Tokyo takes a bigger stick to
Pyongyang By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - In step with the United States,
Japan has decided to wield a bigger stick against
North Korea over its missile and nuclear-weapons
programs by imposing additional sanctions on the
reclusive Stalinist state.
The government
of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi decided at a
cabinet meeting on Tuesday to slap financial
sanctions on North Korea. These include banning
withdrawals and overseas remittances from bank
accounts held in Japan by organizations
and
individuals with suspected links to Pyongyang's
development of missiles and weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). The new sanctions take effect
immediately.
Japan's government expected
the sanctions would have "considerable effect" on
North Korea, a spokesman said, adding that the
steps would target about 15 groups considered to
have ties to North Korea's weapons-development
programs.
The decision comes about two
months after the United Nations Security Council
adopted a unanimous resolution condemning North
Korea's volley of missile test launches. The UN
resolution also called on member states to take
measures to prevent transfers of money, as well as
materials and technologies, that could be used to
help Pyongyang produce missiles or WMD.
Japan's decision on Tuesday came on the
eve of an election for president of the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party to choose Koizumi's
successor. The election winner is almost assured
of becoming the next prime minister because the
LDP-led coalition commands a majority of seats in
both houses of the diet, Japan's parliament. Chief
Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe is almost certain to
win the LDP vote on Wednesday and then be elected
the next premier next Tuesday.
"By taking
these measures, we have demonstrated the resolve
of the international community and Japan that is
in line with the UN Security Council resolution,"
Abe said. "I do not know how North Korea will
respond, but I hope North Korea will accept the UN
Security Council resolution in a sincere manner
and respond to various concerns of the
international community."
Abe's hard line
toward Pyongyang, especially over the issue of
past North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens,
has earned him high public popularity in Japan,
giving him a shot at taking the helm of the LDP
and government much earlier than he himself
expected. Some people close to Abe say
half-jokingly that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
made the greatest contribution to his political
fortunes.
Japan, US closer in step The US administration of President George W
Bush is toughening its stance against Pyongyang.
Japan decided to work with the United States as
Pyongyang refuses to return to six-party talks on
its nuclear ambitions.
But many observers
question the effectiveness of unilateral financial
sanctions. Some other key countries with interests
on the Korean Peninsula, especially South Korea,
China and Russia, remain reluctant about pushing
Pyongyang even further, although they were
apparently embarrassed by North Korea's recent
missile launches. Japan and the US have no
diplomatic relationships with North Korea.
Despite being allies, the US and South
Korea find themselves increasingly out of tune on
the issue. The South Korean government of
President Roh Moo-hyun has taken a conciliatory
policy toward Pyongyang. Bush and Roh held talks
at the White House last Thursday, but failed to
hammer out an agreement over exactly how to deal
with North Korea.
Roh told Bush that South
Korea had taken measures such as suspending
shipments of rice, fertilizer and other aid to
North Korea in response to Pyongyang's test-firing
of ballistic missiles in July. "These steps are,
in fact, similar to sanctions in their effect,"
Roh said, giving no inkling of taking any
additional measures.
"This isn't the
appropriate time to consider the possibility of a
failure of the six-party process" or about
imposing sanctions, Roh said. Earlier, Roh went so
far as indicating that he accepted North Korea had
good reason for developing nuclear weapons. The
US-South Korean alliance, forged five decades ago
during the Korean War, has increasingly been
fraying.
Abe also urged China to follow
suit with sanctions as allowed under the UN
resolution. "China expressed its support for the
UN Security Council resolution. I hope China will
take appropriate measures in line with its
domestic laws and ordinances," he said.
However, it is not that there are no
criticisms of the Bush administration's get-tough
approach to North Korea. Some experts, even in the
US, call for the administration to open direct
dialogue with Pyongyang. Among those experts are
former US president Jimmy Carter, who defused the
nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula - at least
temporarily - by visiting Pyongyang in 1994 for
talks with then-leader Kim Il-sung.
Japan's decision to impose financial
sanctions was apparently timed to coincide with
the start of a general debate of the UN General
Assembly's 61st session in New York. Bush is to
address the assembly. His administration plans to
convene a multilateral meeting involving about 10
countries during the session to discuss North
Korea. Japan apparently hopes its Tuesday decision
will help the US in its strenuous diplomatic
efforts to rally international support for more
pressure and sanctions.
The US thinking is
that the bigger the number of countries involved,
the smaller the voices of opposition to anti-North
Korea sanctions will be. Australia also announced
financial sanctions on North Korea on Tuesday.
These moves by the US and Japan could
prompt North Korea to resume its brinkmanship
diplomacy. There are concerns that North Korea
could take such provocative measures as another
volley of missile launches or even a nuclear-bomb
test. Any nuclear test is likely to harden China's
stance toward its longtime ally, as Beijing has
already expressed its opposition to such a test.
Defiant North Korea North Korea
staged a series of missile tests, including a
Taepodong 2, in the early hours of July 5, which
was still July 4, Independence Day, in the US,
sparking an international uproar and raising
regional tensions. The shorter-range missiles are
believed to be Scuds or Rodongs. All these
missiles fell into the Sea of Japan separating
Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
Just hours
later, Japan reacted angrily by banning the
docking of the Mangyongbyon-92, a ferry that
shuttles between Wonson in North Korea and Niigata
in Japan, and which is the main direct link
between the two countries. Japan also imposed a
ban on entry by North Korean government officials.
