Because the US and UN sanctions have effectively hamstrung South Korean economic cooperative initiatives with North Korea while the US assumed a hardline maximum pressure posture after the US- North Korean summit in Singapore. The Moon government now finds itself characterized by North Korea as the proverbial quisling state under the boot of the foreign occupier. Without ability to demonstrate the freedom of action to materially cooperate with North Korea beyond miltary initiatives around the dmz and maritime northern limit lines and some cultural and sports interactions the South appears incapable of escaping the limits imposed by US hardliners. When South Korea set up a liaison office in Kaesong North Korea simply for diplomatic purposes critics accused the Moon administration of violating sanctions. US officials said South Korea was getting too far out in front of the US and that there should be “no daylight” between Seoul and Washington with respect to North Korea. The US position is basically no sanctions relief until final full verifiable denuclearization. The US administration does not agree with a step by step process of action for action to build trust on the basis of reciprocity. Some have criticized the US approach as an unrealistic “all or nothing” approach causing the negotiations to deadlock such as occured at the Hanoi summit. The practical effect of the US negotiating posture has severely restricted South Korea's freedom to offer incentives to North Korea to engage in further dialogue with itself or the US.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Sunday, August 25, 2019
The US trivializes the South Korea - Japan dispute as a negotiating technique.
White House indifference to the South Korea - Japan dispute is part of the transactional/coercive technique of this administration. The White House loathes the progressive Moon Jae In democratic party government of South Korea. The US defense interests want to increase South Korean payments to the US for defense costs by a factor of five, increase ROK commitments to out of area Indo-Pacific operations; deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles and more THAAD launchers in South Korea; and have South Korea buy into an integrated Aegis air defense system in the region with US and Japanese forces. Unlikely to get much cooperation on these issues from the progressive Moon government, weakening and destabilizing the Moon administration in tacit alliance with the right wing "make Japan great again" Abe government is the chosen path.
It is interesting that US "experts" refer to the situation as "spat" and "tit for tat," trivializing the dispute. The South Korean perspective that they will no longer tolerate Japanese interference in internal South Korean affairs facilitated by prior South Korean right wing dictatorships and their progeny no matter what the US demands.
It is interesting that US "experts" refer to the situation as "spat" and "tit for tat," trivializing the dispute. The South Korean perspective that they will no longer tolerate Japanese interference in internal South Korean affairs facilitated by prior South Korean right wing dictatorships and their progeny no matter what the US demands.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Attend the 2020 Tokyo Olympics? No Thank you.
Abe says radioactivity from Fukishima nuclear disaster is completely contained. Who believes that? Are people really going to eat and drink in Tokyo? One Japanese cabinet minister from the LDP was recently heard to say, "Thank god, one cannot see radiation." The Korean Olympic team (if it attends) will bring its own independent supply of food and water. A word of advice, don't eat the kim (seaweed) or the delicious kim bab, rice rolled in seaweed with other foods. Don't eat the sushi. In fact, don't go at all. All Japanese food imports to South Korea from the Fukishima region are now subject to screening for radioactive contamination. Japan challenged the restriction before the WTO. They lost. There is a reason.
A significant portion of the Olympic games, including men’s baseball and women’s softball and the Olympic torch run, as well as the soccer training facility, will occur on land that the government of Japan has declared to be part of a “nuclear emergency”. This means that athletes and civilians will legally be exposed to allowable radiation levels that are 20 times higher than levels that exist at other athletic facilities on any other continent. Therefore, according to the National Academy of Science’s Linear No Threshold (LNT) radiation risk assessment, the athlete’s risk of radiation related maladies has also increased 20 times higher than if they stayed home.*
*Atomic Balm Part 2: The Run For Your Life Tokyo Olympics
March 08, 2019
Written by Arnie Gundersen
https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/atomic-balm-part-2-the-run-for-your-life-tokyo-olympics
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Coming to Terms with Japanese Imperialism- Then and Now
There is a deep fault line in modern Korean history beginning in the late 19th Century with the collapse of the Chosun dynasty. Japan exploited late Chosun weakness invading the peninsula on various pretexts and subjecting Korea to Japan's military dominance for economic exploitation. This commenced in earnest in 1894, not 1910, as is often alleged in western sources. The fundamental fault line that developed and exists to this day is the divide between those Koreans who resisted Japanese military, political and economic domination of the peninsula, and those Koreans who facilitated and profited from it.
