Intelligence

Russia shoots dead Japanese fisherman

Russia shoots dead Japanese fisherman - World - Times Online

By Jenny Booth and agencies

A Russian patrol boat killed a Japanese fisherman today when it opened fire on a vessel in disputed waters in the Pacific ocean.

The crab fisherman, identified by Japanese media as Mitsuhiro Morita, 35, was shot in the head as he rushed to recover fishing equipment aboard the 4.9-tonne vessel Kyoshin Maru.

The incident took place near Kaigara island, one of several islands off the northeast tip of Hokkaido that are claimed by both Japan and Russia. It is the first fatal shooting in connection with the dispute in 50 years.

The incident took place near Kaigara island, one of several islands off the northeast tip of Hokkaido that are claimed by both Japan and Russia. It is the first fatal shooting in connection with the dispute in 50 years.

Three other crew members of the Kyoshin Maru were taken to nearby Kunashiri island, which is also in the southern Kuril chain and administered by Russia but claimed by Japan, for further investigation, according to news reports. They were not injured but may face criminal charges, according to NHK, a Japanese television channel.

Russia expressed regret over Morita's death, but said that the boat was to blame for violating its waters, and warned Japanese vessels to stay out.

The Japanese government expressed outrage..

"There has been a loss of life, and the situation is grave. Japan demands an immediate apology," said Taro Aso, the Japanese Foreign Minister, after a tense meeting with Russian Deputy Ambassador Mikhail Galuzin in Tokyo. "It’s unacceptable this took place within Japanese waters."

The Foreign Ministry released a statement demanding immediate compensation and the release of the boat and surviving crew. It called on Russia take measures to prevent similar incidents.

Russian officials defended the patrol boat’s actions, insisting that the Japanese ship had violated Russian waters and that authorities acted within their powers.

The responsibility for the shootings lay instead "with the direct culprits and ... with Japanese authorities that close their eyes to fishermen’s poaching in Russian territorial waters," Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which nonetheless went on to express regret over the death.

Morita’s mother, Shoko, said from her home in Hokkaido that she couldn’t believe her son was dead.

"I don’t understand why they had to open fire," Shoko said through tears on NHK. "He was a good son. He didn’t do anything wrong."

The disputed waters lie around four islands, called the Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, which were claimed by the Soviet army near the end of the Second World War. Tokyo has demanded their return, and the dispute has blocked a treaty formally ending wartime hostilities.

While Russian authorities have seized dozens of Japanese boats and injured several fishermen over the years, this was the first shooting death of a Japanese since October 1956, Coast Guard officials said.

Japan’s Fishery Agency acknowledged that crab fishing in that area is illegal, though it said it was unclear whether the boat was illegally fishing at the time of the shooting.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry officials insisted the boat was in Japanese waters. Japan's coastguard service said that it had sent two vessels to the scene to investigate.

A total of 30 fishing boats and 210 Japanese crew members were seized by Russia in the disputed northern waters between 1994 and 2005, while seven other fishermen were injured when the Russian coast guard fired at them during the same period, according to the Japan Coast Guard.

The islands are surrounded by rich fishing waters and are believed to have promising offshore oil and natural gas reserves, as well as gold and silver deposits.

President Putin has offered to revive a 1956 Soviet-Japanese declaration under which Moscow had agreed to return two of the islands, but Tokyo rejected the proposal as insufficient and talks on the issue are deadlocked.

August 16, 2006 at 04:09 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

West mounts 'secret war' to keep nuclear North Korea in check

West mounts 'secret war' to keep nuclear North Korea in check - Sunday Times - Times Online

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent
A PROGRAMME of covert action against nuclear and missile traffic to North Korea and Iran is to be intensified after last week’s missile tests by the North Korean regime.

Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a “secret war” against Pyongyang and Tehran.

It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the “hermit kingdom” in the waters north of Japan.

Few details filter out from western officials about the programme, which has operated since 2003, or about the American financial sanctions that accompany it.

But together they have tightened a noose around Kim Jong-il’s bankrupt, hungry nation.

“Diplomacy alone has not worked, military action is not on the table and so you’ll see a persistent increase in this kind of pressure,” said a senior western official.

In a telling example of the programme’s success, two Bush administration officials indicated last year that it had blocked North Korea from obtaining equipment used to make missile propellant.

The Americans also persuaded China to stop the sale of chemicals for North Korea’s nuclear weapons scientists. And a shipload of “precursor chemicals” for weapons was seized in Taiwan before it could reach a North Korean port.

According to John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations and the man who originally devised the programme, it has made a serious dent in North Korea’s revenues from ballistic missile sales.

But the success of Bolton’s brainchild, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), whose stated aim is to stop the traffic in weapons of mass destruction, might also push North Korea into extreme reactions.

Britain is a core member of the initiative, which was announced by President George W Bush in Krakow, Poland, on May 31, 2003. British officials have since joined meetings of “operational experts” in Australia, Europe and the US, while the Royal Navy has contributed ships to PSI exercises. The participants include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Spain and Singapore, among others.

There has been almost no public debate in the countries committed to military involvement. A report for the US Congress said it had “no international secretariat, no offices in federal agencies established to support it, no database or reports of successes and failures and no established funding”.

To Bolton and senior British officials, those vague qualities make it politically attractive.

In the past 10 months, since the collapse of six-nation talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the US and its allies have also tightened the screws on Kim’s clandestine fundraising, which generated some $500m a year for the regime.

Robert Joseph, the US undersecretary for arms control, has disclosed that 11 North Korean “entities” — trading companies or banks — plus six from Iran and one from Syria were singled out for action under an executive order numbered 13382 and signed by Bush.

For the first time, the US Secret Service and the FBI released details of North Korean involvement in forging $100 notes and in selling counterfeit Viagra, cigarettes and amphetamines in collaboration with Chinese gangsters.

The investigators homed in on a North Korean trading company and two banks in Macau. The firm, which had offices next to a casino and a “sauna”, was run by North Koreans with diplomatic passports, who promptly vanished.

The two banks, Seng Heng bank and Banco Delta Asia, denied any wrongdoing. But the Macau authorities stepped in after a run on Banco Delta Asia and froze some $20m in North Korean accounts.

Last week the North Koreans demanded the money as a precondition for talks but the Americans brushed off their protest.

Kim told Hu Jintao, the Chinese president in January that his government was being strangled, diplomats in the Chinese capital said. “He has warned the Chinese leaders his regime could collapse and he knows that is the last thing we want,” said a Chinese source close to the foreign ministry.

The risk being assessed between Washington and Tokyo this weekend is how far Kim can be pushed against the wall before he undertakes something more lethal than last week’s display of force.

The “Dear Leader” has turned North Korea into a military-dominated state to preserve his own inherited role at the apex of a Stalinist personality cult. Although he appears erratic, and North Korea’s rhetoric is extreme, most diplomats who have met him think Kim is highly calculating.

“He is a very tough Korean nationalist and he knows exactly how to play the power game — very hard,” said Professor Shi Yinhong, an expert in Beijing.

But the costly failure of Kim’s intercontinental missile, the Taepodong 2, after just 42 seconds of flight last Wednesday, was a blow to his prestige and to the force of his deterrent. Six other short and medium-range missiles splashed into the Sea of Japan without making any serious military point.

The United States and its allies are now preoccupied by what Kim might do with the trump card in his arsenal — his stockpile of plutonium for nuclear bombs.

“The real danger is that the North Koreans could sell their plutonium to another rogue state — read Iran — or to terrorists,” said a western diplomat who has served in Pyongyang. American officials fear Iran is negotiating to buy plutonium from North Korea in a move that would confound the international effort to stop Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.

The prospect of such a sale is “the next big thing”, said a western diplomat involved with the issue. The White House commissioned an intelligence study on the risk last December but drew no firm conclusions.

Plutonium was the element used in the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. It would give Iran a rapid route to the bomb as an alternative to the conspicuous process of enriching uranium which is the focus of international concern.

American nuclear scientists estimate North Korea is “highly likely” to have about 43kg and perhaps as much as 53kg of the material. Between 7kg and 9kg are needed for a weapon.

Siegfried Hecker, former head of the US Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, has warned that North Korea’s plutonium would fit into a few suitcases and would be impossible to detect if it were sold.

For the first time since the crisis over its nuclear ambitions began in 1994, North Korea has made enough plutonium to sell a quantity to its ally while keeping sufficient for its own use.

North Korea is known to have sold 1.7 tons of uranium to Libya. It has sold ballistic missiles to Iran since the 1980s. American officials have said Iran is already exchanging missile test data for nuclear technology from Pyongyang. The exchanges probably involve flight monitoring for Scud-type rockets and techniques of uranium centrifuge operation.

Relations deepened between the two surviving regimes in Bush’s “axis of evil” after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s military and scientific links with North Korea have grown rapidly.

Last November western intelligence sources told the German magazine Der Spiegel that a high-ranking Iranian official had travelled to Pyongyang to offer oil and natural gas in exchange for more co-operation on nuclear technology and ballistic missiles. Iran’s foreign ministry denied the report but diplomats in Beijing and Pyongyang believe it was accurate. At the same time evidence emerged through Iranian dissidents in exile that North Korean experts were helping Iran build nuclear-capable missiles in a vast tunnel complex under the Khojir and Bar Jamali mountains near Tehran.

So while one nation, North Korea, boasts of its nuclear weapons and the other, Iran, denies wanting them at all, the world is on edge. If the stakes are high in the nuclear terror game, they are equally high for the balance of power in Asia and thus for global prosperity.

North Korea’s aggressive behaviour and a record of kidnapping Japanese citizens have created new willpower among politicians in Tokyo to strengthen their military forces. To China, Japan’s wartime adversary, that signals a worrying change in the strategic equation. Nationalism in both countries is on the rise. Relations between the two are at their worst for decades.

One scenario is that Japan abandons its pacifist doctrine and becomes a nuclear weapons power. “The Japanese people are very angry and very worried and, right now, they will accept any government plan for the military,” said Tetsuo Maeda, professor of defence studies at Tokyo International University.

The mood favours the ascent of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s hawkish chief cabinet secretary, the man most likely to take over from Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, who steps down in September. “He will be far more hardline on Pyongyang and I’m firmly of the opinion that he intends to make Japan into a nuclear power,” Maeda said.

The government is already committed to installing defensive Pac-3 Patriot missiles in co-operation with the Americans. But radical opinion in Japan has been fortified by Kim’s adventures.

“The vast majority of Japanese agree that we need to be able to carry out first strikes,” said Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University.

“I spoke to Mr Abe earlier this week and he shares my opinion that for Japan, the most important step would be for Japan to have an offensive missile capability.”

Such talk causes severe concern to Washington, which has sheltered Japan under the umbrella of its nuclear arsenal since forging a security alliance after the second world war.

Divisions within the Bush administration — which even sympathisers concede have paralysed its nuclear diplomacy towards the North — also served to undermine Japanese confidence in America, as have the well-documented failings of American intelligence.

Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, a think tank with ties to the Pentagon, says: “There’s no human intelligence in North Korea. Zero. Zippo. It’s like looking at your neighbour’s house with a pair of binoculars — and they’ve got their blinds shut.”

Last week Bush was working the phones to the leaders of China and Russia. But British officials think it unlikely that either will support a Japanese proposal for UN sanctions on the North Koreans.

That leaves the Bush administration with the same unpalatable choices that existed a week, a month or a year ago. The military option, to all practical purposes, does not exist. “An attack is highly unlikely to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons capability,” wrote Phillip Saunders of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in a paper analysing its risks.

“The biggest problem with military options is preventing North Korean retaliation,” Saunders said. He believes half a million artillery shells an hour would be rained on Seoul in the first day of any conflict from North Korean artillery hidden in caves. The North Koreans could fire 200 mobile rocket launchers and launch up to 600 Scud missiles. American and South Korean casualties, excluding civilians, are projected at between 300,000 and 500,000 in the first 90 days of war.

Like former president Bill Clinton’s team, the Bush administration has therefore realised that a diplomatic answer is the only one available.

But years of inattention, division and mixed messages robbed the US of diplomatic influence. One observer tells of watching the US envoy Christopher Hill sit mutely in an important negotiation because policy arguments in Washington had tied his hands.

Yesterday Hill compromised by offering the North Koreans a private meeting if they came back to nuclear talks hosted by China. But American faith in China’s powers of persuasion may have been misplaced.

“China is the source of the problem, not the source of the solution,” argued Edward Timperlake, a defence official in the Reagan administration and author of Showdown, a new book on the prospect of war with China.

Kim ignored Chinese demands to call off the missile tests and some American officials now think Beijing is simply playing off its client against its superpower rival.

The clearest statement of all came from the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (DPRK) itself. The state news agency said America had used “threats and blackmail” to destroy an agreement to end the dispute. “But for the DPRK’s tremendous deterrent for self-defence, the US would have attacked the DPRK more than once as it had listed it as part of an ‘axis of evil’.”

The lesson of Iraq, the North Koreans said, was now known to everyone.

Additional reporting: Sarah Baxter, Washington; Julian Ryall, Tokyo

Thoughts of Kim

I know I’m an object of criticism in the world, but if I am being talked about, I must be doing the right thing

The leader’s greatness is in reality the greatness of our nation

We oppose the reactionary policies of the US government but we do not oppose the American people. We want to have many good friends in the United States

Click here to find out more!

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

July 9, 2006 at 01:11 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

For US military, few options to defang North Korea

For US military, few options to defang North Korea | csmonitor.com

Any US action risks nuclear reprisals against American troops and allies in the region – and a renewed Korean conflict.
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – As was surely intended, North Korea's July 4 test launch of a long-range missile that, by some estimates, could reach American shores, fastened attention on the most overlooked member of President Bush's "axis of evil."

Yet the clearest message to the United States came from the six other missiles fired that day, not from the now-infamous Taepodong-2. Its apparent failure suggests that the threat to the American homeland remains remote. But the flexing of North Korea's midrange missile muscle confirms that it is probably able to deliver nuclear weapons to Japan or South Korea - or to US forces stationed there.

The result is that the US finds itself in a stalemate militarily, relying on a missile-defense shield that is at best unproven. Any military action - such as a precision strike against a launchpad - risks not only nuclear reprisals against American troops and their allies in the region, but also a resumption of the Korean War on the peninsula.

"North Korea has the capability to inflict significant harm on immediately neighboring states," says Jonathan Pollack, an East Asia expert at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "That's what constrains any thought being given to any preemptive kind of force."

In truth, the July 4 missile test hasn't yet told experts much that they didn't already know. They expected that North Korea was making progress on its mid- and short-range missiles; the launches appeared to support that. At the same time, experts remain skeptical about the capabilities of the Taepodong-2. It was only the second time that North Korea had launched a long-range missile. The other was in 1998, and both were failures.

"I'm going to want to see eight to 12 flights before I say that's an existing capability," says John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.

Moreover, others caution that the Taepodong-2 itself - its actual capabilities or range - remains mostly a mystery. Nor does the US know why it failed. "All this is supposition," says Mr. Pollack. "Until we see some additional clarification, it behooves us to wait."

Few other options are available at this point. The secrecy that shrouds North Korea not only makes it difficult to locate key targets such as nuclear facilities or other missile sites, but it also makes it difficult to gauge North Korea's response to an attack.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry suggested in a recent Washington Post opinion article that the US destroy any North Korean long-range missile before it launched. This would be possible because long-range missiles take a long time to fuel, making them relatively easy to spot. The danger, however, is how a beleaguered regime desperate to survive might respond.

"How will North Korea perceive an attack on any given day?" asks Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "The options tend to be ones of provoking general war."

For Japan and South Korea - both strong US allies and home base to thousands of American troops - this makes the military option a nonstarter. South Korea knows that its northern neighbor keeps artillery batteries trained on Seoul and has massive ground forces at its disposal. Japan knows that North Korea launched a missile over Japanese territory in 1998.

While the North Korean army is sizable, many experts suggest that the threat presented by these forces, which have not been used since the 1950s, is not the main concern. "As long as the war was conventional, I don't think North Korea would do much better than Iraq did," says Pike.

Rather, experts worry what North Korea would do with its nuclear material if it were attacked. Some say the regime could make sure that its material fell into the hands of other American foes, like Iran or Syria. Others suggest it might be put on top of a rocket heading for Tokyo or Okinawa.

Even before this week's launches, Japan had agreed to work more closely with the US on missile defense. Now, Japan says it will allow Patriot missiles - which are defensive missiles designed to destroy incoming enemy missiles - at US bases in Japan.

On the regional level, missile-defense tests have had some success. Interceptors fired from US Navy ships have worked well, but they are relatively slow, making it hard for them to destroy missiles not launched directly at their ship.

The Patriot missile, first used in the Gulf War, has had more mixed results. The military claims that Patriots destroyed "a number" of Iraqi missiles at the beginning of the current war. But critics counter that many also missed, and at least one shot down a British fighter jet.

As for defense of US territory against long-range missiles, missile defense is still struggling. In the two most recent tests, in late 2004 and early 2005, the missile failed even to launch.

"We've been trying for 45 years" to build a reliable missile-defense shield, says Philip Coyle, who oversaw missile testing for the Pentagon as director of operational test and evaluation from 1994 to 2001. "Unfortunately, it's still not something we can rely on."

July 7, 2006 at 07:21 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Kim Young-nam says his Japanese wife Megumi killed herself

Kim Young-nam says his Japanese wife Megumi killed herself : National : Home

Interview with Kim Young-nam: Megumi committed suicide

Kim Young-nam, believed to be abducted to the North from a beach in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, when he was a high school student, said at a press conference on June 29, "In the past, a period of confrontation, all kinds of strange incidents happened. I want you to report our family reunion from a future-oriented point of view."

He smiled and looked at ease when he entered the conference hall, but when he started speaking, his face became hardened.

Kim explained how he had come to marry Megumi Yokota, a Japanese citizen presumed to be kidnapped to the North.

Asked why he offered a press conference, Kim replied, "I wanted to meet my family quietly after 28 years of separation, but as media has been paying keen attention to my family, and because there were many unfavorable rumors surrounding me, I decided to inform people of the facts accurately."

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Kim Young-nam.

Question: What is your occupation?

Answer: I am involved in unification-related business. In the North, unification business is considered a special sector.

Q: Tell me about your daughter Eun-gyeong’s mother (Megumi Yokota).

A: I met Megumi on business in early 1986. I learned Japanese from her. She was well-behaved and young. We became close while studying the Japanese language together and got married in August 1986. A daughter was born and we were happy for about three years. Even before our marriage, she had suffered from illness, but after giving birth to our daughter, she suffered from depression. Megumi received all the possible medical treatment, but she committed suicide on April 13, 1994. This is all I can say and I cannot tell you any more in detail. A claim that her remains are fake is humiliating for Megumi and me, and is human abuse. If she is alive, how can I say that she is dead?

Q: Tokyo is demanding Eun-gyeong be sent to Japan.

A: Eun-gyeong is Megumi's and my daughter. I can’t understand why Japan is making such a demand. Considering the Japanese government’s position, I don¡¯t want to send her to Japan, and she doesn’t want to go there, as well.

Q: It is said that Eun-gyeong’s original name is Hye-gyeong.

A: Her real name is Eun-gyeong and her childhood name is Hye-gyeong. I didn’t tell her about her mother until the Megumi issue spread. I introduced her as Hye-gyeong to media to protect her private life and I didn’t want her to be shocked.

Q: Do you know something about Lee Min-gyo and Hong Geon-pyo, [South Koreans] who disappeared almost at same time as you did?

A: I have no idea. I don’t want to talk about other persons now.

Q: How is your family?

A: Eun-gyeong is attending Kim Il Sung University and Cheol-bong is an elementary school student. My wife is a student at a school operated by the party. My father-in-law is vice-chairman of the Pyongyang People’s Committee. We are living affluently.

After the interview, Kim said, "Originally, I had no plan to release this information, and I never talked to anyone. However, this is the truth."

He continued, saying, "Please don’t let our family affairs be used for undesirable political purposes."

July 2, 2006 at 01:36 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Kim Young-nam Denies Abduction by N.Korea

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea

A man presumed to have been kidnapped by North Korea 28 years ago on Wednesday told reporters he was not the victim of an abduction but drifted out to sea and was rescued by a North Korean vessel. Kim Young-nam also told reporters his former wife Megumi Yokota, who was abducted by the North at the age of 13, later committed suicide and her remains were returned to Japan.

Kim, who was reunited with his mother on Wednesday, 28 years after he disappeared from a beach in North Jeolla Province, was giving a press conference in the North’s Mt.Kumgang Hotel. "In August 1978, I went to Sunyu island beach, but the two older friends with me started to become abusive toward me.” Kim told reporters. “To protect myself I took a wooden raft out to sea but fell asleep, and when I woke up I’d drifted out into open waters.” After being rescued by a North Korean vessel, Kim “went to the North,” he said.

Kim Young-nam, who disappeared from a beach in South Korea 28 years ago, speaks to reporters at the Mt.Kumgang Hotel in North Korea flanked by his mother and sister on Thursday. Kim says he drifted off and was rescued by a North Korean ship.

"I was frightened, but little by little I became closer to the people of the North, and my heart softened. After looking around from place to place, my perceptions of the North changed," Kim said at the tightly managed press conference. "Especially since I was able to study for free in the North, I thought it would be alright if I studied here and then returned to my hometown later. Now 28 years have come and gone."