After 10 days of raucous debate, the UN
Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution
condemning the missile tests and imposing
weapons-related sanctions. Japan led the push for
legally binding sanctions. The resolution also
called on North Korea to return to the six-way
talks.
But North Korea has thumbed its
nose at the resolution by refusing to return to
the talks involving the US, China, Russia, Japan,
and the two Koreas and which have been suspended
since last November.
Pyongyang boycotted
talks then in retaliation over US financial
restrictions blocking the regime's access to
outside banks for its alleged counterfeiting of US
dollars and money-laundering.
Japan's
decision to slap financial sanctions on North
Korea comes on the first anniversary of an
agreement among the six nations, in which
Pyongyang pledged to give up its nuclear programs
in exchange for aid and security guarantees. But
even before the ink had dried, sharp differences
emerged over how to implement the agreement, and
no progress has been made.
Taking
action While accelerating efforts to build
its missile defense system after Pyongyang's July
5 launches, Tokyo has been considering what steps
it could take in line with the July 15 Security
Council resolution.
The 15 organizations -
and one individual - Japan has designated as being
subject to financial sanctions were chosen based
on information from law-enforcement authorities in
various countries, especially the US, and also
from its own findings. The individual and 12 of
the 15 organizations, mostly North Korean trading
houses and financial institutions, have also been
designated by Washington for its own financial
sanctions.
The newly imposed Japanese
sanctions are in accordance with the country's
Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law.
Under the sanctions, withdrawals and
overseas remittances from accounts held in Japan
by designated groups and individuals must be
approved by the authorities. The measure will in
effect freeze assets owned by designated groups
and individuals because the government will not
approve such withdrawals and remittances unless
they prove they are not involved in North Korea's
development of weapons of mass destruction.
The measures also will tighten
identification checks on people making suspicious
transactions. Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki
said the measures called for the investigation of
all Japanese financial institutions engaged in
foreign-exchange operations to ensure that the
remittance restrictions were being properly
implemented.
"We expect the impact of the
financial sanctions will be increased through the
strict implementation of these restrictions,"
Tanigaki said.
Among the groups subject to
the sanctions are Kohas AG, the Korea Kwangsong
Trading Corp, the Korea Complex Equipment Import
Corp, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp,
the Tosong Technology Trading Corp, Tanchon
Commercial Bank and Ponghwa Hospital in Pyongyang.
The individual is Jakob Steiger, 65,
president of Kohas AG, a Swiss company. In March,
the US froze the assets of Kohas and Steiger,
alleging they helped North Korea proliferate
weapons of mass destruction.
At present,
excluding the newly added 15 groups and Steiger,
Japanese financial sanctions imposed in line with
UN resolutions target about 900 organizations and
individuals with links to the former Iraqi regime
of Saddam Hussein and the former Taliban regime in
Afghanistan.
Ratcheting up pressure The Koizumi government has repeatedly declared
that it would pursue a policy of "dialogue" and
"pressure" toward North Korea. But recently it has
put more emphasis on sticks, rather than carrots,
amid the lack of progress on North Korean issues.
In the last significant move aimed at
ratcheting up pressure on North Korea, in June the
diet enacted the North Korean Human Rights Act,
which called for economic sanctions against
Pyongyang unless progress was made on the
country's human-rights situation, including
resolving the issue of abductions of Japanese
nationals to North Korea. This act also allows the
government to ban the docking of North Korean
ships, or any country's ships that have visited
North Korea, at Japanese ports.
Pyongyang
has often warned that economic sanctions would be
tantamount to a "declaration of war". And it is
true that North Korea would suffer if Japan
imposed them in full. Until 2002, Japan was North
Korea's second-largest trading partner after
China, facilitated in part by the large
ethnic-Korean community in Japan. However, two-way
trade has shrunk considerably in recent years,
reflecting increasingly tense ties. Japan has
fallen behind such countries as China, South Korea
and Thailand. For any sanctions to have bite as
well as bark, cooperation from many countries,
especially China, Russia and South Korea, will be
essential.
In addition, the ruling LDP is
preparing another sanctions law against Pyongyang
in hopes of pushing it through in an extraordinary
diet session next Tuesday. It would ban
transactions with financial institutions suspected
to be involved in money-laundering by North Korea.
This sanctions law is being prepared by an
LDP task force chaired by Ichita Yamamoto, a close
aide to Abe. In his recently published book
Toward a Beautiful Country, Abe said it was
quite possible that financial sanctions would
"induce a chemical change" in North Korea.
Abe also said on Monday that if elected
prime minister, he intends to appoint a state
minister in charge of the issue of Japanese
nationals abducted by North Korea.
"As it
has become obvious that the problem cannot be
resolved only through dialogue, pressure is
unavoidable," he said. "In order to get them to
change their behavior, we cannot help but apply
the pressure."
Abe also said recently, "We
should increase pressure on North Korea on our own
and through international support, to warn the
North that it cannot return to the international
society without resolving the [abduction] problem.
There is no compromise on this."
Hisane Masaki is a Tokyo-based
journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address is yiu45535@nifty.com.
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