WASHINGTON — More than 260 foreign nationals have been rescued from online scam operations in Myanmar and handed over to authorities in Thailand. The rescue is part of an escalating crackdown on human trafficking and cyber fraud along the two countries’ border.

A Myanmar insurgent group, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, which recently raided scam centers in the region, handed the victims over to Thai authorities on Feb. 12.

DKBA Chief of Staff Major Saw San Aung told VOA’s Burmese Service in a telephone interview that the group’s forces raided casinos in Myawaddy District, Karen State, in search of trafficked foreign workers.

“On February 11, we identified 261 victims and transferred them to Thai authorities on February 12,” he said.

“We are handing over everyone we find today, but the process is difficult. The [Myanmar] junta’s immigration department is making demands, and the terrain is challenging. We have to retrieve the victims ourselves before transferring them to the nearest Thai authorities,” Major Saw San Aung said.

A rescue worker and eyewitness who requested anonymity for security reasons told VOA in a phone interview on Wednesday that online scam gangs force victims of trafficking “to meet monthly earnings targets of up to $50,000. If they failed, they were tortured. They were only allowed to sleep for two to three hours a day and worked nonstop. They were kept in dark cells and subjected to continuous abuse.”

Thai officials confirmed that the rescued individuals were taken by boat to Phop Phra, Thailand, before being moved to a secure facility.

China pressured to crack down on scammers

Tensions between China and Myanmar escalated after Chinese actor Wang Xing was abducted and held captive in Myanmar in January, before eventually being rescued from scam centers in Myawaddy.

In response to this incident, China pressured Thailand to crack down on scam networks operating in the region.

This pressure is widely believed to be a key factor behind Thailand’s decision to cut off electricity and fuel supplies to Myanmar, significantly impacting areas controlled by ethnic Karen armed groups.

The Wednesday handover follows another transfer on Feb. 6 when Myanmar’s ruling junta and another armed group, the Karen Border Guard Force handed over 61 trafficked individuals, including 39 Chinese nationals, to Thai custody.

Among those rescued and returned on Thursday, many were from Africa, including 46 Ethiopians and 33 Kenyans, according to the DKBA.

In recent days, Myanmar’s military leadership has also highlighted its efforts to crackdown on illegal online gambling and scam operations in cooperation with the international community.

In audio message shared with the news media last Friday, military junta spokesperson General Zaw Min Tun said many victims of trafficking were lured with promises of high-paying jobs in computer-related and translation fields.

“They were deceived by the prospect of high salaries and good working conditions. Most of them arrived in Mae Sot from Bangkok before being taken across the border illegally by online money-laundering gangs,” General Zaw Min Tun said.

Myawaddy: haven for scam syndicates

Myawaddy, located in Karen State along the Thai border, is controlled by Karen armed groups, including the DKBA and the Karen BGF, the latter was previously aligned with the Myanmar military.

The BGF-controlled town of Shwe Kokko in particular has turned into a notorious hub for online fraud.

As of May 2022, reports indicated that 1,225 Chinese nationals, along with individuals from Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and the Philippines, were trafficked into Shwe Kokko to work in online scam operations. These victims were lured by fake job offers and later forced into online fraud schemes.

Since the Karen BGF severed ties with the Myanmar military and rebranded itself as the Karen National Army last year, the scam operations have faced increased scrutiny.

The U.S. Institute of Peace has warned that online scams originating from Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, are a major security threat and cause significant financial losses in the U.S.

In 2023, USIP estimated that Americans lost $3.5 billion to scams from the region. These scams, including forced labor, scams using romantic relationships and other financial crimes, target U.S. residents through fraudulent job applications and false high-tech job ads.

Aye Aye Mar from VOA’s Burmese Service contributed to this report.
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Some of the 300 Russian fishermen stranded on an ice floe drifting in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Western Pacific have refused evacuation, Russia’s emergency ministry said on Wednesday.

