyang seems fast approaching its stated goal of having nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of targeting the continental U.S.,” she said. As President Moon Jae-in warned CSIS during his visit to Washington in June, she reiterated that “there cannot be another war on the Korean Peninsula” and pledged to take “public diplomacy and outreach” to “a whole new level.” Kang’s appearance seemed to solidify CSIS’s role as an unofficial liaison between Washington and Seoul. That relationship could become official when Victor Cha, CSIS’s Korea Chair, is named US ambassador to South Korea, as expected.

But given the policy differences between Moon and Trump and the constant disagreements within the US administration itself about how to deal with North Korea, it’s easy to see why Ri and the North Korean leadership might be confused about America’s intentions.

Their confusion was apparent on Tuesday, when the Washington Post reported from Switzerland that senior North Korean officials “have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime.” As one of those Republicans told the Post, “their number-one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out.”

Among the Americans contacted were Bruce Klinger, a former CIA analyst who runs North Korea programs for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and Douglas Paal, who once worked as an Asian analyst for the Reagan and Bush administrations. Paal chaired a meeting last week at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where two Japanese experts warned that the Abe government must be included in any US negotiations with North Korea (I covered it for Newstapa). Neither Klinger or Paal accepted Pyongyang’s invitation, according to the Post.

At another CSIS seminar on Tuesday, Sue Mi Terry, a former senior Korea analyst for the CIA who was the Korea Director for President Bush’s National Security Council, said she met with North Korean official in Sweden this past summer. While they said de-nuclearization was “off the table,” Terry said, the officials “were willing to meet to discuss a peace treaty.” But that idea has been rejected by the US government, largely because it’s seen as a strategy to “get the US to pull out troops” from South Korea, she said. But she was critical of Trump’s tweets about North Korea and his rhetoric at the UN, which she called “counterproductive.”

At the CSIS forum where Kang spoke, there was more talk of Trump’s UN speech. “It’s very important to lower the temperature,” said Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State who in 2000 became the highest-level US official to ever visit Pyongyang. She took issue with US officials and pundits who claim that the Clinton administration’s 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea was a failure. Under that agreement, North Korea “made no new fissile material, no ICBMs and no missiles,” she said. During her talks with former leader Kim Jong Il, she added, Kim said “we could keep US forces in South Korea.”

Trump’s rhetoric has also raised concerns for US public. On Monday, CBS News published a new poll showing that 53 percent of Americans were concerned that Trump might act too quickly “and start an unneeded war in Korea.” According to CBS, “a majority disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the [North Korea] situation, and more voice concern that the U.S. would go to war too quickly than too slowly.”

The United States has agreed to “substantially increase” the sale of advanced weaponry and military technologies to South Korea as a result of recent discussions between Presidents Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in about their joint approach to countering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The first major exports under this new initiative are likely to be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tools for identifying and destroying military targets and installations in case of war with North Korea, according to a Newstapa review of U.S. government statements and defense contractor websites.

Missile defense systems will also figure large in any sales. Kim Jong-dae, a lawmaker with the Justice Party, recently asserted that “it’s very likely” that the United States could push Seoul to buy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that has been so controversial in Korea, as well as Patriot PAC-3 and SM-6 missile interceptors. The THAAD system and the Patriot batteries are made by Lockheed Martin, and the SM-6 by Raytheon.

ISR has been a major emphasis for South Korea. It recently earmarked $10.6 billion for procurement and R&D as “part of a program to improve its own ISR capabilities,” and in two years will launch the first of five military satellites, according to the US military newspaper of record Defense News. ISR technologies are also important for the upgraded communications systems that will be necessary if and when South Korea regains wartime operational control of its military.

One possible option for South Korea, observers say, could be the “Avenger” drone previously known as the “Predator.” This unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has been used extensively by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US Air Force in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. The new version can carry 3,000 pounds of sensors and bombs and is considered one of the world’s most deadly weapons.

The Avenger would augment the fleet of four RQ-4 “Global Hawk” high-altitude surveillance drones South Korea purchased from Northrop Grumman in 2015 for delivery in 2018. The US corporation, which is the second largest US military contractor, has close ties to Samsung Corporation and Korea Aerospace Industries. General Atomics said in August it is engaged in talks to sell the Avenger to a foreign buyer that was later identified as India by Defense News.