Kim said Yokota was unstable even before they got married. “After giving birth her depression got worse and she showed signs of mental disturbance… until on April 13, 1994 she committed suicide in hospital," Kim said. "I met with Japanese government officials who traveled to Pyongyang in 2004 and gave them a detailed explanation” of the circumstances surrounding Yokota’s death, and handed over her remains. He said Tokyo’s claim that DNA tests show Yokota’s purported remains to be those of two other people were “clumsy and childish allegations.”

Kim appealed to reporters to stop using him and his family’s story “for impure political aims.” He said he wanted a quiet life and expressed hope his statement would close the matter.

The 45-year-old denied any knowledge of other South Koreans presumed to have been abducted at around the same time. “I really don't know," he said.

His life in the Korean Workers Party’s bosom was happy, he said, adding he “did not envy the lives of others” -- a reference to calls for his repatriation to the South. Asked if he would like to visit his hometown, Kim said, “Considering the situation that the North and the South face, it is premature to think about that. If the circumstances are right, I will visit.”

A graduate of Kim Il Sung National War College, Kim says he works “in the field of reunification.” He is believed to have worked training spies.

(englishnews@chosun.com )

June 30, 2006 at 12:57 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Will N.Korea Really Launch a Missile?

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea

A string of reports in the international press point to an imminent test of North Korea's new long-range Taepodong 2 missile, but the South Korean government and military sources say there are no signs that is going to happen. So what is the true state of affairs?

Reuters and the AFP ran reports on Tuesday that said North Korea is preparing to test a ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. and the test could take place next week. Rumors of preparations for a test launch began to surface at the end of last month, and it is assumed that the reports were referring to a test of a Taepodong-type missile. With an estimated radius of 6,700 km, the Taepodong 2 can hit Alaska, and the newer model with a lighter warhead, some say, could have a range of 10,000 km, meaning it could strike the U.S. mainland.

One government official said North Korea “could play the missile test card at any time as a protest against the U.S., Japan, or South Korea." If the North really intends to test-fire the missile, it would need to put the weapon on a 40 m high launch platform and load it with fuel; neither is known to have taken place. Additionally, it would first have to ban civilian ships from the surrounding waters to ensure that there are no accidents and deploy climate radar and tracking stations, sources said.

Intelligence experts are saying it is worth paying close attention to Japan’s movements in regard to the chances of a missile test. Japan is most sensitive to long-range missile launches and will be the first to react if there are actual signs of preparations. Over the last few years, Japan has been the first to report news related to North Korean missile tests, whether short-range or long.

The Japanese press was also the first to break the news last month of Pyongyang’s rumored preparations for a test launch of Taepodong 2 missiles, but now Tokyo is being cautious. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said his country was “collecting information on military movements of our neighbor countries and analyzing them, but we don’t have the understanding that a missile test is imminent.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )

June 13, 2006 at 09:07 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan

Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan - www.ezboard.com

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
and HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: August 3, 2005

TOKYO, Aug. 2 - Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution that plays down this country's militarist policies in World War II, less than two weeks before ceremonies take place across Asia marking the 60th anniversary of the war's end on Aug. 15.

Asia's GiantsThough expressing "regret" for the wartime past, the resolution omitted the references to "invasion" and "colonial rule" that were in the version passed on the 50th anniversary.

The action will most likely be seen by China and Japan's other Asian neighbors as further proof of growing nationalism here. A right-wing vandal seemed to capture a growing sentiment last week when he tried to scrape off the word "mistake" from a peace memorial in Hiroshima that said of Japan's war efforts: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake."

But in the weeks leading to Aug. 15, the leaders of China have been making sure that their view of the war, simply called the Anti-Japanese War there, gets across. China is spending $50 million to renovate a memorial hall for the victims of the Rape of Nanjing in 1937, when Japanese soldiers killed 100,000 to 300,000 civilians, at a time when details of it are disappearing from Japanese school textbooks. Chinese state television is broadcasting hundreds of programs on China's resistance against Imperial Japan.

The two countries find themselves playing out old grievances in a new era of direct rivalry for power and influence. Never before in modern times has East Asia had to contend with a strong China and a strong Japan at the same time, and the prospect feeds suspicion and hostility in both countries.

China has experienced 25 years of extraordinary economic growth, deeply extending its influence throughout Asia. But just when China's moment in the sun seems to be dawning, Japan is asserting itself: seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, transforming its Self-Defense Forces into a real military and revising its war-renouncing Constitution.

Both governments are encouraging nationalism for their own political purposes: China to shore up loyalty as Marxist ideology fades, Japan to overcome long-held taboos against expanding its military. With the impending 60th anniversary, both are trying to forge a future on their version of the past.

In Japan, major newspapers have published articles defending the Class A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Trials, and a growing number of textbooks whitewash Japan's wartime conduct. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where war dead including Class A war criminals are enshrined.

In China, a new television series called "Hero City" tells of how cities across China "fought bravely against Japan under the leadership of the Communist Party." In Beijing on Aug. 13, six former Chinese airmen from the Flying Tigers squadron are to recreate an air duel with Japanese fighters.

"On the one hand we have a victim's mentality, and on the other we don't see this much smaller country as being worthy of comparison with us," said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Nankai University in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin. "The reality is that they must accept the idea of China as a rising military power, and we must accept the idea of Japan becoming a normal nation, whether we like it or not."

To Japanese conservatives, becoming a normal nation amounts to a revision of the American-imposed peace Constitution that they feel castrated - a term they use deliberately and frequently - their country.

Arguing that Japan must draw closer to the United States, Mr. Koizumi's government has reinterpreted the Constitution to allow Japanese troops in Iraq and has reversed a longtime ban on the export of arms to join the American missile defense shield. Recent polls show an increasing percentage of Japanese favoring a revision of the Constitution.

The conservative news media have helped demonize China, as well as North Korea, to soften popular resistance to remilitarization. Sankei Shimbun, the country's most conservative daily, recently ran a series about China called "The Threatening Superpower."

One of the most emotional issues has been the dozen or so Japanese who were abducted by North Korea, mostly in the 1970's. The whereabouts of one woman, Megumi Yokota, remains a particularly sore point.

North Korea said she had died, and late last year gave Japan what it said were her remains. After DNA tests were done, the Japanese government accused North Korea of deliberately handing over someone else's remains, though most independent experts called the tests inconclusive.

Shinzo Abe, 50, the acting secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party and the leading member of a young generation of hawks, immediately called for economic sanctions.

Hiromu Nonaka, 79, who retired as secretary general about a year ago, said the present situation reminded him of prewar Japan, when politicians manipulated public opinion to rouse nationalism through slogans like "Destroy the brute Americans and British."

"Mr. Abe, who has been in the forefront of the abductee issue, turned toward making all of North Korea into the enemy," Mr. Nonaka said.

Mr. Abe is also one of several conservative politicians who defend textbooks that have outraged Chinese and South Korean demonstrators by sanitizing Japan's wartime atrocities. References to the women forced into sexual servitude by Japan's wartime authorities, called comfort women, all but disappeared this year from governmentendorsed junior high school textbooks.

At a recent news conference, Mr. Abe was asked whether politicians had exaggerated the threat from North Korea and China to influence public opinion and ease Japan toward revising its peace Constitution. "Well, there may be such opinions, but I think it's rubbish," he said.

In China and Japan alike, hatred and suspicion of the other are being deliberately fostered, in many cases by the governments themselves.

In Tokyo, 291 teachers have been reprimanded in the last year and many may face dismissal for refusing to stand before the rising-sun flag at school enrollment and graduation ceremonies and sing Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," considered symbols of Japanese imperialism by most Asians and some Japanese. Those signals of respect used to be optional, or shunned because of their associations with Japan's past militarism.

Efforts to control how the Japanese, especially the young, view Japan and China have even reached the comics. Late last year, 47 local Japanese politicians from all over the country protested that a comic series called "The Country Is Burning," published in "Young Jump Weekly," had distorted the Rape of Nanjing.

The drawings did not actually depict Japanese soldiers committing atrocities, but showed ditches filled with Chinese cadavers. The magazine's publisher quickly backed down and announced that it would delete or modify the offending passages when the series was reprinted in book form.

Hidekazu Inubushi, a politician and leader of the protest, added that forcing respect of the Japanese national anthem and flag was necessary because postwar Japanese education had focused too much on wartime misdeeds and produced graduates who were not proud of their country.

"To correct the big mistake in our education in the postwar 60 years, we've got to introduce forceful methods," he said.

Today's Chinese have been shaped by an anti-Japanese patriotic education, overseen by a government that is aware that its own domestic credentials depend, in part, on a hard line toward Japan. Having a hated neighbor shores up national solidarity and helps distract people from the failings of the Chinese Communist Party. Besides the party's monopoly on power, few orthodoxies are as untouchable today as hostility toward Japan.

Yu Jie, a Chinese author who spent time in Japan researching a book on the two countries' relations, "Iron and Plough," and went on to write another book about his experiences in Japan, discovered that at his own expense.

The books are nuanced works, built around lengthy conversations with pacifists, right-wing activists, scholars of every stripe and ordinary Japanese. One chapter, "Looking for Japan's Conscience," warned against speaking of Japanese in blanket terms.

"In the 60 years since the war, numerous Chinese and Japanese people have worked for the difficult Sino-Japanese friendship, selflessly emitting a dim yet precious light," he wrote.

The books appeared briefly in stores and then disappeared. In a country where censorship is routine, that is a sure sign, the author said, that officials had put pressure on the publisher or the stores to withdraw them.

Mr. Yu said China's policy toward Japan was unlikely to become more balanced as long as an authoritarian government remained in place, because Japan offered an unrivaled distraction from China's own problems.

"We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni," he said. "This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese won't take us seriously."

Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo for this article, and Howard W. French from Shanghai.

December 30, 2005 at 09:39 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Russia, Japan Acknowledge Old Land Dispute

ABC News: Russia, Japan Acknowledge Old Land Dispute

Japan Backs Russia's Bid to Join WTO, Acknowledge Land Dispute That Has Lingered Since WWII
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

TOKYO Nov 21, 2005 — The leaders of Russia and Japan said Monday the settlement of a 60-year-old dispute that kept their nations from formally ending their World War II hostilities requires closer economic cooperation and patient trust-building as Tokyo backed Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization.

After the business-oriented summit, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi acknowledged the dispute over the four frigid, sparsely populated islands that were seized by Soviet troops in the closing days of the war.

The turret of an old tank set in the ground as a part of war fortifications with a lighthouse in the background near Yuzhno-Kurilsk on Kunashir Island, one of the Kuril Islands, in this recent undated photograph. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi agreed to try resolving a 60-year territorial dispute over four tiny, sparsely populated islands that has marred bilateral ties, and said better economic ties will help. The dispute over the Kuril islands, which were seized by Soviet troops toward the end of the war, has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a World War II peace treaty. (AP Photo)

Koizumi said it will not be "easy" to resolve the disaccord but added that both nations "will further deepen our economic cooperation to strengthen mutual confidence, so that in the future we can sign a peace treaty."