Syngman Rhee was essentially a US proxy installed as the initial dictator of a "liberated" South Korea. He had previously lost his legitimacy as representative of the independence movement and provisional government of Korea because of his corruption. But he had the support of the US occupation government as a US trained English speaking politician and that was all that was needed. Ultimately, he was forced to rely on the class of former Japanese colonial collaborators in South Korea for government administration and domestic political support, so he protected them from political and criminal accountability at the hands of the independence movement. Consequently, very few of the thousands of collaborators who committed criminal acts against the Korean people during the Japanese colonial and wartime rule were ever prosecuted and retained considerable political power and influence for years to come.
Rhee's successor, was the military dictator Park Chung Hee. Park had been a former Japanese Imperial Army officer and spy for the Japanese colonial administration of Manchukuo before the liberation. Shinzo Abe's grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, had been a major figure in the governance of Manchukuo, who directed slave labor operations for economic exploitation by Japanese interests. The details of Park's activities as a Japanese trained imperial officer during this period of collaboration are not clear. His history shows he switched national allegiances and political stripes more than once, to advance himself. His character reminds one of the deadly and treacherous collaborator, "goblin," depicted in historical drama, Noktu Flower, concerning the earlier Tonghak period. The characters formed necessarily a product of their respective tumultuous and brutal times.
(Source- JTBC News 8.6) Prime Minister Abe: President Park Geun Hye's father, President Park Chung Hee, was a close friend of my grandfather. It would not be an exaggeration to say that President Park Chung Hee was the friendliest president to Japan. Title of program is war crimes stained South Korea- Japan Cooperation Committee influence on South Korean politics; Arising out of the Manchurian Army- Key war crimes enterprise board executive- pivotal role.
Lately, it is said that Abe's family legacy as the political heir of Kishi Nobusuke is not the root of the current Japanese Korean dispute. This contention couldn't be more wrong. The relationship is pivotal to Japanese corporations involved in the colonial and wartime exploitation of Korea and their later central influence over Japanese- South Korean relations. After Kishi finished his term as prime minister of post war Japan, he played a key role in the negotiations leading to the 1965 Agreement with the Park regime "normalizing" relations with South Korea. This was not an arms length agreement but rather Kishi as the defacto representative of Japanese industrial interests in Korea, the old imperial order, negotiating with Manchukuo's former military agent for Japanese interests in the conquered territories, namely Park Chung Hee. Abe coyly admitted at a meeting of the Japanese Korean Cooperation Committee in 2013, the same organization that Kisi headed 50 years earlier when it first convened in 1963, that Kisi and Park were "close friends." In fact, Japanese corporate interests provided, by far, the majority of financial support to Park's political party in the years leading up to the 1965 agreement.
The 1965 agreement drafted by the committee didn't settle individual Korean claims against Japanese corporations. The legal basis for this view was expressed on July 30, on JTBC by Hosaka Fuji, professor at Sejong University. He describes the issue in terms of the the difference between claims based on contract and property principles for indemnity, which were settled by the agreement from those individual claims for injury compensation which were not. He asserted that the 1965 Agreement did not extinguish private personal injury claims based upon criminal behavior by Japanese during the colonial and wartime periods. Other Japanese and Korean experts have expressed this same view. The professor went on to describe the position of the Abe government as a fraud on the international community as the legal principles had previously been recognized by the Japanese government.
(Source-JTBC News 7.30) Hosaka Fuji, Sejong University professor: The South Korea- Japan Claims Settlement Agreement ended claims for indemnity. Claims for injury compensation still remain.