A rescue operation with helicopters and vessels has brought 109 of the fishermen ashore, but some refused to be rescued, the ministry said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“Some extreme sports enthusiasts are not going to leave without a catch, under any circumstances,” the ministry said.

It posted a video showing fishermen walking on snowy ice away from the rescuers. It was unclear why so many fishermen had gathered at the location.

About a 10-meter ice crack formed from the Russian village of Malki to the mouth of the Dolinka River in the Sakhalin region, setting the fishermen adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk, the ministry said earlier.

Winters in the Sakhalin region in Russia’s Far East, which comprises the Sakhalin Island and the chain of the Kuril Islands, are cold, snowy and long, often lasting more than five months.
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Washington — Human rights experts in Washington are divided over whether the U.S. withdrawal from a United Nations body on human rights will hurt North Korea’s already poor human rights situation.

Last Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, or UNHRC, reintroducing the stance he held during his previous term.

The executive order said that the UNHRC has “protected human rights abusers by allowing them to use the organization to shield themselves from scrutiny,” adding that the council deserves “renewed scrutiny.”

The decision was announced ahead of Trump’s recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited Washington for the first time since Trump’s second inauguration.

Since his first term, President Trump has been disapproving of the activities of the U.N. human rights body. In June 2018, the Trump administration criticized the UNHRC for its “bias against Israel,” stressing the council that year passed resolutions against Israel more than those passed against North Korea, Iran and Syria combined.

Negative impact

Robert King, who served as the U.S. special envoy for North Korea’s human rights under the Obama administration, said that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council could negatively undermine international efforts to improve human rights conditions in the North.

“It will have a negative impact. The U.N. Human Rights Council has been a very effective body in terms of calling attention to North Korea’s serious human rights abuses,” King told VOA Korean on the phone last week. “And the fact that the United States will not be an active participant is again a very unfortunate situation.”

Roberta Cohen, former deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights, said leaving the UNHRC is “a short-sighted decision.”

Cohen, who also served as senior adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly, said it is important that the U.S. be seated at the council with a vote and be active in mobilizing support for any new initiatives.

“If the reforms are needed and they are, the U.S. should be involved heavily,” Cohen told VOA Korean by phone last week. “Walking away cedes the floor to your opponents.”

Cohen highlighted that the council was where the Commission of Inquiry on the Human Rights in North Korea, or COI, was conceived. The COI is widely considered to be the first systematic and thorough documentation of Pyongyang’s violations of human rights.

She added that an update of the COI is to be presented in September for the first time in more than a decade, saying that Washington needs to be part of the process when the report is introduced.

However, others question the role of the Human Rights Council in making a real impact on improving North Korea’s human rights conditions.

“The Human Rights Council has become a very tragic farce. It was supposed to promote and protect human rights around the world but instead it coddles dictatorships and gives them legitimacy by including them as members of the council,” said Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation and a longtime North Korea human rights activist. “We’re not addressing the horrific things that are happening to the North Korean refugees in China that are being shot and executed when they’re returned.”

‘Illegitimate’ members

Human rights experts have long criticized Beijing for failing to afford protection to North Korean refugees and forcefully repatriating them to North Korea.

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy in Washington, said North Korean human rights issues need to be separated from how Trump wants to deal with the United Nations.

“This is about the Trump administration’s views toward U.N. organizations and how they are being misused by countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea,” Maxwell told VOA Korean on Monday via email. “When these organizations are coerced by members of the so-called axis of upheaval, they are not able to support the people who are suffering true human rights abuses.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation chair at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies in Washington, said the U.S. has other tools to address the North Korean human rights issue.

“Pulling out of the UNHRC won’t make much of a difference practically speaking,” Yeo told VOA Korean via email last week. “The U.S. has other means and platforms to raise North Korean human rights objections, including its own State Department human rights reports.”

The U.S. rejoined the UNHRC shortly after the inauguration of Joe Biden as president in 2021, but the Biden administration decided not to seek a second term as a board member of the council when the three-year membership was to expire at the end of 2024.