"We have agreed to seek a resolution that can be acceptable to both countries," Koizumi said.

Putin, who warned before his trip to Japan that he wouldn't discuss ceding control of the islands, pledged to take strong efforts toward the settlement.

"The absence of a peace treaty hampers the development of economic ties," Putin said. "But we will be doing everything possible to solve this problem. We are fully determined to work in that direction to solve all the issues we face."

He added that Monday's talks showed that "both Russia and Japan share the desire" to achieve a compromise.

The tiny islets in the Kuril chain are known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Meanwhile, Russia and Japan signed a program for joint actions to combat terrorism and several agreements on cooperation in energy, communications and other fields.

Putin will return home with Japan's blessing for its WTO bid. Russia, which has to strike separate deals with WTO members as a condition for joining the 148-member global trade body, has launched economic and legal reforms in order to qualify for the membership. It has yet to negotiate a deal with the United States.

"Russia's accession into this organization will help strengthen trade ties with Japan and make them more stable," Putin said.

Putin also said Monday that Russia remains committed to building an oil pipeline to the Pacific Ocean that would deliver Siberian crude to Japan and other nations in the region.

"The construction of the oil pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean opens big prospects," Putin said in a speech before a forum of 500 Russian and Japanese businessmen.

For years, Japan and China have been struggling over alternate routes for the pipeline to ensure a steady supply. The Russian Cabinet last year endorsed the Japanese-backed route to the Pacific coast, but then decided the destination for its first stage would be near the Chinese border.

That raised concerns in Japan that Russia could drag its feet on building the costly pipeline's extension to the Pacific Coast and end up shipping all crude to China.

In an apparent bid to assuage such fears, Russian and Japanese officials on Monday signed a program of energy cooperation that contained Russia's obligation to start building the pipeline's extension to the Pacific Ocean "as quickly as possible." Koizumi said that building the pipeline was "mutually beneficial and very important."

In the same program, Russia also offered Japanese investors to contribute to building a natural gas processing plant in the Siberian city of Sayansk and other energy projects.

Japan has mobilized roughly 7,500 police as hundreds of right-wing activists held protests in the capital to protest the Russian leader's visit.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

November 21, 2005 at 12:23 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

he KAL's Flight-858 Incident: What is Meant by It

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On November 29, 1987, the Korean Airline's passenger plane (Flight No. 858) due for Seoul, with 115 people aboard, just disappeared while flying over the gulf of Martaban, Myanmar. Two days later the Korean Security Planning Agency (KSPA) told the public that the plane had been downed in explosion by the acts of two North Korean terrorists, named Kim Hyonhee (a young lady in her twenties) and Kim Sungil (aged over 70).

The cause of the incident as it was insisted by KSPA was not convincing at all. They had not any single piece of material evidence whatsoever (aircraft wreckage, victims' bodies and their personal belongings, etc) gathered as the result of official investigations that would support their conclusion about the cause of the incident. Notably, KSPA had the investigation crew terminate their searching activity and withdraw from the site only after 10 days of operation, abandoning even their duty of looking for the black-box.

There was a relief boat exhibited by KSPA as had been collected from the sea on the tenth day of the incident. But the boat was hardly seen as something that had come through the aircraft explosion. The boat itself was perfect in its own shape while an air pomp inside the boat fold-up had a slight damage inflicted. How can that happen?

The KSPA displayed a decades-old picture of a schoolgirl taken at an airport event in Pyongyang trying to identify her to be Kim Hyonhee, so insisting that Kim came dispatched from North Korea. Kim also confirmed in public that the girl in the picture was herself. But it soon became apparent that they are different persons having ears of different shapes.

The KSPA story of the incident was thus full of doubts and contradictions. The gathering of the incident victims family members have repeated their petitions to the government of different regimes for the last 15 years calling for an overall reinvestigation of the incident. But their heartbreaking calls have not been favorably responded with due action so far and by this year of 2002, the prosecutorial validity for this case expires in November, perhaps leaving no chance for a court trial to be carried out on the basis of a true story that may be unveiled by a reinvestigation.

It may be true that Kim Hyonhee was ruled guilty on the basis of a KSPA scenario in which she had professed herself to be the main actor for the explosion. And there is no doubt that the court decision was made in a perfect absence of material evidences that could help prove Kim's statement to be true. The victims families appeal to the conscience of Kim Hyonhee and hope that she will now tell the true story about her own share of performance in the tragic drama.

Democracy has progressed in South Korea while the prospect for national reconciliation and eventual reunification between the North and South is brighter today than ever on the peninsula. Now the KAL plane missing incident is one of the most important human-rights problems that requires an urgent and thorough review at the government level. It is to be noted that growing concerns are being paid from every corner of our society to see the justice uphold in dealing with this case.

November 17, 2005 at 11:38 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The tears of my soul

Blackwell's Online

When Korean Air Lines flight 858 exploded in 1987, killing 115 passengers. international law-enforcement officials immediately started searching for the hardened North Korean terrorists who could have committed such a crime. What they found was Kim Hyun Hee, an idealistic young woman who had been transformed by her country into an obedient killing machine. The Tears of My Soul is her poignant, shocking, and utterly compelling story.

Kim Hyun Hee grew up in a country obsessed by the loss of South Korea, an Orwellian world where right and wrong, good and evil, slavery and freedom meant nothing but what the North Korean Communist Party said they did. At sixteen, she was singled out by the Party for her intelligence and beauty and given special training in languages. At nineteen she was honored to be chosen for the North Korean Army's secret and elite espionage school. There she was trained to kill with everything from her hands and feet to grenades and assault rifles, enduring years of grueling physical and psychological conditioning designed to make her an effective and utterly obedient tool of the Party's spy masters. And in 1987, at age twenty-five, she was sent on the mission that would, she was told, reunify her divided country forever.

Kim and her control agent, a man she considered her spiritual father, were captured only hours after the explosion. They were provided with suicide capsules, but hers failed and, for the first time in her life, Kim was outside the control of her masters. After more than a year of soul-wrenching questioning and deprogramming by the South Korean police, Kim realized the full enormity of her crimes, made a full confession, and waited for execution. But in a remarkable decision that sparked national outrage, the South Korean president gave her a full pardon, declaring that she was as much a victim of North Korea as the passengers.

Kim Hyun Hee has devoted the rest of her life to atoning for the 115 lives lost on flight 858. The Tears of My Soul is part of that atonement, an attempt to reveal the incredible world of a fanatic Communist dictatorship still in power today, and its horrible control over the human mind and heart.

November 17, 2005 at 11:00 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

TERRORIST NETWORK ORGANIZATION

The Training of Terrorist Organizations II

Terrorist networks are organized for operational effectiveness as well as for group security. Terrorist groups are directed by a "headquarters". The headquarters may be the leaders within the organization or a third party representing a state sponsor. There may also be regional directorates that are subordinate to the headquarters. Action teams, or tactical cells, are groups that perpetrate an assault or other similar actions. They are the men and women who detonate the bombs, conduct assassinations, and actually carry out kidnappings and hijackings. Ideally, they do not know who directs or controls them. Terrorist networks also include support teams that serve various purposes. Support teams may be active or passive. Active supporters may conduct fund raising drives for the group, provide safe locations for members attempting to elude the authorities, or treat wounded or injured members. Although they do not conduct actual missions, they directly interact with, and support the movement. Passive supporters do not become openly involved in the criminal activities of the organization. On the other hand, they may contribute money to the cause or provide the group with information of tactical value. Support teams generally operate at all times, while tactical cells may be activated just prior to planned operations. Support teams normally do not know the identity or existence of other teams in the movement. Compartmentalization into "cell" structures is crucial to the survival of the group. It has become vital as counter terrorist efforts have intensified in scope and effectiveness.1

The three major categories of terrorist groups are non state- supported, state-supported, and state-directed. Non state-supported groups are generally small special interest bands such as radical environmentalists. They tend to be less trained, and less violent, than groups that have outside assistance. An exception is Sendero Luminoso, an extremely violent Peruvian terrorist organization, which may purposely avoid outside support in order to retain freedom of action.

State-supported groups obtain training, financial assistance, and logistical support from sovereign governments. The sponsors generally want to avoid being linked to their surrogate and may conduct training away from their own territory. Financial aid and equipment are funneled surreptitiously to the terrorist organizations, which on occasion may act for chiefly mercenary reasons. Iranianemployment of the Syrian sponsored Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, to destroy Pan Am Flight lO3 over Lockerbie, Scotland is an example of state sponsored terrorism. The PFLP-GC attack was allegedly coordinated in Damascus through contacts established by Sayeed Ali Akbar Mohtashami, former Iranian ambassador to Syria, and a graduate of the Soviet terrorist training facility at Simferopol. Jabril's group reportedly received $l.3 million for the mission.2 State-directed terrorist groups are organized, supplied, and controlled by a nation. An example of state-directed terrorism is the North Korean employment of assassins to murder a number of South Korean officials visiting Rangoon in l983.3 The destruction of Korean Air Flight 858 in l987 is another example of North Korean state- directed terrorism. One of its perpetrators, Miss Kim Hyon Hui, was apprehended after the attack and has provided a detailed description of her training for the operation that was well chronicled by Eileen MacDonald in Shoot the Women First.

Miss Hui was born in Pyongyang during l962 into the relatively privileged family of a diplomat. Like all North Korean citizens, she was indoctrinated to revere her leaders, observe and believe the party line, and to hate its enemies. Her conditioning began when she was two months old and spent portions of each day at statenurseries.

Miss Hui was a superior student in Japanese at Kim II Sung University. During her second year at that institution she was directed to meet with officers from the North Korean Research Department (secret service). After a battery of language, memory, and political reliability tests she was selected for agent training. Her initial training was conducted at Kimsong Political Military College in complete isolation from her family and friends, as well as from other students. Daily instruction was undertaken in small arms, languages, codes, and communications. Political indoctrination was interwoven with all courses. Her physical training was intense. Miss Hui claims that when it was concluded she could "swim two kilometers and run 4O kilometers over rough ground at night."4

After a year at the university she was moved north to the vicinity of the Chinese border where she received advanced instruction in kidnapping, assassination, marksmanship, bombing, and agitation. The research department planned to employ her as an agent in Japan. She spent six years studying the language and customs of that nation with Li Eun Hye, who had been kidnapped from a Japanese beach by North Korean agents. (There have been several reported incidents of Japanese citizens being kidnapped from Japan by North Korean Security Forces).5 The purpose of the training was to allowher to pass as a Japanese citizen. She also received specialized training in professional espionage, automobile operation, photography, and clandestine communications. Her ability to function under cover as a Japanese citizen was tested during a trip to Europe in l984 during which she posed as the daughter of the elderly agent who accompanied her. After returning she studied Chinese in Canton, China and Macao.

