Category: Japan

Considering how close Prime Minister Abe is with President Trump, this could be a sign that the U.S. has a deal in the works that the Japanese want to be part of:

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday he wants to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even though he keeps testing missiles. At the same time, Abe gave a cold shoulder to South Korea amid tensions over wartime history.

In a policy speech opening the parliamentary session, Abe said he will take any chance to meet Kim.

“I’m determined to face Chairman Kim Jong Un, without attaching any preconditions,” Abe said, after changing his policy earlier this year. “Based on a level-headed analysis, I will act decisively so that I won’t miss any chance.”

Abe used to say he would meet Kim only when there is progress on denuclearization and the decades-old issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea. But he changed his tune after other regional leaders, including those in China, South Korea and Russia, choose to meet Kim.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

The Japanese government is trying to get in front of the claim that radiation from the Fukushima disaster is impacting South Korea:

Japan’s embassy in South Korea has begun posting the daily radiation levels of Fukushima and Seoul after new questions about the lingering effects of the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The embassy website said the information reflects that “interest in radiation levels in Japan has recently been increasing, particularly in South Korea”.

The move comes amid worsening ties between Japan and South Korea over a long-running disagreement about Japanese use of forced labour in South Korea during World War II.

The two countries have taken retaliatory trade measures against each other, and South Korea has tightened radiation checks on Japanese food imports.

The readings show levels in three Japanese cities are almost the same as in major cities outside of Japan, including Seoul, the embassy says.

“The Japanese government hopes the South Korean people’s understanding about Japan’s radiation levels will deepen as we continue to provide accurate information based on scientific evidence and explain it fully with clarity,” it says in Japanese and Korean on the site.

AFP

You can read more at the link, but the Japanese can post whatever accurate information they want and it is not going to matter. This is clearly retaliation against the export controls that Japan has put on South Korea for equally dubious reasons.

Latest polls: South Koreans are more wary of Japan than of North Korea. Meanwhile, 80% of respondents trust US. pic.twitter.com/R9Rv0hcpOg

— William Kim 김영권 (@NKMESSENGER) September 25, 2019

Here is the latest on the South Korea-Japan spat:

Japan did not ask South Korea for intelligence on North Korea’s recent launch of two “unidentified projectiles” after Seoul ended its military information sharing pact with Tokyo. 

Political analysts in Seoul said Sunday the key motivation behind the silence was because it did not want to be viewed as seeking help to acquire classified information after the termination of the pact, commonly known as GSOMIA, Aug. 22.

However Tokyo seems fully capable of monitoring North Korea’s military activities in cooperation with the United States and does not need to work with South Korea, they added. 

Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) and Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) have yet to finalize their assessment of the projectiles’ maximum altitude and speed ― two key pieces of information when analyzing the specifications of North Korean missiles or projectiles.

“I think Japan is curious to know about North Korean projectiles last week but does not want to appear to be begging for help from the South,” Shin In-kyun, president of the Korea Defense Network said. “This is why Japan has not asked for related information on the projectiles. It is as simple as that.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but maybe the Japanese are not bother to ask the ROK because they already received their intelligence information from the United States?

The Japanese are apparently letting the North Korean authorities push them around in their own EEZ:

A North Korean government vessel with an armed crew threatened a Fisheries Agency’s patrol ship in the Sea of Japan in late August, prompting Japanese fishing boats operating in the area to flee, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Stars & Stripes

It will be interesting to see how the IOC rules on the “Rising Sun” flag at next year’s Olympics:

South Korea has formally asked the International Olympic Committee to ban the Japanese “rising sun” flag at next year’s Tokyo Games, calling it a symbol of Japan’s brutal wartime past and comparing it with the Nazi swastika.

South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Wednesday said it sent a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach expressing “deep disappointment and concern” over Japanese plans to allow the flag in stadiums and other facilities during the 2020 Olympics.

South Korean Olympic officials last month urged the local organizing committee to ban the flag, but Tokyo organizers responded by saying it was widely used in Japan, was not considered a political statement and “it is not viewed as a prohibited item.”

The flag, portraying a red sun with 16 rays extending outward, is resented by many South Koreans, who still harbor animosity over Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is another area impacted by the current trade dispute between Korea and Japan, the hiring of South Koreans in Japan:

Song Min-su, a Japanese major in his final year at Hannam University, south of Seoul, has watched in dismay as a dispute between South Korea and Japan over wartime forced labor has spiraled into a damaging political and economic row.