The Japanese contention today is that such claims aren't lawful under "international law" because of the 1965 Agreement. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents contemporaneous to the agreement show this not to be the case:
*Japanese document confirms individual right to recourse in spite of Korea-Japan Agreement of 1965, March 15, 2010
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/410123.html
Also:
*Individual Claims Not Covered by 1965 Treaty: Documents
Posted March. 15, 2010 09:29,
http://www.donga.com/en/List/article/all/20100315/264613/1/Individual-Claims-Not-Covered-by-1965-Treaty-Documents
(Source- JTBC News 8.6) Class A war criminal awarded by South Korean government. In 1970, Kisi was awarded the top national award in diplomacy by South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, the Distinguished Order of Diplomatic Service. Park was a former graduate of Japanese military schools and a former military officer and agent of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchukuo.
Most of the money in the "settlement" were loans at relatively high rates of interest. Most of what was characterized as "aid" and "approaching settlement for claims," was not delivered in funds but rather goods in kind and services in kind from the very corporations who had committed the slave labor crimes during the colonial and wartime period. The most significant portion of the settlement went to Pohang Steel. It was not settlement for injuries due to slave labor war crimes against Koreans. According to the JTBC report, arrangements for Korean projects built by Japanese corporations with loans were accompanied by bribes, kickbacks and other corruption. A JTBC expert commentator said that the primary contracts a went to Japanese corporations and that prices for goods and services were over charged. This was the so called "black fog." The committee operated primarily as a private organization run through personal connections and there was little transparency, supervision or accounting for their expenditures.
(Source- JTBC News 8.5) "Aid," the disappearing 800 million dollars, tracking how it was used.
The tainted history of Park Chung Hee, is camouflaged by the myth about his status as father of the economic miracle of South Korea. Other administrations appeared to have obscured the record of collaboration and toadying to Japanese interests out of political expediency. The reactionary right wing parties that made Park's daughter president after South Korea came out into the daylight of legitimate representative government had to conceal the pro-Japanese collaboration that had brought her family power and political influence. When the Korean courts began adjudication of litigation against Japanese corporations responsible for slave labor war crimes, she obligingly, at the request of the Japanese government led by Abe, illegally interfered in the administration of justice by the constitutionally separate judicial branch. When she was removed from power for such practices and other corruption, the proper and lawful adjudication of the slave labor claims went forward. So the "unjustified" claims against Japan aren't the result of Moon Jae In, they are the result of the rule of law permitted to go forward.
As Abe comes forward with disingenuous arguments, claiming the 1965 Agreement forecloses such claims by individual South Koreans against war crime legacy Japanese corporations, the US pretends not to understand the deeply rooted nature of the problem. William Underwood has documented the long history of evasion, obstruction, collusion and denial by the offending Japanese corporations and the Japanese government in precluding these claims. The rift was caused by the dictators in South Korea the US wholeheartedly supported, their successor administrations, and the US supported LDP party in Japan, founded, in part, by war criminal and Nazi sympathizer, Kishi Nobusuke, with the support of the CIA. It is clear from the history of the agreement that private claims for compensation due to forced labor war crimes are not foreclosed by the agreement as a matter of fact.* The agreement did not settle those claims but forestalled the issue indefinitely as a practical matter by entering an agreement with a compliant pro-Japanese dictator in South Korea.