The move was made amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which launched a surprise attack on the former a year prior. The State Department explained at the time that the U.S. decided not to pursue a second term at the council “because we are engaged with our allies about the best way to move forward.”

Every March or April, the State Department releases the annual Human Rights Reports, which cover the human rights situations around the world. The document last year said there were credible reports of unlawful killing, enforced disappearances and torture taking place in North Korea.
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SINGAPORE — An 18-year-old Singapore student who was radicalized by violent far-right extremism online and who idolized the gunman behind deadly attacks on two mosques in New Zealand has been detained under the Internal Security Act, the government said.

Nick Lee Xing Qiu, identified as an “East Asian supremacist,” envisioned starting a “race war” between Chinese and Malays in Singapore, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said in statement issued on Monday.

“At the point of his arrest, Lee’s attack ideations were aspirational and he had no timeline to carry them out,” the ISD said, adding investigations into his online contacts had not revealed any imminent threats to Singapore.

Lee has been detained since December under the ISA, which allows suspects to be held for up to two years without trial.

The ISD said Lee found Islamophobic and far-right extremist content on social media in 2023, and then began actively searching for such content. It said he idolized the gunman who killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch in 2019, role-playing as him in an online simulation.

“Lee aspired to carry out attacks against Muslims in Singapore with like-minded, far-right individuals that he conversed with online,” the ISD said.

Lee is the third Singaporean youth with far-right extremist ideologies to be dealt with under the ISA, the department said, noting far-right extremism was a growing concern globally.

“Youths may be more susceptible to such ideologies and may gravitate toward the sense of belonging and identity that far-right movements appear to provide,” the ISD said.
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BEIJING/NEW DELHI — China hopes the Dalai Lama can “return to the right path,” and is open to discussions about his future as long as certain conditions are met, Beijing said on Monday, a proposal rejected by the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in India. 

The exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who turns 90 in July, fled Tibet in 1959 for India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule but has expressed a desire to return before he dies. 

China is open to talks about the future of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate as long as he abandons his position of splitting the “motherland,” a foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, told a regular press conference. 

Guo was responding to a request for comment on the death of the spiritual leader’s elder brother Gyalo Thondup, who had previously acted as his unofficial envoy in talks with Chinese officials. 

Gyalo Thondup died on Saturday, aged 97, in his home in the Indian town of Kalimpong. 

The Dalai Lama needs to openly recognize that Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of China, whose sole legal government is that of the People’s Republic of China, Guo said, using the country’s official name. 

But the deputy speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, Dolma Tsering Teykhang, rejected the preconditions. 

“It is not feasible for His Holiness to tell lies, that’s not going to happen,” she said from the Indian Himalayan town of Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama also lives. 

“If they dictate that His Holiness should speak about Tibet being an inalienable part, that is a distortion of history. By distorting history, you cannot have a peaceful and amicable solution.” 

The Dalai Lama stepped down in 2011 as the political leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile, which Beijing does not recognize. Official talks with his representatives have stalled since, but Teykhang said back-channel discussions were ongoing, declining to give details. 

As the Dalai Lama ages, the question of his successor has also become increasingly urgent. China insists it will choose his successor. 

But the Dalai Lama says he will clarify questions about the succession, such as if and where he will be reincarnated, in line with Tibetan Buddhist belief, around the time of his 90th birthday in July. 

In a short meeting with Reuters in December, he said that he could live 110 years. 

Teykhang, who was born in Tibet, said she was hopeful the Dalai Lama would be able to return home, led by efforts from people within China. 

“I’m very hopeful that His Holiness will visit Tibet, and he will go to his Potala Palace,” she said. “Very hopeful.” 
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Beijing — Emergency teams in China’s southwestern Sichuan province raced against time Sunday to locate 28 people after a landslide triggered by rains killed one person and buried homes. 