Song, 25, has been pursuing his dream of working in Japan. With historic labor shortages in Japan, he had been confident he would avoid the tough job search many of his peers faced at home in South Korea, where youth unemployment is growing.

But curbs in Japan on the exports of high-tech materials to South Korea have escalated a bitter diplomatic feud between the neighbors, sparking boycotts that have hit the sales of Japanese cars, beer and other goods in South Korea, as well as travel to Japan.

“It will not only get harder to find a job in Japan, but the current sentiment will also make things more difficult to find a job in Korea with the use of my Japanese major,” Song said.

South Korea’s relations with former colonial ruler Japan have long been testy, with Tokyo having cited a dispute over court rulings related to forced wartime labor during World War II as a factor that led to tighter export controls implemented in July.

South Korea responded by stripping Japan of favored trading nation status and scrapping an intelligence-sharing pact.

The dispute has derailed a surge in the hiring of highly educated South Korean graduates by Japanese companies in recent years, forcing job seekers, employment consultants and the Seoul government to rethink Japan as a place to work. (………..)

With unemployment at a 26-year-low, Japan was the most popular overseas place to work for Koreans in 2014 and 2016-2018, figures from Human Resources Development Service of Korea show. Japan was the destination for nearly one-third of 5,783 South Korean graduates who found jobs overseas last year under government programs, more than triple the number seen in 2013.

But last month, the Labor Ministry canceled a job fair focused on Japan and Southeast Asia for late September that would have been the largest organized by the government, blaming the strained ties.

Another job expo held by the Korea-Japan Cooperation Foundation for Industry and Technology in mid-July, also with a focus on jobs in Japan, received 20 percent fewer participants than its previous fairs, an official said.

South Korea’s Labor Ministry is planning the second of its biannual global job fairs in November, but instead of focusing on jobs in Japan, as it did last year, it plans to broaden the list of countries.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link, but with already high youth unemployment in South Korea, it seems like the Korean government would rather have people unemployed than working in Japan.

Notice how the family members of U.S. POW’s used as forced laborers in Japan are not launching lawsuits, demanding compensation, and wanting normalization treaties with Japan thrown away:

The daughter of a Marine Corps veteran got an apology from Mitsubishi Materials Corp. during a visit Wednesday to the site of a mine where the veteran worked as a prisoner during World War II.

George Burlage, a member of the 4th Marine Regiment, was captured on Corregidor in May 1942 and spent time in prisoner of war camps in the Philippines and Taiwan before traveling to Japan in a “hell ship” prisoner transport.

The Visalia, Calif., native ended the war working at a lead and zinc mine operated by Mitsubishi Mining in northeast Japan, according to his biography provided by the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

This week, his daughter Georgianne Burlage, 64, of Denton, Texas, traveled to her dad’s old POW camp, now a tourist attraction called Hosokura Mine Park in Sendai, as part of a trip for eight children of American POWs arranged by the Japanese government.

Some 27,000 U.S. troops were captured by Japan during the war and suffered in hellacious conditions at the hands of their Japanese captors: torture, starvation, disease, exposure and the continual deaths of their brothers in arms. About 40% percent of the POWs perished — 1,115 of them after being sent to Japan to work as forced laborers at more than 100 camps run by approximately 60 companies. (………)

“Officials from Mitsubishi met us and formally apologized to me for what happened to my father,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “That meant a lot to me. They were very gracious.” (…….)

Despite his ordeal, her father hadn’t expressed animosity toward the Japanese people and remained philosophical about his time in captivity, she said.

“They were mistreated but he always said it was 40 months of his life. He didn’t let it ruin the rest of his life,” she said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on Japan’s other island dispute:

Japan plans to bolster defenses around its disputed southern island chain by creating a specialized police force that will respond to any incursions in the East China Sea.

The news was first reported Monday by Japan public broadcaster NHK, which cited police sources. The Okinawa-based law enforcement unit will be trained in border security tactics and deployed in the next Japanese fiscal year, which begins in April.

The move marks the first time Japanese police will be called to respond to territorial incursions near the Senkaku islands. The uninhabited, resource-rich chain between Okinawa and Taiwan are controlled by Japan but claimed by Taiwan and China, which refers to them as Diaoyu. (…….)

“The National Police Agency believes that there should be some police expertise to respond to [incursions] and they decided to place a unit in Okinawa,” the report said. “The [unit’s] members will be carrying sub-machine guns and are highly trained in case the trespassers are armed.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.