Miss Hui was provided with a month of specialized explosives

training during l987, after she had been chosen for the KAL 858 mission. She was paired once more with the elderly male agent that she had traveled to Europe with, and viewed the assignment as a combat mission behind enemy lines. The couple received explosives and a detonator disguised as a radio and a bottle of whisky from a North Korean diplomat while on a layover in Belgrade. Miss Hui stated that she and her companion would have stayed on the plane and exploded with it if that had been required for the accomplishment of the mission. After the couple was apprehended and brought in for questioning her partner committed suicide and she attempted to kill herself with a cyanide laced cigarette. Her combination of years of training and unswerving loyalty to her cause made her an extremely effective terrorist (or agent) for her nation. The duration, intensity, and effectiveness of her training clearly underscores the point that state-directed terrorists are normally more technically prepared and better equipped than state-supported or non state-supported terrorists.6 It is interesting to compare the training Miss Kim received, with "terrorist theory" advanced by Carlos Marighella in his book the Liberation of Brazil.7 The book contains a chapter entitled "Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Warfare" that was widely translated and employed by Latin American and European terrorists. Marighella encouraged physical training and manual skills, as well as the mastery of small arms and explosives. He emphasized the primacy of the political goal. Additionally, he stated that only a guerrilla who had passed initial tests should be selected for additional training or tasking.

Miss Hui's North Korean handlers also believed in physical conditioning and ensured that she was competent with small arms and explosives. She was tested in Europe prior to being assigned to destroy KAL 858, an action designed to further the DPRK's political goal of subverting the Seoul Olympics. The similarities are remarkable and demonstrate the validity of the time tested methods described by Marighella and employed by the North Korean Research Department.

November 11, 2005 at 10:28 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Outline and Background of Abduction Cases of Japanese Nationals by North Korea

MOFA: Outline and Background of Abduction Cases of Japanese Nationals by North Korea

April 2002

1. Outline of Individual Cases

There are a total of eight cases, involving 11 Japanese nationals, of suspected abductions by North Korea. Each of them is outlined as follows:

(1) "Ushitsu Case" of 1977 arrest by Ishikawa Prefectural Police
On 19 September 1977, a North Korean resident in Japan allegedly took a Japanese male residing in Tokyo to a beach near Ushitsu on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture and handed him over to North Korean agents waiting there aboard a North Korean spy ship. On the following day, 20 September, Ishikawa Prefectural Police arrested the North Korean resident and confiscated a table of random numbers, a code book and other items, which police believed substantiated his suspected spying activities.

(2) Missing Case of a Junior High School Girl in Niigata Prefecture in 1977
On 15 November 1977, a junior high school girl in Niigata Prefecture went missing after she said goodbye to her friend on their way home from extracurricular activities at her school.

(3) Missing Case of a Japanese Couple in Obama City in Fukui Prefecture in 1978
On 7 July 1978, a Japanese man who went missing left his home in Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, in a light truck, saying he had a date, but never returned home. His truck was later found with the ignition key on. The woman whom he said he was supposed to meet did not come home either after leaving her home, saying she had a date. They seemed to be very happy about their forthcoming marriage. There were no reasons to suspect that they had killed themselves.

(4) Missing Case of a Japanese Couple in Kashiwazaki in Nigata Prefecture in 1978
On 31 July 1978, a Japanese man living in Kashiwazaki City, Niigata Prefecture left his home by bicycle. He told his family that he was going out just for a while, but never returned. His bicycle was later found in front of a library in the city. A woman, who was working at a cosmetics store, told her colleague that she was going on a date with him after work. She did not come home, either. There were no reasons or motives for them to run away from homes. y 2

(5) Missing Case of a Japanese Couple in Kagoshima Prefecture in 1978
On 12 August 1978, a man in Kagoshima Prefecture failed to return home after telling his family that he was going to the beach to see the sunset with his partner. Two days later, his car was found at the seaside campground, with the doors locked. The woman also left her home, telling her family that she was going to the beach with him to see the sunset, and never returned home.

(6) "Shin Gwang-Su" Case in 1980
A Japanese man living in Osaka was allegedly abducted and taken aboard a ship near Aoshima Beach in Miyazaki Prefecture in 1980. Shin Gwang-Su, who was arrested in South Korea in 1985 on charges of spying for North Korea, is believed to have had a direct role in the suspected abduction case.

(7) "Lee Un-Hae" Case
Kim Hyon Hui, a North Korean offender convicted for the 1987 bombing of a Korean Airlines jet (see Note below), told South Korean authorities a Japanese woman, called "Lee Un-Hae," taught her the Japanese language in North Korea. Japanese police announced in May 1991 that they had reached the decision on the basis of their investigation there was a very high probability that the Japanese language teacher mentioned by Kim Hyon Hui was a Japanese woman from Saitama Prefecture who had been listed missing.

(Note) On 29 November 1987, Korean Airlines Flight 858, bound for Seoul from Baghdad via Abu Dhabi and Bangkok, crashed over the area of the Bay of Bengal after a time-bomb placed on the plane exploded, killing all the 115 passengers and crew aboard.

(8) Missing Case of Miss Keiko Arimoto in Europe
Around October 1983, Miss Keiko Arimoto, who was studying in Britain, went missing after sending a letter to her family from Copenhagen, Denmark. Later, a Japanese man who also went missing after visiting Europe said in a letter to his family in Japan that he and two other Japanese, including Miss Arimoto, were staying in North Korea.
2. Developments in Japan-North Korea Talks

(1) 1991-1992

1. In May 1991, at the Third Meeting of the Normalization Talks between Japan and North Korea, the Japanese side raised the case of "Lee Un-Hae." The North Koreans reacted strongly against it, charging that it was "an insult to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and an act to destroy the bilateral talks."

2. Although the working-level consultations on the issue of Lee Un-Hae had been taking place, the North Korean side, in November 1992, during the working-level consultations at the eighth meeting of the Normalization Talks, refused to listen to the Japanese side's assertion about the issue and left the consultations unilaterally, thereby leading to the suspension of the Normalization Talks themselves.

(2) 1997-1998

1. At the deputy Director-General minister-level preliminary talks in August 1997 to prepare for the resumption of the Normalization Talks and again at the first meeting of the Japan-North Korea Red Cross Meeting in September 1997, Japan raised the issue of the suspected abductions. The North Korean side categorically denied its alleged part in the suspected abductions.

2. At the request of the delegation of Japan's ruling coalition parties in November 1997, North Korea replied that it would "look into the matter as a simple case of missing persons." In responding to this reply, the Japanese side, at the second meeting of the Japan-North Korea Red Cross Meeting in December 1997, strongly urged the North Korean side to conduct the investigation in earnest and take specific action toward the settlement of the issue. The North Korean side pledged to carry out the investigation and convey the result to Japan, while insisting that its government had absolutely no part in the suspected abductions.

3. In June 1998, a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross announced that as a result of its investigation, none of the 10 missing Japanese nationals whom Japanese law-enforcement authorities suspect had been taken to North Korea through the seven suspected abduction cases were found to be residing in North Korea. In August, the bilateral talks were suspended following North Korea's ballistic missile launch.

(3) 1999-Present

1. In December 1999, in response to a request by a mission of Japanese parliamentarians (the so-called Murayama mission), North Korea said it was ready to "continue the investigation as the case of missing persons." Based on this response, the Japanese side presented at the subsequent Japan-North Korea Red Cross Talks, a list of Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted, renewing the request for the investigation. The North Korean side, in consideration of the Japanese proposal, promised to instruct the organization concerned to conduct a thorough investigation. In addition, at the following preliminary talks for preparations for the resumption of the Normalization Talks, the Japanese side pointed out the issue of the suspected abductions could not be skirted in seeking to improve the Japan-North Korea relations, pressing North Korea to respond in good faith.

2. At the Japan-North Korea Red Cross Talks held in March 2000, the North Korean side informed the Japanese side that the organization concerned began a thorough investigation into the case of missing persons as requested by Japan. North Korea further promised that if any of the missing persons were found in the country, it would make a report to Japan and take appropriate measures.

3. In April 2000, at the meeting in Pyongyang of the Japan-North Korea Normalization Talks, resumed after a hiatus of about seven and a half years, Japan once again pointed out that addressing the suspected abductions could not be avoided in order to seek improved relations between Japan and North Korea, calling for North Korea's good faith. In response, the North Koreans asserted they would hold no further dialogue with Japan if Japan kept using the term "abductions."

4. In August 2000, the second meeting after the resumption of the Japan-North Korea Normalization Talks was held in Japan. The Japanese side repeated that both sides could not avoid addressing the issue of the suspected abductions, expressing the hope that North Korea would steadily conduct a "thorough investigation" and come up with convincing results. The North Korean side again dismissed the suspected abductions as impossible, insisting the issue should not be a topic at the Normalization Talks. At the same time, however, the North Koreans explained that the North Korean Red Cross, in cooperation with the authorities concerned, was conducting a "thorough investigation of the missing persons" in line with the Japan-North Korea agreement.

5. On 27 December 2001, the North Korean Red Cross announced the total suspension of the investigation into the "missing persons" requested by Japan. In response, Japan expressed regret over North Korea's suspension of the investigation as totally unacceptable.

6. On 11 March 2002, the National Police Agency officially announced that there were suspicions that Miss Keiko Arimoto had been abducted by North Korea. On 22 March, the North Korean Red Cross made a statement that North Korea had "never kidnapped or abducted her to North Korea." It also said it had decided to "continue the investigation into the 'missing persons'," adding that it was ready to hold the Japan-North Korea Red Cross Talks. On the same day, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said in a statement that Japan could not accept the claim of the North Korean Red Cross denying the suspicion about the abduction of Ms. Keiko Arimoto. On the other hand, Foreign Minister Kawaguchi recognized the resumption of the investigation into the case of the 'missing persons' as a positive movement responding to Japan's strong request for the resumption since the end of last year and expressed that the Japan-North Korea Red Cross Talks were one of the signs of North Korea's movements responding to Japan's repeated calls for talks between Japan and North Korea.

(END)

November 11, 2005 at 10:07 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan charter reform proposed

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan charter reform proposed

Japan's ruling party has proposed revising the country's constitution to formalise the role of its military.

The Liberal Democratic Party proposal, published on Friday, seeks to update the post-World War II constitution to reflect present realities.

If endorsed, it would formally legalise the activities of Japan's Self-Defence Force (SDF), at home and abroad.

The plan is likely to concern China and the Koreas, watchful of any signs of rising militarism in Japan.

Significantly, the proposed new constitution retains a pledge that Japan will never wage war as a means of settling international disputes.

What is different about the proposal is that it states that "military forces for self-defence shall be maintained".

Whilst Japan has had a 240,000-man Self-Defence Force (SDF) for nearly 50 years, the constitution still states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained".

"We will never wage war again," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Friday, after the proposal was released.

"But we should make it clear that maintaining a force for self-defence is not against the constitution."

