TOKYO - Japanese government officials must have privately breathed a sigh of
relief that North Korean's rocket launch this past weekend did not require any
defensive action by Tokyo. The Taepodong-2 rocket flew over Japan without any
part of it falling on the country.
Tokyo had loudly promised that it would shoot down the first stage or any other
aberrant debris that might have fallen on the northern tip of Honshu. It moved
two destroyers equipped with anti-missile weapons into the Sea of Japan and two
batteries of PAC-3 missiles to northern Japan along the projected flight path.
It was always unclear whether these asserts would succeed in downing any rocket
flotsam, not just because they are untried, but because the debris would be
following an unpredictable
trajectory. The failure would have been supremely embarrassing to the Japanese
who experienced enough embarrassment from this exercise as it was.
Following the launch, the first stage fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan, a
couple hundred kilometers off the coast, while the second, and apparently the
third stages, too, fell harmlessly in the northern Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang, of
course, proclaimed the mission a success, but the US expressed doubts that the
North succeeded in its stated goal of putting a satellite in orbit.
This was probably the most over-hyped "crisis" in recent memory. In the
two-week buildup preceding the launch, the Japanese media went into a frenzy,
with daily stories of the impending launch, endless reproductions of satellite
pictures of the launch site in North Korea and speculation about fallout from
the missile.
The event was a godsend to both political parties, who must face off against
each other in a general election sometime before autumn. For Prime Minister
Taro Aso, whose public approval ratings are very low, it was a chance to
display crisis management skills, moving missile batteries around the country
and dispatching warships.
Unfortunately, these skills were undercut by a series of hair trigger alert
blunders by the military, known here as the Self-Defense Forces. They sent out
two false warnings that a launch had taken place, resulting in emergency
messages to the region and municipalities.
For opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, the missile crisis was welcome too as it
diverted media attention from his public relations problems. For more than a
month, the press had focused overwhelmingly on the arrest and later indictment
of his private secretary for accepting illegal campaign contributions.
The scandal had threatened to scuttle any chance the Democratic Party of Japan
(DJP) had in ousting the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party from power in
the election. The military snafus gave the DJP, for the first time in months,
an issue on which they could beat the government.
Meanwhile, some pundits in the United States are calling this President Barack
Obama's first major foreign policy test since taking office. No doubt the US,
Japan and South Korea will feel obliged to do something, having spent so much
energy attacking the launch. Tokyo will probably extend sanctions that have
been in place since the North's nuclear bomb test in 2006.
All of this invests much more into the event than it probably deserves, in a
way playing into the hands of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il. Ridicule rather
than handwringing might be the more appropriate response. After all, if the US
initial assessment is correct, the test was just another in a long line of
failures for North Korea.
In 1998, North Korea fired a multi-stage rocket over northern Japan, which
landed in the north Pacific without boosting a satellite in orbit. In 2006, it
attempted to send a missile aloft, but it exploded less than a minute after it
took off. This week another rocket test fizzled. So in 11 years, North Korea's
ballistic missile program has gone exactly - nowhere.
It should be noted that the same is not true of North Korea's short- and
medium-range missiles, which are not only in good working order but present a
much more direct threat to South Korea and Japan. Indeed, it is the main
justification for Tokyo's expensive decision to develop a missile shield.
(Ironically, if North Korea really did hurl a ballistic missile across Japan
aimed at Alaska or Hawaii, as some fret about, Japan legally could do nothing
to shoot it down, since its American-written constitution prohibits "collective
defense", even of supposed allies like the US.)
North Korea's people are not likely to hear anything about rocket failure. In
North Korean mythology, the 1998 missile test was a brilliant success sending a
satellite into orbit that beamed praises to Kim Jong-il and his father Kim
Il-sung back to Earth (audible to nobody but Koreans) and this launch was
another brilliant success.
In their view, the newest North Korean satellite is now in orbit broadcasting
songs and praises of the Dear Leader. If you don't believe it, somewhere in
Pyongyang there is likely to be a transmitter sending the messages out over the
one government radio channel to which ordinary North Koreans are allowed to
listen.
In the minds of ordinary people and probably the elite in Pyongyang too, North
Korea has become a full-fledged, ballistic-missile-armed nuclear power,
virtually the equal to the US and the other great powers. It is a delusion on
their part but nevertheless a dangerous one.
Todd Crowell is a correspondent based in Tokyo.
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