The export of the Avenger drone to South Korea would require a change in US policy. Under the Obama administration, the Global Hawks sold to Seoul could only be used for reconnaissance, and were not armed, according to a US Congressional Research Service report prepared for US lawmakers last May. As a result, the Korean Ministry of National Defense is spending nearly $450 million to “indigenously develop” a UAV designed for armed combat that it hopes to be ready by 2021, CRS said.

Few details have been provided by the White House and the Pentagon on the future weapons and technologies to be sold to South Korea, and none of the sales are expected to happen quickly.

“Foreign military sales involve drawn-out processes that can take years,” Real Clear Defense, a military publication, noted in September. “They typically entail complex negotiations not only between nations but within the U.S. government, with the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress all playing central roles.”

The US arms sales to South Korea will be overseen by US Army Lieutenant General Charles Hooper. He is the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency,  which is charged with overseeing Pentagon financial and technical assistance to US military exporters.

In a speech Tuesday in Washington, Hooper told hundreds of contractors and foreign military officers that the Pentagon was prepared to listen as much as possible to South Korea and other military partners “to make sure we understand their requirements before we move forward.”

His agency, Hooper said, is committed to making sales move as quickly as possible to “reduce the flash-to-bang time” and “get weapons to partners as quickly as we can.” He added: “we’re in an increasingly competitive environment.” He spoke to the annual military convention and exhibition sponsored by the Association of the US Army, which was attended by all major US companies as well as about 20 arms makers from South Korea.

Hooper declined comment on specific arms sales. But last month, he told another conference that the Pentagon is already “working very closely with our South Korean allies to assess their immediate requirements” and “address our mutual interests.” He has plenty of experience: he spent the previous three years as US defense attache to Egypt, where US exports have risen 46 percent since 2011 to $238 million in 2016, or 16 percent of Egypt’s total.

South Korea’s 2016 imports of $1.6 billion made it the world’s 6th largest purchaser of arms, behind Saudi Arabia, Algeria, India, Iraq and Egypt, according to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database. Most of South Korea’s weapons come from the United States.

South Korea is “a major purchaser of U.S. weapon systems,” and is “regularly among the top customers for Foreign Military Sales (FMS),” the congressional research group recently stated. From 2008 to 2016, it said, Korean contracts under FMS reached $15.7 billion and commercial acquisitions $6.9 billion, for a total of $22.5 billion in acquisitions over that time.

According to CRS, 75 percent of South Korea’s imports were purchased from U.S. military corporations, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing (which recently won a five-year contract to sustain South Korea’s fleet of F-15s). They make up four of the world’s top five arms companies.

In addition,“European and Israeli defense companies also compete for contracts; Korea is an attractive market because of its rising defense expenditures,” CRS noted. US competitors include the EU’s Airbus, which recently beat out Boeing for a $1.3 billion tanker contract with the South Korean Air Force.

Much of the “complex negotiations” will involve technology transfers. Key Korean weapons systems, such as the KF-X fighter jet built by Korea Aerospace Industries with assistance from Lockheed Martin, rely on the U.S. for core technologies, particularly advanced radar that serve as an aircraft’s “eyes and ears.”

As recently as last year, however, the US government and Pentagon have denied South Korean requests for the transfer of some of these technologies. This was particularly true for missiles, which South Korea has limited since it joined the Missile Technology Control Regime in 2001.

At the time, “the US military absolutely did not want to see South Korea have their own independent long-range strike capability,” military analyst John Pike wrote in his popular military blog, GlobalSecurity.org.

But in 2012, the US and South Korea compromised, allowing South Korea to increase its missile range from 300 to 800 kilometers.  But recently, Washington “rebuffed” the Korean request for the “long-range precision air-to-ground missile” called JASSM, the Guardian reports. It is made by Lockheed Martin.

The US limits on missiles and technology sales are now being extended as a result of the heightening tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ICBM tests. “I am allowing Japan & South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States,” Trump tweeted a few days after North Korea exploded its sixth and largest atomic bomb on September 3.

Yet even before Trump’s announcement, Moon’s government was pushing to revise its missile guidelines to double the maximum weight of its warheads to 1,000 kilograms.