*[Fact check] S. Korean individuals have the right to claim compensation from Japan
Posted on : Aug.7,2019 16:57 KST Modified on : Aug.7,2019 16:57 KST
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/904882.html
(Source- JTBC News 8.6) Kishi Nobusuke, South Korea- Japan Cooperation Committee President (1963): "No person here thinks of this as a war of invasion." This is the revisionist mythology of Shoin school imperialists and advocates of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The US military posture in East Asia would be reduced to something similar to its pre-WWII status without Japan's support and military infrastructure. That is inconsistent with the so called "pivot to Asia" and the looming US disputes with China. Abe knows this and is taking an aggressive, if not outright belligerent stance, in attempt to return South Korea to a quisling status, as it was under the Korean right wing dictators and subsequent transitional administrations. For this reason the US pretends not to know why its allies can't get along, or the very serious flaws at the heart of the US alliance system in Asia, that were present at its birth, but actively concealed from public view. At this time in history, when democracy has seen the light of day of in South Korea, these flaws are not just historical grievances but relate to the very essence of what kind of leader Abe really is, and what kind of party the LDP is. The potential dangers of yielding to Abe-LDP initiatives, such as removing constitutional limits on Japanese military operations, and conducting a devastating trade war with South Korea, rival those of American complicity in Japanese imperialism at the dawn of the 20th Century.
Syngman Rhee was essentially a US proxy installed as the initial dictator of a "liberated" South Korea. He had previously lost his legitimacy as representative of the independence movement and provisional government of Korea because of his corruption. But he had the support of the US occupation government as a US trained English speaking politician and that was all that was needed. Ultimately, he was forced to rely on the class of former Japanese colonial collaborators in South Korea for government administration and domestic political support, so he protected them from political and criminal accountability at the hands of the independence movement. Consequently, very few of the thousands of collaborators who committed criminal acts against the Korean people during the Japanese colonial and wartime rule were ever prosecuted and retained considerable political power and influence for years to come.
Rhee's successor, was the military dictator Park Chung Hee. Park had been a former Japanese Imperial Army officer and spy for the Japanese colonial administration of Manchukuo before the liberation. Shinzo Abe's grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, had been a major figure in the governance of Manchukuo, who directed slave labor operations for economic exploitation by Japanese interests. The details of Park's activities as a Japanese trained imperial officer during this period of collaboration are not clear. His history shows he switched national allegiances and political stripes more than once, to advance himself. His character reminds one of the deadly and treacherous collaborator, "goblin," depicted in historical drama, Noktu Flower, concerning the earlier Tonghak period. The characters formed necessarily a product of their respective tumultuous and brutal times.
Lately, it is said that Abe's family legacy as the political heir of Kishi Nobusuke is not the root of the current Japanese Korean dispute. This contention couldn't be more wrong. The relationship is pivotal to Japanese corporations involved in the colonial and wartime exploitation of Korea and their later central influence over Japanese- South Korean relations. After Kishi finished his term as prime minister of post war Japan, he played a key role in the negotiations leading to the 1965 Agreement with the Park regime "normalizing" relations with South Korea. This was not an arms length agreement but rather Kishi as the defacto representative of Japanese industrial interests in Korea, the old imperial order, negotiating with Manchukuo's former military agent for Japanese interests in the conquered territories, namely Park Chung Hee. Abe coyly admitted at a meeting of the Japanese Korean Cooperation Committee in 2013, the same organization that Kisi headed 50 years earlier when it first convened in 1963, that Kisi and Park were "close friends." In fact, Japanese corporate interests provided, by far, the majority of financial support to Park's political party in the years leading up to the 1965 agreement.
The 1965 agreement drafted by the committee didn't settle individual Korean claims against Japanese corporations. The legal basis for this view was expressed on July 30, on JTBC by Hosaka Fuji, professor at Sejong University. He describes the issue in terms of the the difference between claims based on contract and property principles for indemnity, which were settled by the agreement from those individual claims for injury compensation which were not. He asserted that the 1965 Agreement did not extinguish private personal injury claims based upon criminal behavior by Japanese during the colonial and wartime periods. Other Japanese and Korean experts have expressed this same view. The professor went on to describe the position of the Abe government as a fraud on the international community as the legal principles had previously been recognized by the Japanese government.