Nearly 1,000 personnel were deployed following the landslide in the village of Jinping in Junlian county on Saturday. Some officers navigated through the remains of collapsed buildings, using drones and life-detection radars to locate any signs of life with the help of locals who were familiar with the area, state broadcaster CCTV said. 

Two injured people were rescued and about 360 others evacuated after 10 houses and a manufacturing building were buried, CCTV reported. 

At a news conference Sunday, authorities said preliminary assessments attributed the disaster to heavy rainfall and local geological conditions. They said these factors transformed a landslide into a debris flow about 1.2 kilometers (more than half a mile) long, with a total volume exceeding 100,000 cubic meters (3.5 million cubic feet). 

The rescue operation was hampered by continuous rainfall and more landslides. According to preliminary estimates, the collapsed area was about 16 football pitches in size and many houses were carried far by the debris flow. 

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong was at the site to guide the operation and visited the affected residents, according to official news agency Xinhua. 

Liu also noted the surrounding slopes still pose collapse risks, calling for scientific assessment to ensure the safety of the operation and prevent another disaster, Xinhua said. 

China has allocated about $11 million to support disaster relief and recovery efforts. 

Landslides, often caused by rain or unsafe construction work, are not uncommon in China. Last year, a landslide in a remote, mountainous part of China’s southwestern province of Yunnan killed dozens of people.
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JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Economists are raising concerns about the viability of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s program launched this year to combat child nutrition.

According to an Indonesian Ministry of Health Nutritional Status Study report, 21.6% of children ages 3 and 4 experienced stunting caused by malnutrition in 2022.

The first stage of the Free Nutritious Meal Program, extending through March, is intended to provide around 20 million Indonesian school children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers meals to improve their health and prevent stunting.

The effort was initially projected to cost $28 billion over five years. However, Coordinating Minister for Food Zulkifli Hasan said on Jan. 9 during a meeting on food security that the $4.4 billion budgeted for this year will run out in June and that $8.5 billion more will be requested to fund the program through December.

China, Japan, the United States and India have expressed support for the program, although it is unclear how much money will be provided or what form that support will take. Japan and India have said their help will be in the form of training.

Officials plan to implement the program in stages, eventually reaching 83 million people — more than a quarter of Indonesia’s 280 million population — by 2029, Muhammad Qodari, deputy chief of the presidential staff told reporters on Feb. 3.

The program is part of a long-term strategy to develop the nation’s youth to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation, referring to a plan to make Indonesia a sovereign, advanced and prosperous nation by its 2045 centennial.

The program’s cost could make Prabowo politically vulnerable, according to Dinna Prapto Raharja, a professor of international relations at Jakarta’s Bina Nusantara University and a senior policy adviser at Jakarta consulting firm Synergy Policies.

“In order to finance this program, Prabowo has taken steps to implement major cutbacks in his government budget with some ministries seeing 50% cuts,” Dinna said.

“Now he is forced to seek financial assistance from overseas sources.” she told VOA on Jan. 31.

The Finance Ministry said the spending cuts would amount to $18.7 billion, 8% of this fiscal year’s approved spending.

While other nations said they would support the program, officials from the National Nutrition Agency — which manages the program — said internal talks about the level of foreign aid, type of assistance and technical aspects of its implementation have not begun.

Support from China, Japan, US and India

In November, China committed to supporting free nutritious meals but did not pledge a specific amount.

The Chinese Embassy in Jakarta did not respond to VOA requests for further information on the value and form of the assistance. It remains unclear whether China’s financial assistance will be in the form of a loan or grant.

The United States is providing training to Indonesian dairy farmers to support the program, which has increased the demand for locally produced milk. Indonesia, so far, can provide milk only two to three times a week to school children, according to Deddy Fachrudin Kurniawan, CEO of Dairy Pro Indonesia and project leader of U.S. Dairy Export Council training.

Deddy told VOA on Jan. 8 that Indonesia has had to import 84% of its milk in the past, and that demand will double because of the food program.

In January, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced Japan will support the meal program by helping the Indonesian government increase its ability to combat childhood malnutrition.