That will “improve its ability to destroy hardened targets,” Bruce Klingner, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea who now heads up the Northeast Asia program for the extreme-right Heritage Foundation, told the military publication Defense One. Doing so, he said, “augments allied deterrence and defense capabilities” and “furthers the trend of South Korea assuming a larger responsibility for its defense.”

The desire for Seoul to take a larger role in military matters is reflected in President Moon’s latest drive to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the US military.

“It’s only when we regain wartime operational control of our military that North Korea will fear us more and the South Korean public will trust the military more,” Moon declared on September 28. That, in turn, will require an expansion of South Korea’s satellite communications, defense analysts point out. Taking over OPCON “requires significant across the board investment in communications enablers,” Australian security expert Dr. Euan Graham told Defense News.

That could open a lucrative, new market for US intelligence integrators such as CACI International. It is one of five contractors that dominate the US spying and surveillance business and has extensive operations at US bases in South Korea, including the huge new base at Camp Humphries near Pyeongtaek. Employment notices on the CACI website show the company is currently hiring in Korea for work at this base, and looking specifically for classified telecommunications network operators.

Korean purchases of high-tech items such as drones will also strengthen US-South Korean industrial cooperation. Under the ROK’s 2015 drone deal with Northrop Grumman, for example, South Korea purchased two ground stations and supporting equipment so Korean  operators can “control and maintain the system,” the company said. Because that involves extensive training, it deepens US-Korean cooperation in intelligence operations and further tightens the military alliance.

One of the most extensive training programs is run by Lockheed Martin, which manufactures for South Korea the F-16 fighter jet, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense systems also deployed by Japan, and the T-50 training aircraft jointly marketed around the world with KAI.

Under a program called “ROKStar,” it provides millions of dollars in R&D funding and mentoring to South Korean universities and research institutes for technologies in line with Lockheed’s “core capabilities,” according to the company website. Among these are signals processing technologies used by the US National Security Agency to monitor global communications. In 2016, ROKStar awards went to researchers at Korea University, Seoul National University, and Ulsan National Institute for Science and Technology.

Northrop Grumman, which makes many of the advanced radar systems used in US missile programs, is deeply rooted in Korea through its local CEO, Brian Kim, a former executive with Boeing Defense, Space and Security (where he oversaw sales of AH-64 Apache helicopters and small bombs). Kim, according to his official biography, spent over 20 years working in the US for KAI and its founding partners Samsung Aerospace and Hughes Aircraft Company, where he presided over aircraft programs such as the KAI T-50.

Boeing, of course, is well represented by Mark Lippert, the last US ambassador to South Korea. In April, he joined the company in Washington as its vice president for international affairs, and quickly threw himself into Korean affairs. He was an honored guest in June when President Moon spoke to the US Chamber of Commerce just before his summit with Trump, and has been spotted by Newstapa at every major Korea-related event since then at the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies in downtown Washington.

As tensions in Korea have increased this year, stock values for the companies doing business in Korea have risen sharply. Boeing’s shares this year have risen around 60 percent since Trump moved into the White House in January. Raytheon is up 25 percent, while both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman saw their stock rise by 20 percent (that’s about double the 12.4 percent rate for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.)

But even the relatively minor cutbacks in the domestic defense budget over the past year has led US defense contractors to focus more on boosting exports. “One area where we expect the majority of our growth potential to come from in the years ahead is our international customers,” Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, said at a “media day” last March. South Korea is central to their plans.

The United States has agreed to “substantially increase” the sale of advanced weaponry and military technologies to South Korea as a result of recent discussions between Presidents Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in about their joint approach to countering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The first major exports under this new initiative are likely to be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tools for identifying and destroying military targets and installations in case of war with North Korea, according to a Newstapa review of U.S. government statements and defense contractor websites.

Missile defense systems will also figure large in any sales. Kim Jong-dae, a lawmaker with the Justice Party, recently asserted that “it’s very likely” that the United States could push Seoul to buy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that has been so controversial in Korea, as well as Patriot PAC-3 and SM-6 missile interceptors. The THAAD system and the Patriot batteries are made by Lockheed Martin, and the SM-6 by Raytheon.

