ASIA-SECURITY: Japan Sits on the Fence of Tense Korean Peninsula

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 21 1996 (IPS) - Isolated and facing serious food shortages, North Korea is making no secret of efforts to cultivate relations with rich Japan, but as much as Tokyo wants to normalise ties with Pyongyang it is keenly aware that South Korea is against it.

South Korea has successfully managed to throw cold water on North Korean attempts to hold bilateral talks with the United States on resolving the peninsula issue. Seoul has also so far convinced both Washington and Tokyo not to provide Pyongyang with any more food aid.

But if there is no progress soon on called for talks to reach a conclusive peace agreement on the increasingly tense peninsula, it will be difficult for both the United States and Japan to continue to ignore North Korea’s cries for aid.

This is because both Washington and Tokyo fear that the food crisis in North Korea is in itself a threat to regional security since the Pyongyang leadership may yet seek war as a distraction from its economic shortcomings.

In the past week there have been signs of a restive Pyongyang with reports of North Korean troops making provocative border incursions across the demilitarised zone that provides a buffer between the two nations.

A peninsula war would threaten to envelop the entire East Asian region, including China and Japan — the latter having only last month extended an alliance treaty with the United States that may require Tokyo to provide indirect support to U.S. troops engaged in battle.

The ‘Nikkei Weekly’, Japan’s leading financial newspaper, says the Japanese government does have legitimate concerns. For not only can North Korean missiles reach much of Japanese territory, but to be counted as well are the 230,000 North Korean citizens living in Japan.

“Because of the possibility of confrontation on the Korean peninsula, Japan has to play its hand carefully,” says the Nikkei.

Japan, which held the Korean peninsula under colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, normalised relations with South Korea in 1965, but while it trades with the North, Tokyo has no official ties with Pyongyang.

Analysts say Japan should not ignore South Korea’s concerns, but should try to convince Seoul that a Tokyo-Pyongyang peace track would in no way jeopardise peninsula talks, or undermine South Korea’s position.

The ‘Mainichi Shinbun’, another important daily, argues that there is no reason for South Korea to “feel threatened” by Japanese-North Korean talks, and even allow Japan and the United States to “take the lead” in trying to resolve border tension.

“The country (South Korea) has become a leading democracy in Asia, far surpassing the North in military and economic terms… Why can’t Seoul now try an ‘Eastern approach to the North by way of Tokyo and Washington’?” it asks.

The answer to this, says Tsutomu Nishioka, a Japanese political analyst, is that South Korea — its politicians and people “feel they are being ignored in the important issue which the government points out is of the utmost concern for South Korea”.

That is why Seoul invited senior U.S. and Japanese officials to a meeting on the South Korean island of Cheju last week, say analysts, who note that South Korea insisted at the three-way talks, that Japan and the United States not send aid to North Korea.

Rather, the meeting reiterated the call by Washington and Seoul for four-way talks between the United States, South Korea, North Korea and China, to try to secure a formal peace treaty that would replace the shaky armistice that was agreed at the end of the 1950- 53 Korean war.

U.S. President Bill Clinton and his South Korean counterpart Kim Young Sam jointly proposed the peace initiative when Clinton visited Seoul last month. But North Korea is yet to respond, but has before said it would rather negotiate with the United States directly.

The Cheju meeting was widely reported by the Japanese Press with Japan’s biggest paper, the ‘Asahi Shinbun’ saying that Japan and the United States only “reluctantly” having agreed not to send food aid to the North.

According to the newspaper, when it came to the question of aid, Washington and Tokyo insisted on the insertion of the phrase “for the time being” in the joint statement issued at the end of the meeting.

“By doing so Japan and the United States left themselves some room to ignore South Korea’s position in the future and to carry out aid programmes on their own,” the paper quoted a Japanese diplomat at the meeting as saying.

The Asahi Shinbum also said that Japanese officials at that meeting also reassured South Korea that any efforts by Japan to normalise relations with North Korea, would have no bearing on the proposed four-nation peace talks.

When reports emerged last month that Japanese and North Korean officials held a secret meeting in Beijing last month, South Korea responded angrily, warning Tokyo that the initiative was not in the long-term interest of regional security.

Without giving any details about the outcome of the meeting, the Japanese foreign ministry however argued to the contrary, saying Tokyo would be in a better position to help in any North-South peace process, if it first upgraded relations with Pyongyang.

The Japanese media agrees.

The ‘Nikkei Weekly’ says Japan should build on trading ties between the two countries with the intent of formalising diplomatic relations. Currently, Japan is North Korea’s largest trading partner — two-way trade between the two countries amounted to 514 million dollars in 1995.

North Koreans in Japan are also happy that Tokyo seems set to restart normalisation talks first initiated in 1991, but broke down in late 1992 when North Korea rejected Japan’s demand for information about a Japanese woman allegedly abducted by North Korean secret agents.

Chie Kwan-ik head of the Chosensoren, Japan’s largest North Korean conglomerate with interests in the garment sector and the manufacture of television sets, says the normalisation of ties would certainly enhance trading relations.

North Korea meanwhile has put one condition on the normalisation of relations, and that is that Japan issues an apology for its war- time atrocities, and compensates Pyongyang and its people who suffered under Japanese occupation.

“Improvement of relations between North Korea and Japan is an urgent issue,” North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju told Japanese reporters on an invitational trip to Pyongyang this week.

He urged Tokyo to resume bilateral normalisation of talks “soon and separately” from the proposed four-nation peace negotiations.

“The two countries are close geographically, but have a most distant relationship,” he was quoted by the Kyodo Japanese news agency as saying. “If Japan makes an apology for the past and gives compensation, the problem will be easily resolved.”

Not so easily, notes Nishioka. “The Japanese government is worried (about upsetting the South Koreans). High-level officials are finding it to very difficult not to take sides,” the political analyst added.