Ishiba offered Japan’s support by training Indonesian cooks and sending Japanese chefs to assist. Prabowo added that Japan will also assist in improving the fishery and agriculture sectors, based on Japan’s experience.

More recently, India reaffirmed support for the program through the sharing of knowledge of the government’s Food Corporation of India and other institutions with Indonesian officials.

“India shares its experiences in the fields of health and food security, including the [free] lunch scheme and public [service] distribution system to the Indonesia government,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on his YouTube channel on Jan. 25.

Other support and reaction

Other countries have said they support the program. France and Brazil expressed their support on the sidelines of the recent G20 Leaders Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Prabowo instructed his team to arrange a visit of an Indonesian delegation to Brazil to take notes from the South American country’s similar program. France, which has a similar school feeding program, intends to share its expertise and help Indonesia modernize its agricultural sector.

Teuku Rezasyah, an associate professor of international relations at Bandung’s Universitas Padjajaran, noted that India exported 20,000 metric tons of water buffalo meat to Indonesia last year while Brazil exported 100,000 metric tons of beef to Indonesia.

British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Reynar showed similar interest during her meeting with Prabowo in London in November. However, it remains unclear what type of support the U.K will offer.

Mohammad Faisal, executive director of the Center of Reform on Economics, told VOA in Jakarta on Jan. 31 that countries offering support will have their own interests in mind, as well.

“I believe there’s no free lunch,” Faisal said. “The donations may be partly altruistic, but not entirely. Donor countries consider it as strengthening bilateral ties, but they may also expect to reap the benefits in the future, such as enjoying ease of investing in Indonesia through incentives and getting better penetration of export markets as a reward.”

Rezasyah agreed.

“Donor countries are probably hoping Indonesia will import more products from their countries to support this multibillion-dollar supplemental food program,” he said. “On the other hand, they see Indonesia becoming a middle power that could contribute to finding solutions to global affairs.”
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BANGKOK — The head of a Thai parliamentary committee that oversees border affairs and refugee camp officials told VOA the suspension by the United States of refugee admissions has halted a resettlement deal the U.S. struck with Thailand last year to take in thousands of Myanmar families.

About 90,000 refugees from Myanmar are in Thailand in a string of nine sealed-off camps along the countries’ shared border. Some have lived in the camps since the mid-1980s, fleeing decades of fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic-minority rebel groups vying for autonomy. Most are ethnic minority Karen.

After more than a year of talks and planning, the United States agreed to start taking in some of the refugees last year, although the U.S. State Department would not say how many of them might resettle. However, Thai lawmaker Rangsiman Rome, and an aid worker previously told VOA that local United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees staff told them in 2023 that it could be up to 10,000 per year, a claim the U.N. would not confirm or deny.

The first groups of 25 families left the camps for the United States in July.

U.S. President Donald Trump said that during the previous four years — the term of former President Joe Biden — “the United States has been inundated with record levels of migration, including through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” and he suspended the program by executive order Jan. 20, effective a week later.

The administration is allowing only case-by-case exceptions, “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok declined to comment to VOA on the order’s impact on the resettlement deal the United States and Thailand struck last year.

Asked about the deal’s fate, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told VOA it was “coordinating with implementing partners to suspend refugee arrivals to the United States” and refused further comment.

Rangsiman, who chairs the Thai House of Representatives National Security, Border Affairs, National Strategy and National Reform Committee, which monitors the refugee camps, confirmed Friday that Trump’s order has put a stop to the deal, at least for the time being.

“We are aware that the deal is on hold but still waiting for updates from related departments if this deal can be renegotiated,” he told VOA.

Officials and spokespersons for the Thai government and ministries involved in managing the deal either refused to speak with VOA or did not reply to requests for comment.

Camp administrators told VOA that all work vetting and preparing the refugees in the camps for resettlement to the U.S., including interviews and medical checks, has stopped since the White House order.