ISR has been a major emphasis for South Korea. It recently earmarked $10.6 billion for procurement and R&D as “part of a program to improve its own ISR capabilities,” and in two years will launch the first of five military satellites, according to the US military newspaper of record Defense News. ISR technologies are also important for the upgraded communications systems that will be necessary if and when South Korea regains wartime operational control of its military.

One possible option for South Korea, observers say, could be the “Avenger” drone previously known as the “Predator.” This unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has been used extensively by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US Air Force in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. The new version can carry 3,000 pounds of sensors and bombs and is considered one of the world’s most deadly weapons.

The Avenger would augment the fleet of four RQ-4 “Global Hawk” high-altitude surveillance drones South Korea purchased from Northrop Grumman in 2015 for delivery in 2018. The US corporation, which is the second largest US military contractor, has close ties to Samsung Corporation and Korea Aerospace Industries. General Atomics said in August it is engaged in talks to sell the Avenger to a foreign buyer that was later identified as India by Defense News.

The export of the Avenger drone to South Korea would require a change in US policy. Under the Obama administration, the Global Hawks sold to Seoul could only be used for reconnaissance, and were not armed, according to a US Congressional Research Service report prepared for US lawmakers last May. As a result, the Korean Ministry of National Defense is spending nearly $450 million to “indigenously develop” a UAV designed for armed combat that it hopes to be ready by 2021, CRS said.

Few details have been provided by the White House and the Pentagon on the future weapons and technologies to be sold to South Korea, and none of the sales are expected to happen quickly.

“Foreign military sales involve drawn-out processes that can take years,” Real Clear Defense, a military publication, noted in September. “They typically entail complex negotiations not only between nations but within the U.S. government, with the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress all playing central roles.”

The US arms sales to South Korea will be overseen by US Army Lieutenant General Charles Hooper. He is the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency,  which is charged with overseeing Pentagon financial and technical assistance to US military exporters.

In a speech Tuesday in Washington, Hooper told hundreds of contractors and foreign military officers that the Pentagon was prepared to listen as much as possible to South Korea and other military partners “to make sure we understand their requirements before we move forward.”

His agency, Hooper said, is committed to making sales move as quickly as possible to “reduce the flash-to-bang time” and “get weapons to partners as quickly as we can.” He added: “we’re in an increasingly competitive environment.” He spoke to the annual military convention and exhibition sponsored by the Association of the US Army, which was attended by all major US companies as well as about 20 arms makers from South Korea.

Hooper declined comment on specific arms sales. But last month, he told another conference that the Pentagon is already “working very closely with our South Korean allies to assess their immediate requirements” and “address our mutual interests.” He has plenty of experience: he spent the previous three years as US defense attache to Egypt, where US exports have risen 46 percent since 2011 to $238 million in 2016, or 16 percent of Egypt’s total.

South Korea’s 2016 imports of $1.6 billion made it the world’s 6th largest purchaser of arms, behind Saudi Arabia, Algeria, India, Iraq and Egypt, according to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database. Most of South Korea’s weapons come from the United States.

South Korea is “a major purchaser of U.S. weapon systems,” and is “regularly among the top customers for Foreign Military Sales (FMS),” the congressional research group recently stated. From 2008 to 2016, it said, Korean contracts under FMS reached $15.7 billion and commercial acquisitions $6.9 billion, for a total of $22.5 billion in acquisitions over that time.

According to CRS, 75 percent of South Korea’s imports were purchased from U.S. military corporations, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing (which recently won a five-year contract to sustain South Korea’s fleet of F-15s). They make up four of the world’s top five arms companies.

In addition,“European and Israeli defense companies also compete for contracts; Korea is an attractive market because of its rising defense expenditures,” CRS noted. US competitors include the EU’s Airbus, which recently beat out Boeing for a $1.3 billion tanker contract with the South Korean Air Force.

Much of the “complex negotiations” will involve technology transfers. Key Korean weapons systems, such as the KF-X fighter jet built by Korea Aerospace Industries with assistance from Lockheed Martin, rely on the U.S. for core technologies, particularly advanced radar that serve as an aircraft’s “eyes and ears.”

As recently as last year, however, the US government and Pentagon have denied South Korean requests for the transfer of some of these technologies. This was particularly true for missiles, which South Korea has limited since it joined the Missile Technology Control Regime in 2001.