The Japanese contention today is that such claims aren't lawful under "international law" because of the 1965 Agreement. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents contemporaneous to the agreement show this not to be the case:
The text of the 1965 agreement says in Article 2, “The High Contracting Parties confirm that the issues concerning property, rights, and interests of the two High Contracting Parties and their peoples (including juridical persons) and the claims between the High Contracting Parties and between their peoples, including those stipulated in Article IV(a) of the Peace Agreement with Japan signed at the city of San Francisco on September 8, 1951, have been settled completely and finalized.” The Korean government received through the agreement $300 million in grants, $200 million in loans and $300 million in private loans. Regarding the interpretation of Article 2, the Japanese government maintained the attitude through the 1990s that the individual right to recourse still existed. Since then, Tokyo has been denying that stance. Recently, Japanese courts have also been dismissing claims for damages from victims, arguing that the agreement settled all claims.*
*Japanese document confirms individual right to recourse in spite of Korea-Japan Agreement of 1965, March 15, 2010
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/410123.html
Also:
The Japanese Foreign Ministry prepared an internal document in 1965 saying, “Though a treaty was signed, an individual’s right to seek damages is a separate issue.”
...The document was titled “The legal meaning of the people’s rights and the waiver of the rights to seek damages under the peace treaty.”
“When an individual’s property rights (private rights) in a country is infringed upon by another country, the former country holds the right to seek damages from the latter country, but this right is legally separate from the individual’s own right to seek damages,” the document said.*
*Individual Claims Not Covered by 1965 Treaty: Documents
Posted March. 15, 2010 09:29,
http://www.donga.com/en/List/article/all/20100315/264613/1/Individual-Claims-Not-Covered-by-1965-Treaty-Documents
Most of the money in the "settlement" were loans at relatively high rates of interest. Most of what was characterized as "aid" and "approaching settlement for claims," was not delivered in funds but rather goods in kind and services in kind from the very corporations who had committed the slave labor crimes during the colonial and wartime period. The most significant portion of the settlement went to Pohang Steel. It was not settlement for injuries due to slave labor war crimes against Koreans. According to the JTBC report, arrangements for Korean projects built by Japanese corporations with loans were accompanied by bribes, kickbacks and other corruption. A JTBC expert commentator said that the primary contracts a went to Japanese corporations and that prices for goods and services were over charged. This was the so called "black fog." The committee operated primarily as a private organization run through personal connections and there was little transparency, supervision or accounting for their expenditures.
The tainted history of Park Chung Hee, is camouflaged by the myth about his status as father of the economic miracle of South Korea. Other administrations appeared to have obscured the record of collaboration and toadying to Japanese interests out of political expediency. The reactionary right wing parties that made Park's daughter president after South Korea came out into the daylight of legitimate representative government had to conceal the pro-Japanese collaboration that had brought her family power and political influence. When the Korean courts began adjudication of litigation against Japanese corporations responsible for slave labor war crimes, she obligingly, at the request of the Japanese government led by Abe, illegally interfered in the administration of justice by the constitutionally separate judicial branch. When she was removed from power for such practices and other corruption, the proper and lawful adjudication of the slave labor claims went forward. So the "unjustified" claims against Japan aren't the result of Moon Jae In, they are the result of the rule of law permitted to go forward.
As Abe comes forward with disingenuous arguments, claiming the 1965 Agreement forecloses such claims by individual South Koreans against war crime legacy Japanese corporations, the US pretends not to understand the deeply rooted nature of the problem. William Underwood has documented the long history of evasion, obstruction, collusion and denial by the offending Japanese corporations and the Japanese government in precluding these claims. The rift was caused by the dictators in South Korea the US wholeheartedly supported, their successor administrations, and the US supported LDP party in Japan, founded, in part, by war criminal and Nazi sympathizer, Kishi Nobusuke, with the support of the CIA. It is clear from the history of the agreement that private claims for compensation due to forced labor war crimes are not foreclosed by the agreement as a matter of fact.* The agreement did not settle those claims but forestalled the issue indefinitely as a practical matter by entering an agreement with a compliant pro-Japanese dictator in South Korea.
