North Korea Should Be Careful Trolling Resurgent Japan
Mr. Pesek is a Tokyo-based journalist and the author of “Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades.”
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A PAC-3 Patriot missile unit is deployed at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo on April 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Japan’s notoriously stressed salarymen and women have a brand-new excuse for being late to work: Kim Jong-un.
On April 29, the Tokyo Metro company set a dramatic precedent by halting train services in response to a North Korean ballistic missile test. The move dramatized the new normal -- and the rising stakes -- in a nation of 127 million people directly in the line of fire should Kim decide to hit a staunch U.S. ally.
The existential stakes rose further a month later when Pyongyang fired a Scud-type missile inside Japan’s “exclusive economic zone.” It landed where cargo and fishing vessels are active, an area extending 200 nautical miles from the Japanese coast. In other words, too close to home.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed “concrete measures” to stop “repeated provocations” now even halting Tokyo trains. Abe, along with U.S. President Donald Trump, urged China to use its considerable leverage to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.
All this raises a tantalizing question: How might Beijing react to a more assertive Japanese response to Kim’s actions?
Squeezing the regime
Chinese President Xi Jinping is clearly fed up with Kim’s military adventurism. A recent plunge in North Korean coal purchases by China, for example, got Pyongyang’s attention. So did hints Beijing might cut oil shipments that support Kim’s enfeebled economy. But while China is squeezing the regime, it’s doing so only tentatively. As this dawns in a Trump White House trying to shift the burden of restraining Kim to Xi, tensions are sure to fly.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/06/13/north-korea-should-be-careful-trolling-resurgent-japan/#3c92a2926fcd
I personally think we should all adopt nomihodai instead of wanting to kill each other... NK is bat shit nutty at times eh?
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The North Korean threat to Japan
The U.S., working with Japan, must make the nuclear threat from North Korea a priority issue
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
In early May, I was part of a fact-finding trip to Japan. What I learned from four days of discussions with senior government officials, legislators and scholars was invaluable. I’ve worked with Japanese counterparts for many years, especially on issues related to North Korea, but what I took away from this trip was Japan’s deep concern about the existential nuclear threat from North Korea and the need for the U.S., working with Japan, to more aggressively pursue a resolution of this issue. What also got my attention was Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pro-active contribution to peace in the region and the real progress made with Japan’s commitment to collective defense with its U.S. ally.
Japan appreciates President Trump’s decision to make the North Korea nuclear threat a priority national security issue. For years, Japan has been living with this existential nuclear threat from North Korea. Now, the U.S. is seized with the reality that North Korea will soon become an existential nuclear threat to the U.S. The progress North Korea continues to make with its missile programs, definitely to include the recent Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) successes, with a mobile, solid fuel missile capable of reaching Guam, has correctly focused attention on the need to get North Korea to halt these missile launches and return to negotiations, ideally before they launch an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S.
Japan is supportive of President Trump’s strategy of “putting all options on the table.” Their preference would be returning to negotiations and getting China to use more of its leverage with North Korea to accomplish this goal. China’s decision to cease importing coal from North Korea in 2017 was movement in that direction. Another card available to China is the crude oil they provide to North Korea. Any reduction in the amount of oil China provides to North Korea would have immediate impact on the North’s economy and its ability to sustain its very vulnerable infrastructure.
A return to negotiations, however, must not only focus on halting North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, it must also focus on our principal objective: Complete and verifiable denuclearization. There is a sense, and only a sense, that North Korea may believe that the progress they’ve made with its nuclear and missile programs has conditioned the international community to view a halt in these programs as the only realistic obtainable objective. Thus North Korea would retain its nuclear weapons and be accepted as a nuclear weapons state, albeit with a limited and capped nuclear weapons capability.
This would be a tragic mistake, not only for Japan and South Korea, but for the U.S. and those countries in the region.
[2] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/1/north-korean-threatens-japan/
= new reply since forum marked as read