The proposal not only paves the way to formally acknowledging the SDF's legality, but also seeks to validate peacekeeping missions conducted overseas - Japan currently has several thousand non-combat troops in Iraq.

"The military forces for self-defence may engage in activities conducted in international co-operation to secure peace and security of the international community," according to the proposal.

Analysts say this clause may be interpreted as allowing the SDF to engage in collective self-defence - firing to protect its international allies - on these missions. It is currently forbidden by Japanese law from doing so.

The preamble to the proposed new constitution is also controversial. It adds that Japanese people should share a "love for the country" - a phrase that could potentially be interpreted as having nationalistic overtones.

Former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who helped write the proposed constitution, told Reuters news agency he did not believe it presented a big change:

"I think it basically puts into print the present situation," he said.

Long process

For the proposal to come into law it needs to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament before winning a majority vote in a public referendum.

Recent opinion polls have suggested that while a majority of the Japanese public favour revising the constitution, two-thirds of them oppose any change to the part that refers to the use of force - Article 9.

Mr Miyazawa predicted that it would take 10 more years to revise the constitution.

October 29, 2005 at 04:05 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

GSDF, Hokkaido police conduct drill against 'armed agents'

Japan Today - News - GSDF, Hokkaido police conduct drill against 'armed agents' - Japan's Leading International News Network

Friday, October 21, 2005 at 08:01 JST
SAPPORO — Police and the Ground Self-Defense Force on Thursday conducted a joint drill in Hokkaido under the scenario of an incursion by armed enemy agents into Japan. The drill at the GSDF Makomanai garrison in Sapporo is the first police-GSDF joint drill aimed at maintaining public order in the event of an emergency.

About 150 officers of the Hokkaido prefectural police and 250 members of the GSDF's Northern Army took part in the drill under a scenario in which agents carrying powerful weapons have entered Japan, preventing the police from dealing with the situation by themselves.

© 2005 Kyodo News.

October 20, 2005 at 09:07 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Discussions under way to create Japanese version of MI6

Japan Today - News - Discussions under way to create Japanese version of MI6 - Japan's Leading International News Network

By Tsukasa Arita

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 at 11:24 JST
TOKYO — Discussions are under way in Japan about whether to create a Japanese secret intelligence service along the lines of Britain's MI6 — commonly known from James Bond films — in charge of espionage activities overseas.

The deliberations were initiated by a proposal from an experts group sponsored by Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura for determining how to strengthen Japan's overseas information gathering functions.

The five-member group is headed by Yoshio Omori, a former chief of the Cabinet Information Research Office, and includes military critic Kensuke Ebata.

In September, the group came up with the proposal, which notes that the current system of acquiring information from overseas is inadequate, and "also considering the role our country plays in the international community, the system is not suitable."

In Japan, the Foreign Ministry, the Cabinet Information Research Office, the Defense Agency, the National Police Agency and the Public Security Investigation Agency each collect and analyze overseas information, but an official source said, "Among major countries only Japan has no overseas information-gathering organization."

Discussions about creating such a setup have not arisen because Japan has depended on the United States for obtaining intelligence under a bilateral security system.

In addition, the Japanese have a deep-rooted sense of resistance to intelligence agencies stemming from the country's experience of prewar special political police and spies.

The end of the Cold War, North Korea's nuclear programs, and the spread of terrorism across the world in recent years have demanded the Japanese government increasingly collect and examine information from abroad, but it lacks the required capacity.

In 1996 when the Japanese ambassador's official residence in Peru was attacked by armed guerrillas, Omori was head of the Cabinet Information Research Office. As a "shameful story," he said, "Nobody in Japan knew about the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement armed guerrillas, and the government had to ask the United States about them."

Britain's MI6 is placed under the country's foreign minister. Contrary to the flashy image conveyed by "007," it has no legal force and is said to merely handle information. But Omori describes the activities and scale of the U.S.'s intelligence service, the CIA, as beyond comparison.

Foreign Minister Machimura visited London in July and secretly met MI6 executives to exchange opinions on how intelligence agencies should operate, government sources said.

A government official in charge of overseas information analyses said, "People's suspicion that 'intelligence agencies' can become dangerous runs deep. That sense of alarm should be taken seriously."

Machimura said, "It will require time. But, one step at a time, we would like to steadily move ahead," indicating that understanding from the people is needed first.

© 2005 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

October 19, 2005 at 10:29 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A NEW SUN RISING

globeandmail.com

Structural reforms are lifting Japan out of years of stagnation. But the most dynamic force may be a new generation willing to throw out the old rules. GEOFFREY YORK REPORTS FROM TOKYO

By GEOFFREY YORK

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Anyone seeking a symbol of the new Japan need look no further than a swashbuckling spike-haired 32-year-old cyberspace tycoon named Takafumi Horie.

Japan's business establishment loathes him. Television audiences adore him.

He drives a blue Ferrari, wears black T-shirts and jeans, performs on quiz shows, collects comic books, writes bestsellers on how to get rich and infuriates the business elite by violating the traditional protocol against hostile takeovers.

Mr. Horie dropped out of Tokyo University and created his own Internet company when he was 23. Within seven years, he had earned his first $100-million (U.S.). His company, Livedoor Co., reported sales of $294-million and profits of $54-million last year, primarily through Internet services and DVD rentals.

Japan's young generation made him an instant hero when he launched a brash bid to set up a franchise in the exclusive Japanese baseball league last year. Young fans saw him as a bold reformer who would rescue the baseball league from financial ruin. But the baseball moguls refused to let him enter the league.

Last month he returned with a vengeance, stunning the corporate establishment with a bid for control of Fuji TV, one of Japan's leading broadcasters. Backed by financing from the U.S.-based Lehman Brothers investment bank, he used a series of secret off-hours trades to purchase 40 per cent of Nippon Broadcasting Systems, the largest shareholder in Fuji TV. The broadcasters fought back bitterly with a "poison pill" defence, issuing new shares that diluted Livedoor's stake.

The struggle for Fuji epitomizes all the conflicts and tensions of today's Japan.

On one side are the young Japanese entrepreneurs who see Mr. Horie as an icon of change in a stodgy corporate world. They are pushing for new competition and reform in Japan's slow-moving economy, opening the doors to globalization, foreign investment, new technology and fresh blood to challenge the cozy elites who traditionally control industries through cross-holdings. On the other side, Japan's older business leaders have been outraged by Mr. Horie's rude tactics and secret manoeuvring. They denounced him for "stepping into other people's homes without taking his shoes off." They alleged that his takeover bid was "an act of terrorism." And they accused him of allowing foreign financiers to gain influence in a strategically important industry.

Behind this clash is a deeper struggle between two visions of Japan's future. One vision is the confident, new Japan: taking an active role on the world stage for the first time in 60 years, sending troops to Iraq, seeking a seat on the United Nations Security Council, winning global influence through its pop culture and technology, aiming to send astronauts to the moon, opening up its economy, challenging the U.S. for dominance in the auto industry, and even supplying the hottest new superstars for American baseball teams.

The other vision is more anxious and angst-ridden. This is a country that obsesses over the possibility of future decline. It worries about its dropping birth rate and its aging populace. It broods over projections that its population will decline by 20 million in the next 50 years. It frets over the dramatic rise of China and the nuclear threat from North Korea. And it expresses its insecurities through an increasingly nationalistic class of politicians who oppose foreign investment and demand patriotic education in the schools.

Nobody should expect either of these two visions to gain the upper hand. The only certainty is that fundamental changes are under way, and they will have profound implications for the world.

Japan remains the second-biggest economy after the United States, a crucial force in Asian security and a key trading partner of Canada. Its emerging new identity will shape not only the global economy but also the potential for military conflicts in Asia.

Much of this shifting direction can be traced to the arrival of one man: Junichiro Koizumi. Since becoming Prime Minister in 2001, Mr. Koizumi has introduced a new populism and nationalism into Japanese politics, giving the country greater confidence and a willingness to engage on the world stage. He has pledged to revise Japan's constitution, removing the pacifist restrictions that made it unique in the world. He has been willing to clash politically with North Korea and China. He has signed onto the U.S. missile defence system and has sent Japanese troops to foreign combat zones.

Domestically, his populist style has helped ensure that "reform" is the new Japanese buzzword. And he has forced the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party to respond to the public mood. Despite decades in power, the LDP is now compelled to portray itself as the party of reform. "We are changing politics!" proclaims the latest LDP brochure. "Our job is to change Japan."

On the economy, too, Mr. Koizumi has tackled Japan's powerful bureaucracy and promised a new agenda of "reform without sacred cows" -- the kinds of reforms supported by the younger generation of business leaders. On these issues, however, the Prime Minister's record is much more mixed.

Certainly his policies have helped encourage more openness and efficiency in the economy, cutting wasteful public-works spending and reducing excess debts, especially in the banking sector where non-performing loans have been drastically reduced.

While Mr. Koizumi cannot claim all the credit, it is true that, following years of stagnation, Japan's economy is finally beginning to rebound. Its growth for 2004 was 2.7 per cent -- the best performance since 1996. Its banks are increasingly healthy, its corporations are more efficient, deflation is ending, personal consumption is rising, and money-losing "zombie" companies are finally dying off. Land prices in central Tokyo increased last year for the first time in 17 years, indicating an end to the property-value collapse that has plagued Japan since the 1980s.

"Japan is on the verge of showing vitality in its domestic economy for the first time in a decade," said Richard Jerram, chief economist at the Tokyo office of Macquarie Securities. "I think its banking system is basically solvent now, and that's extremely good news. The prospect is that the domestic economy will be much stronger now."

As the economy revives, Japan's younger entrepreneurs are increasingly willing to throw open their doors to global competition and corporate takeovers.

The cyber-tycoon, Mr. Horie, has become the symbol of the new era.

"His popularity among young people is shocking to the older generation, who see him as an Americanized capitalist," said Mari Miura, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. "In the past, there was lifetime security and you had a job until you died. Now you need to have mobility skills. People feel that they don't have to be loyal to their bosses any more. They feel that their income depends on their performance now. That's why they like Horie. He is challenging the establishment and he doesn't seem to care about social norms."

The most celebrated of Mr. Koizumi's reforms is his plan to privatize Japan's vast network of postal services, including the postal savings system -- essentially the biggest financial institution in the country. However, the postal privatization seems to be largely driven by political factors, rather than a genuine desire for economic reform, since Mr. Koizumi knows that the privatization would weaken his political foes. The postal system and its rural employees were the main stronghold of a rival faction of the ruling party, and Mr. Koizumi is determined to defeat it.

Moreover, the privatization plan has been weakened and delayed by strong opposition within his own party. He has repeatedly compromised with his opponents, watering down the reforms and pushing back the schedule to the point where some of the postal reforms will not be completed until 2017.

"I don't think he is a true believer in neo-liberalism or markets," Ms. Miura said. "His primary motive was to destroy the rival faction in the LDP. In reality, the postal system isn't likely to change very much."

