NORTH-EAST ASIA: Security Picture Shifts as Japan Asserts Self

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 30 1999 (IPS) - Reports of North Korean spy ships trying to infiltrate Japan last week are fueling potentially dramatic changes in the security and diplomatic picture in Asia, according to analysts here.

Already, the incident is spurring widespread concern in Japan about the North Korean “threat” — and is coming in handy in efforts to boost the duties and powers of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) tasked to protect the nation.

In an unusual move, naval destroyers with Japan’s SDF was ordered to chase away the intruding ships — the first time since the defense unit was created in 1954.

By law, SDF actions are strictly limited to defensive actions on behalf of Japan, and they are barred from firing anything other than warning shots, except in self-defense.

Japan’s Defense Agency Chief, Hosei Norata, called Monday for a further build-up Japan’s defense capabilities, including rushing new legislation through the current Diet session that would allow the SDF to move more swiftly without prior legislative approval in times of emergency.

Discussion of the North Korean threat is coming in handy in the military establishment’s arguments for boosting the SDF’s role — something Pyongyang itself is well aware of.

Indeed, North Korea, in a letter to the Japanese government, on Saturday denied its involvement in the Mar 23 ship incident, calling it “fiction invented by Japanese reactionaries”.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hiromi Nonaka, said “such a response from North Korea was predictable”.

The Japanese Diet is currently debating the final stages to implementing new Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines that will allow the SDF to play a more active role with American troops in Asian hot spots.

The Japanese media says Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi is trying to submit to the Diet such emergency legislation, once the pending bills to cover the updated Japan-U.S. defense guidelines are approved.

“The government reaction in the Diet is very welcome,” says analyst Kazuhiro Araki, of the Modern Korea Research Institute, pointing out that the latest episode follows the more frightening missile test conducted into the Sea of Japan by Pyongyang in August.

“The recent incident is an indication that the North Korean threat is a real one,” Araki notes, a reaction increasingly common here these days.

The Japanese daily ‘Sankei Shinbun’ suggests that the mysterious ships, that were chased away by the Maritime SDF, was on a mission of destruction targeting the Japanese Diet or the centre of Japanese commercial business.

Quoting spy specialists, the newspaper reports that while the North Korean ships were escaping, some 10 infiltrators entered Japanese shores along the Pacific Ocean. While other observers say this is not certain, they grant that the ships could have been trying to drop off spies.

“The situation is tense and must be taken extremely seriously,” says Araki. “North Korean spies have been coming into Japan to collect military data on and enter South Korea on terrorist missions for many years now and Japan has been unable to stop it.”

The new security concerns provide a platform for Tokyo to stop relying on the US for its Asian diplomacy, and go ahead with building Japan’s own bilateral ties with its neighbors, say Japanese foreign policy experts.

After its defeat at the end of the Pacific War, “Japan has relied on Washington to conduct its Asian foreign policy,” writes Tokyo University professor Takeshi Inoguchi in an opinion piece in the ‘Nikkei’, Japan’s leading financial daily.

But this reliance has in many ways become unwieldy for Japan in modern times, analysts say.

Japan has threatened U.S. interests in Asia during the third quarter of the 20th century when “it began to look as if Japan might be getting inordinately interested in Asia and might pursue a security policy distinct from US policy,” Inoguchi says.

Inoguchi points out that based on this notion, Japanese premiers and foreign ministers have increased their visits to other Asian nations from only 15 in 1978 to 59 in 1988.

A major development is closer ties with South Korea, Asia’s second economic giant after Japan, and with whom Tokyo has uneasy ties due to its occupation of South Korea decades ago.

Obuchi’s visit to Seoul on Mar 20, despite violent student protests, in fact ended up being unusually warm and forward looking.

The leaders released a communique that called for cooperation on dealing with North Korea, with Japan promising to consider loosening its economic sanctions against the Stalinist state if a peaceful dialogue is resumed.

Kim and Obuchi also outlined an economic agenda on economic cooperation, including a bilateral investment treaty that will also lift import restrictions on all Japanese products from June 30 this year.

Some analysts see this as pursuit by both sides of strategic ties apart from the American factor in the region. Economist Junko Mizuno, in fact, sees closer economic ties as “a step closer to a free-trade zone that is in the making between the two countries”.

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the biggest industrial economies in East Asia, do not belong to any free trade grouping. But to many in the region, deeper economic integration would be yet one more step toward lessening dependence on the U.S. market.