“After the 20th, after the announcement, everything stopped,” said Nido, who goes by one name, the vice chairman of the committee managing day-to-day operations at the Umpiem camp in Tak province.

“On the 27th, many people from the camp had to go for their second vaccination. The doctors and nurses were there already preparing to vaccinate. But when the people arrived, they said there were some changes, so they had to stop the vaccination process. They told the people they will have to stop this process for a while, but they could not say for how long,” he said. “The interviews, the vaccinations — they had to stop it.”

Bweh Say, secretary of the Karen Refugee Committee that oversees the individual camp committees, said he was told by UNHCR staff that resettlement work was on hold across all the camps.

“Some of their staff, when we sit together, we talk together … they said [it has] stopped,” he said.

The UNHCR has been helping Thailand and the United States run the resettlement program, but it refused to comment to VOA on the impact of the suspension of the U.S. refugee admissions program, USRAP.

Camp officials and refugee advocates say the deal between Thailand and the U.S. was the only foreseeable chance in the near term for thousands of families to have a future other than as permanent refugees.

The Myanmar military’s overthrow of a democratically elected government in 2021 amplified violence in the country, setting off a civil war that has killed thousands of civilians.

Thailand itself will not allow the refugees to settle outside the camps and mostly denies them the chance to work or study outside the camps legally. Aid and advocacy groups that work with the refugees have described rising despair, drug abuse and violence.

No other country besides the United States has taken up Thailand’s call to resettle the refugees in large numbers.

“This [deal] is very important for the refugees. Some of us have been staying in the camps for decades — two or almost three. Children have been born here,” said Nido, a refugee himself who fled Myanmar nearly 20 years ago.

“The situation in Myanmar now is very terrible,” he said. “A lot of conflict and fighting. It’s not possible to go back. It’s also not possible to be recognized as a Thai national or to get Thai ID, and when you’re stateless, it is very hard to move around or find work.”

Inside the camps, jobs are hard to come by except for running a small shop or working with an aid group for a modest stipend. Schools are barred from teaching the Thai curriculum or language, leaving little chance for a higher education. Monthly food allowances, funded by international donors, barely keep pace with inflation.

Since Trump took office, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development also has compelled the clinics it was funding across the camps to close, forcing the refugees onto Thailand’s own public health care system. The Thai government has vowed to plug the gap, but media reports say it is struggling.

Some critics say the USAID programs are wasteful and promote an agenda that fosters dependence without addressing the root of the problem. A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, said Friday, “The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” although he did not detail the alleged mismanagement.

“If they could return [to Myanmar], if the situation [were] safe, of course everyone would want to return to their homes. But since it is impossible, then resettlement is one of their first options,” said Wahkushee Tenner, a former refugee from the camps who now runs the Karen Peace Support Network, a nongovernment group based in Thailand that advocates for the Karen.

“Resettlement is not the best option,” she said, “but there is no best … option.”
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pentagon — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth welcomed Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles to the Pentagon on Friday, after Australia made its first $500 million payment to the United States under the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal involving Washington, Canberra and London.

“The check did clear,” Hegseth joked to Marles and reporters ahead of the defense ministers’ meeting.

Marles said the “strength of American leadership” in the Indo-Pacific region is “critically important” to Australia. He added that the AUKUS submarine deal also represented an increase in Australian defense spending.

“We really understand the importance of building our capability, but in paying our way,” Marles told Hegseth.

Marles was the first foreign defense counterpart that Hegseth had hosted since his confirmation.

U.S. and Australian officials confirmed that Australia transferred the $500 million after a call between Marles and Hegseth late last month.

AUKUS is a trilateral partnership that Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. announced in September 2021 to support a “free and open Indo-Pacific” amid increased Chinese aggression.