*[Fact check] S. Korean individuals have the right to claim compensation from Japan
Posted on : Aug.7,2019 16:57 KST Modified on : Aug.7,2019 16:57 KST
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/904882.html
The US military posture in East Asia would be reduced to something similar to its pre-WWII status without Japan's support and military infrastructure. That is inconsistent with the so called "pivot to Asia" and the looming US disputes with China. Abe knows this and is taking an aggressive, if not outright belligerent stance, in attempt to return South Korea to a quisling status, as it was under the Korean right wing dictators and subsequent transitional administrations. For this reason the US pretends not to know why its allies can't get along, or the very serious flaws at the heart of the US alliance system in Asia, that were present at its birth, but actively concealed from public view. At this time in history, when democracy has seen the light of day of in South Korea, these flaws are not just historical grievances but relate to the very essence of what kind of leader Abe really is, and what kind of party the LDP is. The potential dangers of yielding to Abe-LDP initiatives, such as removing constitutional limits on Japanese military operations, and conducting a devastating trade war with South Korea, rival those of American complicity in Japanese imperialism at the dawn of the 20th Century.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Sinzo Abe: Making Japan Great Again
Abe, a right wing reactionary, goes rogue to "make Japan great again." The US mistake was letting his class A war criminal grandfather Kisi Nobusuke out of prison to form the LDP party and rehabilitate the Shoin school nutcases that founded the Meiji imperial regime. The US, now desperate about the rise of China, turns a blind eye to Abe's campaign to repeal Article 9 of the Constitution restricting military activities in order to reclaim Japanese hegemony in east Asia. If one wants to understand Abe one must understand his family and political heritage:
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
At the dawn of the 20th Century Theodore Roosevelt was led down the primrose path of fantasies about a "democratic Japan" by Baron Kentaro Kaneko which led to the Japanese conquest of Asia and ultimately the catastrophes of WWII. Similarly, Trump is being led down a similar path by Sinzo Abe.
Japan's two small aircraft carriers which it calls destroyers participated in the Talisman Sabre exercises this year demonstrating the capability of it's new amphibious forces to project power. The "destroyers" of the Izumo class over 800 feet long are 27,000 tons loaded displacement making their classification a misrepresentation for political reasons. The two carriers will be modified in the near future to carry F-35b stealth fighters provided by the US.
(Source- KBS 1 History Journal, ep. 199) This vision of a greater imperial Japan as depicted in the graphic was attributed to Yoshida Shoin in the mid 19th Century.
(Source- KBS 1 History Journal, ep. 199) Yoshida Shoin's memorial tablet is stored at the Yasukuni shrine. The shrine commemorates other heroes and patriots of earlier wars and conflicts associated with the Meiji Restoration and the Meiji government. The shrine also commmemorates WW II war criminals, such as Tojo Hideki. Koreans and other victims regard the shrine unfavorably as veneration of the Japanese imperial tradition.
This is from The Diplomat in January 2014:
*https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/china-opens-memorial-honoring-korean-independence-activist/
Generic news reporting routinely dates the Japanese colonization of Korea to annexation in 1910, but Japanese subjugation of Korea more accurately might be said to have begun with the Sino-Japanese War in July 1894, and was basically a conflict over who would dominate Korea. The Japanese assassination of Queen Myeongseong in October 1895, and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905, were just further steps in consolidation of undisputed control of Korea by Japan. Japan's seizure and spurious claim to Dokdo dates from this early period of Japanese military expansion.
Abe's ludicrous statement on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Asia from Japanese imperialism:
Jeff Kingston elaborates on the specious revisionist reasoning of Abe:
* Abe's revisionism and Japan's divided war memories
BY JEFF KINGSTON
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/08/22/commentary/abes-revisionism-japans-divided-war-memories/#.XUjMxFVKi00
Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介 Kishi Nobusuke, 13 November 1896 – 7 August 1987) was a Japanese politician and the 37th Prime Minister of Japan from 25 February 1957 to 12 June 1958, and from then to 19 July 1960. He is the maternal grandfather of Shinzō Abe, twice prime minister in 2006–2007 and 2012–present.