At the time, “the US military absolutely did not want to see South Korea have their own independent long-range strike capability,” military analyst John Pike wrote in his popular military blog, GlobalSecurity.org.

But in 2012, the US and South Korea compromised, allowing South Korea to increase its missile range from 300 to 800 kilometers.  But recently, Washington “rebuffed” the Korean request for the “long-range precision air-to-ground missile” called JASSM, the Guardian reports. It is made by Lockheed Martin.

The US limits on missiles and technology sales are now being extended as a result of the heightening tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ICBM tests. “I am allowing Japan & South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States,” Trump tweeted a few days after North Korea exploded its sixth and largest atomic bomb on September 3.

Yet even before Trump’s announcement, Moon’s government was pushing to revise its missile guidelines to double the maximum weight of its warheads to 1,000 kilograms.

That will “improve its ability to destroy hardened targets,” Bruce Klingner, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea who now heads up the Northeast Asia program for the extreme-right Heritage Foundation, told the military publication Defense One. Doing so, he said, “augments allied deterrence and defense capabilities” and “furthers the trend of South Korea assuming a larger responsibility for its defense.”

The desire for Seoul to take a larger role in military matters is reflected in President Moon’s latest drive to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the US military.

“It’s only when we regain wartime operational control of our military that North Korea will fear us more and the South Korean public will trust the military more,” Moon declared on September 28. That, in turn, will require an expansion of South Korea’s satellite communications, defense analysts point out. Taking over OPCON “requires significant across the board investment in communications enablers,” Australian security expert Dr. Euan Graham told Defense News.

That could open a lucrative, new market for US intelligence integrators such as CACI International. It is one of five contractors that dominate the US spying and surveillance business and has extensive operations at US bases in South Korea, including the huge new base at Camp Humphries near Pyeongtaek. Employment notices on the CACI website show the company is currently hiring in Korea for work at this base, and looking specifically for classified telecommunications network operators.

Korean purchases of high-tech items such as drones will also strengthen US-South Korean industrial cooperation. Under the ROK’s 2015 drone deal with Northrop Grumman, for example, South Korea purchased two ground stations and supporting equipment so Korean  operators can “control and maintain the system,” the company said. Because that involves extensive training, it deepens US-Korean cooperation in intelligence operations and further tightens the military alliance.

One of the most extensive training programs is run by Lockheed Martin, which manufactures for South Korea the F-16 fighter jet, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense systems also deployed by Japan, and the T-50 training aircraft jointly marketed around the world with KAI.

Under a program called “ROKStar,” it provides millions of dollars in R&D funding and mentoring to South Korean universities and research institutes for technologies in line with Lockheed’s “core capabilities,” according to the company website. Among these are signals processing technologies used by the US National Security Agency to monitor global communications. In 2016, ROKStar awards went to researchers at Korea University, Seoul National University, and Ulsan National Institute for Science and Technology.

Northrop Grumman, which makes many of the advanced radar systems used in US missile programs, is deeply rooted in Korea through its local CEO, Brian Kim, a former executive with Boeing Defense, Space and Security (where he oversaw sales of AH-64 Apache helicopters and small bombs). Kim, according to his official biography, spent over 20 years working in the US for KAI and its founding partners Samsung Aerospace and Hughes Aircraft Company, where he presided over aircraft programs such as the KAI T-50.

Boeing, of course, is well represented by Mark Lippert, the last US ambassador to South Korea. In April, he joined the company in Washington as its vice president for international affairs, and quickly threw himself into Korean affairs. He was an honored guest in June when President Moon spoke to the US Chamber of Commerce just before his summit with Trump, and has been spotted by Newstapa at every major Korea-related event since then at the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies in downtown Washington.

As tensions in Korea have increased this year, stock values for the companies doing business in Korea have risen sharply. Boeing’s shares this year have risen around 60 percent since Trump moved into the White House in January. Raytheon is up 25 percent, while both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman saw their stock rise by 20 percent (that’s about double the 12.4 percent rate for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.)

But even the relatively minor cutbacks in the domestic defense budget over the past year has led US defense contractors to focus more on boosting exports. “One area where we expect the majority of our growth potential to come from in the years ahead is our international customers,” Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, said at a “media day” last March. South Korea is central to their plans.