There is, however, a new openness in the Japanese economy, and that is making it easier for foreign companies to invest and trade here. But analysts believe that Canada is failing to exploit these opportunities. Only 2 per cent of Japan's imports came from Canada in 2003, a substantial drop from Canada's 3.2 per cent share a decade ago.

"Canada's commercial relationship with Japan has declined significantly in recent years," said Carin Holroyd, a specialist in Canada-Japan trade relations, in a commentary published this year by the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada.

"Canada's performance with Japan has been mediocre at best," she said. "Other countries have been more creative, better-informed, and more engaged with the rapidly changing Japanese market. . . . Canadian firms have done relatively little to respond to commercial openings in Japan. The country has suffered economically, and significantly at that, as a consequence."

Japan: an overview
Official name: Nihon

Government type: Constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government

Electoral system: Universal suffrage at 20 years of age

Head of state: Emperor Akihito

Head of government: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi

National legislature: The bicameral Diet (Kokkai) consists of the 247-seat House of Councillors (Sangi-in) and the 480-seat House of Representatives (Shugi-in)

National government: Under the constitution, the prime minister must command a parliamentary majority so after elections the leader of the majority party or leader of a majority coalition in the House of Representatives usually becomes prime minister, who them appoints the cabinet

Main political parties: Democratic Party of Japan; Japan Communist Party; Komeito; Liberal Democratic Party; Social Democratic Party

Area: Japan consists of four main islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, plus thousands for smaller islands. Their combined area is 377,873 square kilometres

Language: Japanese

Population: 126.9 million as of October, 2000, census (estimated at 127,333,002 in July, 2004)

Currency: Japanese yen (JPY)

Exchange rate: 100 yen = 94 cents (U.S.) or $1.14 (Canadian)

Largest cities and populations:

Tokyo, the capital (8.3 million)

Yokohama (3.43 million)

Osaka (2.6 million).

Nagoya (2.17 million)

Sapporo (1.8 million)

Kobe (1.5 million)

Kyoto (1.47 million)

GDP: 504.6-trillion yen

Per capita GDP: 3,954,545 yen

Real GDP growth rate: 2.7 per cent in 2004.

Unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted): 4.5 per cent in January

Inflation: Minus 0.3 per cent

Corporate bankruptcies: Fell 12.6 per cent In February from a year earlier, down for a 26th straight month

Current account surplus: Shrank 28.2 per cent in January from a year earlier to 774.9-billion yen ($7.46-billion U.S.)

Merchandise exports: Rose 1.7 per cent year-on-year in February

Merchandise imports: Rose 11.3 per cent in February year-on-year

Top trading partners: China (including Hong Kong) reached 20.1 per cent of Japan's total trade in 2004 at $213-billion (U.S.) in exports and imports; the United States was second at 19 per cent or $197-billion

Trade with Canada: Japan is Canada's second largest trading partner (after the U.S.), with almost $20-billion in exports and imports

Trade surplus: Fell 21.7 per cent in February from the same month a year earlier to 1.093-trillion yen ($10.36-billion U.S.)

Agricultural output: Japan's agricultural output totalled 8.901-trillion yen ($80.9-billion U.S.) in 2003, down 0.3 per cent

year-on-year

Industrial production: Rose 2.5 per cent in January, from a month earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, and was up 1.5 per cent unadjusted year-on-year

Government budget: 82.2-trillion yen ($778-billion U.S.) for fiscal year 2005, which begins in April. The deficit will reach 15.95-trillion yen, down about 3-trillion yen from 2004. (The government hopes to achieve a surplus in the early 2010s)

Government debt: Set to climb to around 770-trillion yen ($7,296-billion U.S.) by the end of fiscal 2005/06 or about 150 per cent of GDP.

Foreign exchange reserves: $840.56 billion (U.S.) the world's biggest external reserves.

SOURCE: REUTERS, BLOOMBERG NEWS, ASIA PACIFIC FOUNDATION OF CANADA, THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS STATISTICS BUREAU

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

August 27, 2005 at 12:40 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Having failed to privatise the post box, leader turns to ballot box

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

From Richard Lloyd Parry and Leo Lewis in Tokyo
JAPAN’S Prime Minister announced a snap general election yesterday when he lost a bitterly fought vote on the privatisation of postal services.

The election, scheduled for September 11, will be a bruising struggle that could permanently alter the political terrain in Japan after 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

If Junichiro Koizumi’s gamble pays off, he will purge the LDP of his reactionary opponents and recreate the party in his own image: as a radical populist force, intent on structural reform of Japan’s government and bureaucracy.

If he fails, he risks splitting his party, and handing power to an increasingly confident opposition, the liberal Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

When the results were announced, the DPJ MPs were on their feet punching the air and hugging one another. “We’ve been steadily making efforts for this day,” Katsuya Okada, the DPJ’s leader, told his jubilant MPs. “Now we finally have an opportunity to change the government.”

The LDP-led coalition Government had been expected to lose yesterday’s vote in the upper house of Japan’s diet, but the margin of defeat was greater than expected — 125 MPs opposed the postal privatisation Bills and 108 supported them, after 22 LDP members voted against their own party leader and eight either abstained or failed to vote.

Yesterday evening, as he had threatened to do for weeks, Mr Koizumi dissolved the lower house, insisting that party backing would be withdrawn from all those who defied him. “I will destroy the LDP,” he told his Cabinet ministers. “I am determined to create a new party which make its priority the welfare of the people.”

Attention will now focus on the rebel MPs, many of whom have sworn to stand for re-election against the new officially appointed pro-Koizumi candidates. They may decide to form a new party, which would put great strain on the unity of the LDP in its 50th year. In that time, it has only once been out of power, for eight months, after an election defeat in 1993.

Yesterday’s dramatic events were the culmination of weeks of mounting tension over a project which Mr Koizumi has made his central goal — the privatisation of Japan’s post office, one of the richest and most influential institutions in the country. Against ferocious opposition, his Cabinet has pushed through a set of Bills which would privatise mail delivery, life insurance, post offices services and, above all, the post office savings system to which Japanese entrust 340trillion yen (£1.7 trillion).

The money represents a source of funding for the lavish and often wasteful public spending that has been the life blood of Japanese politics. In rural Japan, postmasters are influential figures whose support underwrites many LDP politicians. Hence the bitter opposition to the Bills, which squeaked through the lower house a month ago by just five votes.

In a measure of the intensity of the feelings, Yoji Nagaoka, a member of an anti-Koizumi LDP faction, hanged himself last week after voting in favour of the postal legislation. Heizo Takenaka, the minister behind the reforms said: “The rejection is a major blow to Japan’s future and its economy.”

August 8, 2005 at 10:07 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Worshipping war criminals

TheStar.com - Worshipping war criminals

Shrine to soldier deities at centre of Asians' anger and fears of a return to WWII fervour

MARTIN REGG COHN
ASIA BUREAU, TOKYO

Dressed in ceremonial silk robes, the Shinto priest claps twice and bows deeply before reciting prayers.

This religious purification rite, enacted daily for the devout, embodies traditional Japanese reverence for the spirits of 2.4 million war dead enshrined in the historic Yasukuni Shrine.

War criminals are no exception.

In fact, the souls of more than 1,000 Japanese convicted of war crimes — including 14 designated "Class A" by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal — are worshipped here.

Six decades after World War II, more than 5 million people make the pilgrimage annually to the shrine's leafy grounds, blanketed in chrysanthemums and swirling in controversy.

Today, people keep coming to commune with the dead. No one is buried within the shrine's precincts, but the spirits of the war dead are there forever.

And as the 60th anniversary of war's end approaches, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's insistence on repeating his annual visits has provoked furious reactions in China and South Korea.

Tens of thousands of Chinese protested on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai this year when Tokyo approved new textbooks sanitizing Japan's wartime atrocities, reviving grievances about the shrine.

Koizumi publicly expressed remorse for Japan's aggression, but his defiant announcement that he would keep visiting the shrine prompted China's visiting vice-premier to storm out of Tokyo in a sharp diplomatic rebuke.

The standoff has not only soured relations across East Asia, it also has focused attention on the resurgence of Japanese nationalism at home.

Renewed fascination with Japan's wartime adventurism is drawing young and old, politicians and priests, into an unusual debate: Does history count for less than faith and tradition?

Known as Kami, or deities, the war criminals were secretly enshrined in 1978 by the private Shinto religious foundation that runs Yasukuni. The priests make no apologies for safeguarding their spirits.

"History is something that has to await the verdict of future historians," argues Shingo Oyama, a priest and designated spokesperson for the 136-year-old shrine.

He is quick to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the international tribunals, insisting: "You can't prove that they are war criminals."

Indeed, the shrine publishes its own version of events, referring to World War II as the Greater East Asian War. Conveniently overlooking the attack on Pearl Harbor, it states that "Japan was forced into the conflict." In the aftermath, "the precious lives that were lost in these incidents and wars are worshipped as the Kami."

Praise is showered on those "who were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces .... These martyrs are also the Kami of Yasukuni."

Inside the sprawling grounds of the shrine, lined with ginkgo and cherry trees, a war museum showcases the exploits of kamikaze pilots and downplays the infamous 1937 Nanjing massacre, asserting casually that "Chinese citizens were once again able to live their lives in peace."

Such sentiments are echoed by a growing number of Japanese, raising alarm bells among analysts and opposition politicians who sense a return to wartime chauvinism.

Many critics place the shrine at the centre of the revival.

"I feel it's going back to the days of the old imperial army," says Masahide Ota, an academic and lawmaker from the opposition Social Democratic Party.

"This is a sort of tool for reviving nationalism among the Japanese people. And it's all connected with the textbook issue."

The country is clearly split.

The speaker of Japan's parliament, backed by former prime ministers, urged Koizumi to exercise "utmost caution" before visiting the shrine again.

Business leaders also expressed concerns and recent public opinion polls show about half of all Japanese now opposing any more visits.

But Ota believes the recent opposition to prime ministerial pilgrimages merely reflects sensitivities about Japan's trading relationship with China, rather than any introspection about the country's past.

"Young people don't know anything about the last war," he says, but "they're always interested in the samurai spirit" of Japanese warriors from earlier eras.

"I'm afraid Japan will make the same mistake again."

Indeed, there is growing sympathy for the notion that the convicted war criminals were blameless victims, scapegoated by the victors of World War II who imposed their will upon Japan.

"A lot of people want the prime minister to keep visiting the shrine," says Narui Hiroaki, 43, who has come to worship for the first time.

"Worshipping the war criminals is not necessarily a bad thing," adds the computer salesman, whose father fought in the war.

"A war criminal doesn't necessarily equal a villain."

Inside the waiting room, ordinary Japanese are shown a propagandizing video that replays grainy footage of the war-crimes tribunal and condemns the legal process as unjust, vowing: "We won't forget."