The first initiative under AUKUS was aimed at strengthening the U.S. submarine industrial base so that Australia can acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. It also provides for the rotational basing of American and British nuclear submarines in Australia.
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Thousands of North Korean troops helped Russia regain some of its territory in the Kursk region following Ukraine’s counterattack, but the Russian army is now using them less on the front line and have pulled some back. VOA Russian spoke to experts who noted that despite initial successes, the losses in manpower among North Korean recruits became overwhelming as they were unprepared and not trained for the current war in Ukraine. 

Click here for the full story in Russian.
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Seoul, South Korea — When Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, his goal, according to Japanese officials, will be straightforward: reaffirm the U.S.-Japan alliance and build a strong rapport with Trump.

But many in Tokyo see Ishiba’s goal as even simpler: to avoid a diplomatic disaster with a newly re-elected Trump, whose “America First” foreign policy has returned with even greater intensity than during his first term.

Not even three weeks after retaking office, Trump has escalated pressure on U.S. allies and partners, often in abrupt and unpredictable ways.

He has threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada while raising the possibility of military action against cartels and suggesting Canada become the 51st state. He has floated seizing Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, and warned Panama that if it doesn’t curb Chinese influence, the U.S. could forcibly take back control of the Panama Canal.

The developments have rattled many in Tokyo, which relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and has long aligned itself with the concept of a U.S.-led, rules-based international order.

“If you watch Japanese media or listen to what Japanese people say, they’re just hoping that Ishiba can get out of this meeting without being a victim of some kind of new attack from America,” said Jeffrey J. Hall, a Japanese politics specialist at Kanda University of International Studies.

Emulating Abe?

So far, Japan has been spared Trump’s second-term criticism. Last week, while announcing his meeting with Ishiba, Trump declared, “I like Japan,” citing his friendship with Shinzo Abe, the country’s deceased former prime minister.

Abe, who led Japan for nearly all of Trump’s first term, carefully cultivated the relationship through personal diplomacy and flattery – often playing golf with Trump and even gifting him a gold-plated golf club. Many Japanese commentators hope Ishiba can take a similar approach to maintain smooth relations with Trump.

But that may be difficult. Unlike Abe, Ishiba leads an unstable minority government and faces the possibility of his party losing its Upper House majority in crucial elections later this year.

Analysts also say Ishiba’s less charismatic personality may make it hard for him to form a personal bond with Trump.

“He doesn’t do the bullet points and assertive style of communication that Trump seems to appreciate,” said Philip Turner, a former senior New Zealand diplomat now based in Tokyo. “If flattery is the solution, then Ishiba probably is not very good at it.”

Better to stay quiet?

The situation is so volatile that some in Japan question whether Ishiba should be meeting Trump right now at all. Instead of walking into danger, they ask, why not try to stay off Trump’s radar for as long as possible?

But a quiet approach may not work either, said Mieko Nakabayashi, a former Japanese lawmaker. “Some people say, ‘Don’t wake the sleeping baby,’ but this time Ishiba may have to do it,” said Nakabayashi, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University.

If Trump eventually threatens Japan with tariffs, Nakabayashi said it will be better for Ishiba to have established a personal relationship with him beforehand to manage the crisis.

“You have to take a risk if you want to have a better relationship with Mr. Trump,” she added.

To head off potential pressure, analysts say Ishiba may highlight Japan’s role as the largest foreign investor in the United States. He may also want to raise economic issues like Nippon Steel’s attempted takeover of U.S. Steel, which was blocked by the administration of former U.S. president Joe Biden.

But some analysts predict Ishiba may scale back his ambitions, aiming simply to pave the way for a Trump visit to Japan, where officials would try to demonstrate the importance of the alliance firsthand.

Hall said that approach may be successful, if only because “Trump seems to have his plate full with a lot of other things right now and Japan is a sort of reliable partner that doesn’t stir things up.”

“But we’ll have to see. We really can’t predict America and how it will act right now,” he added. “It’s just at a level of uncertainty that Japan has never experienced before.”
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WASHINGTON — Greenland’s representative in the United States met recently with at least one ambassador from the Pacific Islands to learn more about a political arrangement that some think could create an opportunity for the Arctic island and Washington, VOA has learned.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in either buying or taking control of Greenland, a resource-rich semiautonomous territory of Denmark, noting its strategic importance and position in the Arctic Ocean where Russia and China are rapidly advancing. But there has been pushback from the island’s residents, political leaders, Denmark and Europe.