Known for his brutal rule of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in Northeast China, Kishi was called Shōwa no yōkai (昭和の妖怪; "Devil of Shōwa").[2] After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a Class A war crime suspect. However, the U.S. government released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.*
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
At the dawn of the 20th Century Theodore Roosevelt was led down the primrose path of fantasies about a "democratic Japan" by Baron Kentaro Kaneko which led to the Japanese conquest of Asia and ultimately the catastrophes of WWII. Similarly, Trump is being led down a similar path by Sinzo Abe.
Japan's two small aircraft carriers which it calls destroyers participated in the Talisman Sabre exercises this year demonstrating the capability of it's new amphibious forces to project power. The "destroyers" of the Izumo class over 800 feet long are 27,000 tons loaded displacement making their classification a misrepresentation for political reasons. The two carriers will be modified in the near future to carry F-35b stealth fighters provided by the US.
This is from The Diplomat in January 2014:
Japan’s relations with South Korea and China have soured since the Abe administration entered government in late 2012. The Japanese prime minister’s recent visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine was met with protests from its neighbors and even a statement from the U.S. embassy that said that it was “disappointed.” *
*https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/china-opens-memorial-honoring-korean-independence-activist/
Generic news reporting routinely dates the Japanese colonization of Korea to annexation in 1910, but Japanese subjugation of Korea more accurately might be said to have begun with the Sino-Japanese War in July 1894, and was basically a conflict over who would dominate Korea. The Japanese assassination of Queen Myeongseong in October 1895, and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905, were just further steps in consolidation of undisputed control of Korea by Japan. Japan's seizure and spurious claim to Dokdo dates from this early period of Japanese military expansion.
Abe's ludicrous statement on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Asia from Japanese imperialism:
Citing the deaths of more than 3 million Japanese during World War II, and the deprivation that prevailed, Abe asserted: “The peace we enjoy today exists only upon such precious sacrifices. And therein lies the origin of postwar Japan.”
This is the revisionist conceit: that all that carnage in what Abe’s advisory panel termed a “reckless” war was worthwhile because it is the basis for the peace and prosperity now enjoyed by contemporary Japanese.*
Jeff Kingston elaborates on the specious revisionist reasoning of Abe:
Abe is suggesting that the peace enjoyed today came from Japanese aggression in the 1930s and ’40s, and thereby tries to bestow some legitimacy on those actions.
This underhanded justification of war is not necessary to honor the war dead. They died because Japan’s leaders at the time, including Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, launched Japan into this avoidable tragedy. Those leaders held Japanese lives cheap, and they were sacrificed and subjected to awful horrors for an ignominious cause. Dressing this sanguinary rampage up as the bedrock of contemporary Japan is a deplorable deceit. Their deaths were in vain because Japan’s regional rampage that claimed perhaps as many as 20 million Asian lives, and trampled on the dignity and welfare of countless more, was not in service of a noble mission.*
* Abe's revisionism and Japan's divided war memories
BY JEFF KINGSTON
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/08/22/commentary/abes-revisionism-japans-divided-war-memories/#.XUjMxFVKi00
Friday, August 2, 2019
DPRK: New Generation of Missile Threats v. US Maximum Pressure
There has been a notable lack of consistency in the US approach to North Korea since the Singapore Summit. There are two basic problems. The first is the domestic political problem inside the US government and political society represented by the usual domestic military interests, traditional anti-North Korean lobby groups and think tanks, and the strong political opposition to Donald Trump. The Trump administration appears incapable of carrying out an easing policy toward North Korea because of these opposed interests, not even in the tiniest material steps. Without those steps there can be no trust building leading to any kind of denuclearization or convergence of political interests with the traditional cold war era enemy, North Korea. The constellation of pro-military interests fostered under the post war system in the far east will not release its grip on US policy.