A family has brought a newborn baby to receive priestly blessings, while others line up to enter the inner precinct where the prime minister makes his pilgrimage.

A priest wearing a pointed Eboshi hat with a slim chinstrap leads us to a large fountain where he stops and ladles water into his hands in a cleansing ritual.

We shuffle in slippers past a large, unadorned wooden courtyard to an altar under slate roof tiles, where the priest prays with green sprigs and blesses the faithful.

On cue, people clap their hands twice and the ritual concludes with the drinking of sacred sake from orange cups.

The pilgrimage brings tears to the eyes of many visitors who are deeply affected by the experience, reinforcing the arguments of Oyama, the shrine's spokesperson, that they were right to enshrine the war criminals.

Dismissing appeals from some opposition politicians and critics that they reverse their 1978 decision to enshrine the war criminals, Oyama is adamant that the spirits have reached their final resting place.

"Even if the deities were removed or split off, the spirits will still remain in the original shrine," he insists.

"Souls and spirits are not things. What has been enshrined as a deity cannot be moved because of political pressure."

Additional articles by Martin Regg Cohn

July 24, 2005 at 12:38 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan's free spirits

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Japan's free spirits

It is nearly 15 years since Japan's economy ground to a halt, triggering a period of introspection about the country's values and its place in the world. In the second of a special series, BBC News Online's Sarah Buckley reports on how young people's expectations about work are changing.

Hidden in central Tokyo is an area known as Golden Gai - a strip of anonymous counter-bars which attract those in search of a counter culture.

Bartender Shinichi Yoshimoto used to do a 16-hour day at a loan-sharking company. "I took the first train to the company, and I took the final train home," he said.

But he gave it all up to become a "furita" - a term used to describe those who do part-time or short-term work.

Economic changes, partly stemming from a decade of slow or no growth, have altered Japanese attitudes to work.

Previous generations could expect to spend their working lives at the same company and never face the sack. Now such lifetime employment is dying out. And jobs are more scarce as companies struggle to regain productivity.

Many Japanese still choose to follow in their parents' footsteps. But this changing environment has brought more freedom for the young. For some, this is exciting; for others, it is terrifying.

I think everyone wants to be like us, but they can't do it so they're envious. They don't have the confidence
Hiroko Abe

Shinichi, who has travelled to nearly 40 countries, said his time abroad opened his eyes.

"I realised that life is very short, so I don't have any time. Life is only for joy... I like losers like me."

But not everyone is keen on Japan's "losers", who over the last decade have become an increasingly visible section of the population.

Hideaki Omura, a lawmaker with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said 4 million furita out of a working population of 65 million was "very serious".

"We should enforce a policy to make young people get a proper job," he said.

He stressed that furita do not pay income tax or make pension contributions.

"They work only when they want to, so... they are not the regular workforce that the country can rely on.

"They are young people, very lively with good skills and potential, but they don't contribute their skills."

Shinichi, however, is not just having fun. He has a plan for the future. Using his experience of working in publishing, he is setting up his own publishing company.

"Instead of saving, I'm making a company and making friends. That's my investment for the future," he said.

Other furita interviewed also had plans.

Harumi Sato, 24, who works for a temping agency, wants a variety of experience before post-graduate study in ancient literature. Twenty-eight-year-old Hiroko Abe, who works for two bars, an internet café and a medical check-up car, dreams of setting up a salon where people can meet and exchange ideas.

She is studying law in her spare time and hopes a legal qualification will back up her future.

"I think everyone wants to be like us, but they can't do it so they're envious. They don't have the confidence," she said.

Freedom's dark side

One of those who certainly lacks confidence is Gen Kubata, who lives with his mother, and has not worked since being bullied during a brief spell working at a printing company.

"I was bullied in junior high school and then I got the same experience (at work) so I thought 'that's enough'", said 23-year-old Gen, his shoulders hunched.

He also stopped socialising, and even spent some time as a hikikomori - a complete recluse who never goes out.

While the furita phenomenon has affected Japan for some years, Gen belongs to a group only recently identified. These people are known as Neet - those Not in Education, Employment or Training and under 25 years old.

While there were only 80,000 Neet in Japan in 1997, there were at least 400,000 in 2000, according to estimates.

Yuji Genda's book on Neet
Sociologist and author Yuji Genda says Neet are lost

Kei Kudo works at Sodateage Net, a centre in Tachikawa city outside Tokyo, which helps Neet people reintegrate into society.

He said he believed there were several reasons for the rise in Neet. Parents are allowing their children to live at home; as people live longer there is less hurry to start a family and career; and more people are entering higher education without a clear purpose.

The last reason is in part due to one of the most significant shifts - there are fewer job opportunities.

Kei said some of Japan's unskilled work was being outsourced to countries like China or Vietnam, and that corporate Japan was hiring fewer new recruits instead of cutting established staff.

"They (Neet) cannot step into society again because they're afraid of people and lack confidence. They don't need to get into society again because of their parents," Kei said.

What exacerbates their problem, says Yuji Genda, the author of a book on Neet, is their dislocation from a broad social spectrum.

"I have never met a Neet who doesn't want to work. My impression is that they want to work too much. They think about what is the goal or concept of work too much. They are very serious."

He said Neet had no real understanding of the world, for which he blamed shrinking social networks.

"There are lots of kids who have never talked to adults, apart from parents and teachers."

As Japan emerges from its decade of economic upheaval, young people lack support at a time when they need it most.

Society is becoming more polarised as economic changes force it to be more competitive. Those with confidence and skills may be able to forge their own way, but others who are not so fortunate have a tough time ahead.

July 11, 2005 at 10:03 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan steps up security measures

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Japan steps up security measures

Japan has stepped up security around its nuclear plants and on its rail and subway networks following the attacks in London on Thursday.

Extra measures have been introduced to help protect commuters on lines already subject to stringent checks.

A government spokesman said Japan, which is a G8 nation and has troops stationed in Iraq, was on high alert.

But Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said there were no plans to withdraw Japanese forces from Iraq.

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the Japanese authorities fear that because the capital's metro alone carries as many as six million passengers a day it is particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The new measures include the removal of rubbish bins that had only been recently been re-installed after previous security scares, and more police on duty at major stations.

But security experts say the authorities have their hands tied. Legal limits on surveillance activities make it more difficult to gather detailed intelligence in Japan than in some other countries.

A high-ranking police official is reported to have warned that despite the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway 10 years ago, Japanese people are less wary of terrorism than they need to be.

Unless the public becomes more vigilant, he said, it will be impossible to prevent a terrorist attack.

Commitment remains

A previously unknown group said it carried out the blasts as revenge for the "massacres" Britain was committing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some 500 Japanese troops are currently in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa.

But the attacks and Japan's operation in Iraq "should not be directly linked", Mr Koizumi said, speaking at the G8 summit in Gleneagles.

He did stress the need for Japan to take steps to prevent attacks on its own soil.

"No country can say that there is no possibility. I think we need to continue to take sufficient steps against terrorism. You cannot tell when or where it could happen," Mr Koizumi said, the Reuters news agency reported.

In another measure, Japan issued a travel warning to its citizens in London, urging them to avoid central London.

South Korea, the other key Asian member of the US-led coalition with troops in Iraq, said the London bombings were "cruel and inhumane crimes".

"Our government declares an intention once again to work actively together with the international community to root out terrorism," it said in a statement, the AFP news agency reported.

July 8, 2005 at 03:11 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

North Koreans Say They Hold Nuclear Arms

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > North Koreans Say They Hold Nuclear Arms

By JAMES BROOKE and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 11, 2005

TOKYO, Feb. 10 - North Korea declared publicly on Thursday for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons and would refuse to return to disarmament talks. That left China, the United States and its allies to debate whether diplomacy could still persuade the North Koreans to give up the nuclear option.

American officials played down the importance of the declaration, while acknowledging that they were surprised by the announcement; they and Asian officials had believed North Korea was about to return to the negotiating table after a hiatus of eight months.

The officials said American intelligence agencies had for years worked on the assumption that the North probably possessed nuclear weapons. Just last week, two White House officials traveled to Asia with assessments that North Korea's arsenal had probably enlarged and with evidence that the country had probably sold partly processed nuclear fuel on the black market.

In Washington, intelligence officials were scanning satellite imagery for any evidence that North Korea might be preparing a nuclear test, but so far have seen none, officials said.

Five months ago, senior Bush administration officials warned that they suspected that North Korea might be preparing a test ahead of the American presidential election; the activity they had detected slowed soon after Washington's disclosure, and China, Russia, Britain and the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, all called on North Korea to re-engage with the negotiations.

In Luxembourg on Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, winding up a tour of Europe and the Middle East, called the North Korean announcement "an unfortunate move, most especially probably for the people of North Korea, because it only deepens the North Korean isolation from the rest of the international community."

But the administration's message seemed mixed. While Ms. Rice and the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the United States would simply follow the same course of trying to lure the North back into talks, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld gave public voice to the administration's growing concern.

"One has to worry about weapons of that power in the hands of leadership of that nature," he said in Nice, France. "I don't think that anyone would characterize the leadership in that country as being restrained."

Several current and former administration officials, declining to speak for attribution, said the announcement would be very likely to bolster some arguments in the administration that Washington should press to cut off North Korea's remaining trade and financial flows, in hopes of squeezing the country and perhaps destabilizing the government of President Kim Jong Il.

Vice President Dick Cheney "has always argued that 'time is not on our side,' " said one former senior official who argued for deepened engagement with North Korea. "Kim's just made life easier for the hard-liners."

In Beijing - where the negotiations have taken place and the Chinese leadership has used the talks to enter a new diplomatic role in the world - the government gently urged North Korea late Thursday night to come back to the table. But the Chinese said nothing, at least in public, about the North's claim to have nuclear weapons, a stance that underlined China's diplomatic predicament.

Chinese leaders have tried for years to find middle ground between the United States and North Korea, not wanting a nuclear neighbor, but also not wanting the North Korean government to collapse, sending out a flood of refugees. They have consistently urged the rest of the world, especially the United States, to show more patience with North Korea.

They had also contended that it was unclear that North Korea had developed nuclear weapons, despite American intelligence that it had.

The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters in Tokyo, "We will have to continue to persuade North Korea that it is to their benefit to scrap nuclear weapons."

In its statement, North Korea specifically attacked Japan for "toeing the U.S. line."

Tokyo has been struggling with mounting popular pressure for economic sanctions against the North. On Tuesday, Mr. Koizumi personally received a petition calling for sanctions, signed by five million people.

In the past, North Korea has publicly boasted that it possesses an unspecified "deterrent force" and, on the sidelines of six-nation negotiations, warned American officials that it had nuclear capability.

But it had stopped short of a formal announcement that its nuclear fuel had been placed into weapons, perhaps because retaining ambiguity on the point helped China. The announcement from North Korea was clear, however. It said it had "manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's undisguised policy to isolate and stifle" it, and that it would "bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal."

The statement said