Greenland representatives have declined to comment to VOA on their meeting that focused on a framework that Pacific Island nations have with Washington — known as the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA. The compacts give the United States military access to three strategic Pacific Islands — the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau — in exchange for economic aid.

Jackson Soram, ambassador to the United States from the Federated States of Micronesia, told VOA that the discussions took place at the end of January and focused on “basic questions” on the “provisions of economic assistance, and also the security and defense provisions of the compacts.”

Soram said he met with representatives from Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-ruled Danish territory.

Alexander Gray, a former National Security Council chief of staff during the first Trump administration who worked on Pacific Island issues, told VOA he encouraged the Pacific Islands’ ambassadors to conduct these meetings.

“[The Greenlanders] want independence from Denmark,” Gray, who is now a managing partner of American Global Strategies, said in an emailed response. “An independent Greenland, with a tiny population and the second-least densely populated geography on the planet, will quickly become dominated and its sovereignty undermined by Beijing and Moscow.”

Russia has been reopening bases in the region even as Beijing has invested more than $90 billion in infrastructure projects in the Arctic Circle. Both the United States and Denmark have military bases in Greenland.

Gray said arctic dominance by Moscow and Beijing poses “a unique strategic threat” to the United States. He said a COFA “would allow Greenland to maintain its sovereignty, while allowing the U.S. to ensure that sovereignty is truly protected.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has repeatedly told Trump that Greenland is “not for sale.” But Monday, she said Copenhagen welcomes additional U.S. military investment in the strategic island.

“So, if this is about securing our part of the world, we can find a way forward,” she said.

US-Greenland defense agreement

Some analysts say that neither Washington nor Nuuk needs a COFA agreement to increase the U.S. military presence in Greenland. In 2004, the United States, Greenland and Denmark signed the Igaliku Agreement to reduce the U.S. military presence in Greenland to a single air base, the Thule Air Base, which has been renamed Pitfuffik Space Base. It provides Washington with missile defense and space surveillance.

The 2004 agreement provides for “any significant changes to U.S. military operations or facilities” in Greenland to be made through consultation between Washington, Nuuk and Copenhagen.

“Washington can already achieve its objectives through working with Greenland and Denmark,” Otto Svendsen, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote last month on CSIS’s website.

A Danish Institute for International Studies policy brief in 2022 pointed out that COFA has created economic dependence between the Marshall Islands and the United States, as U.S. donor money makes up 70% of the Marshall Islands’ total GDP. This is the opposite of what Greenland’s leaders say they want.

Search for independence

A 2009 law called the Act on Greenland Self-Government outlines a “road map” —-drawn up by Nuuk and Copenhagen — for an independent Greenland, which requires a successful referendum.

In his New Year’s address, Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede said, “The upcoming new election period must, together with the citizens, create these new steps,” opening the door for a referendum during parliamentary elections in April.

A 2019 survey suggested that more than two-thirds of Greenlanders want independence at some point. Yet in a poll released in January by two newspapers in Denmark and Greenland, 85% say they do not want to be part of the United States. Fifty-five percent, however, see Trump’s interest in Greenland as an opportunity.

Gray told VOA that the U.S., Denmark and Greenland should enter trilateral discussions for a compact.

“Working together, Washington, Copenhagen, and Nuuk can find common ground and move forward on a post-independence arrangement that works for all parties,” he said in an emailed response.

As far back as 2010, Greenland told the United Nations it was exploring the idea of negotiating independence through a “free association” with Denmark.

Egede said he is ready to meet with Trump, but, “We do not want to be Danes. We do not want to be Americans.”

Soram said he is trying to get ambassadors from Palau and the Marshall Islands to attend additional meetings with Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark.
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