JAPAN: North Korean Missile Test Prompts Calls for Tough Line

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 2 1998 (IPS) - North Korea’s surprise missile test on Monday has ignited calls for Japan to take a tougher stand toward the Stalinist state as the best way of protecting its own security.

Like South Korea, Japan’s first reactions to the test firing of a ballistic missile by Pyongyang was anger and outrage.

Public concern focused on the fact that the missile flew over Japanese territory, before parts of it fell into the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean.

Tokyo quickly decided to halt food and other aid to famine- stricken North Korea, stop assistance to develop light-water reactors and suspend normalisation talks.

As a result, “we can expect more toughness from Pyongyang during the next few days”, said Kazuhiro Araki, senior analyst at the Korea Institute, a think tank on the Korean peninsula based in Tokyo.

This is especially because North Korea is poised to see the formal accession by its leader, Kim Jong Il, to the country’s presidency in a few days.

But beyond the initial reactions are serious calls that it is time for Japan to rethink its often pacifist, conciliatory stand toward North Korea, not least in order to coax it to abandon intentions to develop nuclear weapons.

“The situation is terribly worrying for the people. Japan should start seriously considering its participation in the (anti- missile) system with the United States,” said Toshiyuki Shikata, professor of defense affairs at Teikyo University.

“The incident has underlined the urgency for Japan to upgrade its defense system including a proposed theater missile defense (TMD) system,” Ambassador Kunihiko Saito to the United States, told a news conference Tuesday.

Such views are shared by many defense officials and hard-line politicians who are getting tired of wooing North Korea.

Previously, North Korea had only tested a single-stage missile. Monday’s launch indicates that Pyongyang has indeed made some progress in building longer-range missiles, which can strike targets in Asia or even beyond.

“Kim (Jong Il) is hoping that his missile test will soften Japan when bargaining for more aid. But quite the contrary. The Japanese government has learnt the bitter lesson of being too easy on the North Korean threat,” Saito explained.

Pyongyang has resorted to brinkmanship before. By walking out of nuclear non-proliferation talks with the United States in 1993, it forced Washington to talk directly and aid the cash-strapped country.

Japan’s pullout from the Korean Energy Development Organisation programme — under which the United States and South Korea supply North Korea with light-water reactors in exchange for ending its nuclear weapons development — will delay the programme.

But analysts say this approach may also backfire.

They say Pyongyang could interpret Tokyo’s suspension of the programme as in effect “freeing” North Korea from the ban on building nuclear weapons, a move that can only worsen the Asian security situation given the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.

Still, Araki says the immediate hawkish sentiment is such that “the possibility of Japan, along with the United States, even taking the unprecedented step of bombing suspected missile development bases in North Korea, cannot be ruled out anymore”.

That may seem like an extreme option to some and indeed, a line of thinking that worries pacifists in Japan.

Already, they say, rising tensions in north-east Asia are allowing hardliners here to take advantage of the missile test to revive defense projects and boost the defense budget to meet the North Korean threat.

It does not help that Japan’s Defense Agency said Japan cannot defend itself, and depended on the United States to inform the government of the missile test. The missile launch, which took place after midnight Monday, had dodged the country’s surveillance systems.

“We are not actually demanding the introduction of a theatre missile defense system, but generally speaking Japan will have to move in that direction,” a senior defense official was quoted as saying by the ‘Asahi Evening Newspaper’.

Defense officials were forced to abandon their plan to develop a theatre missile defense program in 1999 after China protested the proposal.

But Yasuhiko Yasuda, who teaches foreign relations at Saitama University, says this is precisely why Japan must resist the aggressive path. “It must act in a mature way and think about giving concessions so as not to isolate North Korea,” he said.

Japan’s move to boost its defense systems comes in line with amendments made last year to the U.S.-Japan Security Pact, which allows Tokyo to act in “a situation that will deal a vital blow to the peace and security of our country or in areas surrounding our country”.

The US-Japan Security Pact, which allows the U.S. to maintain military bases on Okinawa, is considered the cornerstone of Asia’s security. The amended guidelines, which raised concern in China, aimed to give Japan a more active role along with the United States in maintaining peace in Asia.

Meantime, analysts continue to try to decipher the reason and timing for North Korea’s missile launch. Many believe it was carried out to gain support from a public struggling with poverty and famine.

On Wednesday, Japanese papers quoted North Korea’s major paper, the ‘Rodong Sinmun’ or Labour Daily, as extolling Kim as having done much to turn his country into an “ideological and military power”.

“He, guided by the idea that ideology and army are very instrumental in building a strong and prosperous country, has turned the army and people into the strongest ones in the world,” the paper was quoted as saying.