The second problem is that the Trump administration’s public stance of normalizing relations with North Korea in an effort to bring about denuclearization may be seen as a facade, perhaps better characterized as a deception plan, to mask the hybrid warfare (maximum pressure) strategy that it believes can achieve a strategic victory against North Korea and China, by bringing the regime down by economic, psychological, and covert means. Meanwhile, Japan seeing the far off prospect of a unified Korea, however achieved, as a political, economic and military threat, is carrying a policy aimed at bringing down the Moon administration and replacing it with a more pliable anti-communist and pro-Japanese satellite. Abe is moving within the space created by the almost pathological fear of rising Chinese power compelling the US policy establishment to ignore, if not encourage, the militarism implied in Abe’s drive to eliminate Article 9 constitutional limits on Japanese military operations. Abe is, to coin a phrase, going to “make Japan great again.” The anti-Korean impetus for this drive was evident since Abe came to power in 2012. It broke out into the open militarily during the prior maritime patrol incidents between Japanese military patrol aircraft and South Korean surface warships in the East Sea/ Sea of Japan in December 2018 and January 2019.
The missile tests by North Korea since May 2019, show that North Korea sees right through American intentions. Because of the general lack of public understanding and institutional bias in media and defense related analysis, the context of the otherwise inexplicably provocative launches is missed.
Pompeo made a statement which was televised on VOA Korea July 29, that sanctions would be maintained until final full denuclearization. This position is a compelling reason why there won’t be any meaningful negotiations. Pompeo facetiously maintained that this was the position of the UN, as if the opinion of the permanent security council members, China and Russia were irrelevant. If there were significant steps taken toward dismantlement of nuclear facilities in North Korea, the three largest permanent members of the security council could easily get approval for any partial sanctions relief. The sanctions relief commonly believed to be possible is the easing of sanctions for South Korean- North Korean economic cooperation at Kaseong joint industrial region and Gumgangsan resort.
As shown in the graphic above there is a context to the recent spate of missile launches by North Korea. The first is the introduction of F-35 stealth fighters to the South Korean Air Force in late March at Cheonju Air Base, 140 km south of Seoul. At the same time Japan achieved operational capability of its first F-35 squadron. South Korea will receive 40 F-35s and Japan is expected to receive 157 F-35s. After the first two North Korean launches on July 25th, South Korean analysts immediately noted the connection and surmised that the new Iskander type short range ballistic missile could reach the F-35 base in South Korea. Intercepting the weapon is problematic with its eccentric terminal flight phase. If the missile flies between 30 and 40 km in altitude this is another problem as some analysts maintain that there was an envelope gap between Patriot 3 and THAAD systems at these altitudes. One can assume that the latter problems could be resolved in due course. US and CFC authorities asserted readiness was not affected. There was a similar discussion of these issues after the May 2019 missile launches in North Korea.
Another issue is the successful Arrow Three intercept test in Alaska on July 28th. When Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin visited South Korea July 14, there had been some suggestion publicly, at least on Channel A News in South Korea, that there may have been discussion of Arrow 3 acquisition by South Korea. South Korea already has the Green Pine radar associated with the Arrow air defense system.
The latest launch, August 2, of an unknown type of short range missile by North Korea may have been hypersonic. The South Korean Channel A News Top Ten broadcast today reported that the missiles reached 6.9 mach presenting another intercept problem for South Korean missile defense resources. It appears that the intent of North Korea is to demonstrate that a military solution of the North Korean nuclear problem is not at hand and to emphasize that no solution exists outside of negotiations with real substance leading to normalization of relations, and creation of peaceful environment conducive to denuclearization of the peninsula. Both the US strategy of hybrid warfare/ maximum pressure designed to bring North Korea to its knees, and the North Korean asymmetric military response are less than perfect in their designed goals. Each has resulted in creating an instability in the region inducing a regional arms race, most recently manifested in a particularly disturbing new assertion of hegemonic ambition by Japan against South Korea.
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