Threatening Nonsense

You may recall Suzuki Nobuyuki, the radical right winger who managed to capture 74,000 votes in the Tokyo Metropolitan District on July 21 (introduced here, with the look at how he might have been a sponsored spoiler candidate here).

The frighteningly well-spoken Suzuki holds forth in a new video report from Michael Penn: "Japan Grapples With The Rise Of Hate Groups."

If you have 12 minutes, it is worth a watch.

I would take exception to the statement in the report that the noisy, threatening ultra-right is a new phenomenon. All kinds of things were yelled out at political events in the 1960's (the audio to the video of the assassination of Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma demonstrates how out of control the audience was - Link). However, it is true that threats of death and other violence have been beyond the pale for the past 40 years.

I also worry about misinterpretation of the statement that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo shares many of the ideological beliefs of the radical fringe. Rather than sharing ideology, it is probably better to say that Abe-san and his friends in business, academia, and the media have same the data points and talking points in their arsenals as one finds in the speeches and online drivel produced by the fringe groups and politicians like Suzuki.

The claims of radical parties like Suzuki's Restoration New Wind and organizations like former air self defense forces general Tamogami Toshio's Ganbare Nippon are outlandish in their paranoia. They would not have any attraction, though, if they did not in some way provide a template for understanding actual events. The intrusion of Chinese coast guard ships into the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands (Link) or the erection of monuments to the comfort women -- the women (and some boys) trafficked by the brothel network established to serve the troops and officers of the Imperial Army -- on public land in the United States (Link) provide Japanese hate groups all the evidence they need of a vast global anti-Japanese conspiracy encircling and strangling the nation. These groups do on their own then layer on farcical claims, perhaps out of theatricality, perhaps as ornamentation in order to disguise the poverty of their intellectual wares.

That the relationship between Chinese and South Korean patriots and right wing fringe groups in Japan is symbiotic, each side providing the other with the justification for festering hatred and provocation (possibly providing a comfortable living for some of the participants) rarely makes the news anywhere.

A Comment On The Number Of Permanent Residents

Found a mistake in Yuka Hayashi's report on the xenophobes making life miserable for the residents of Shin-Okubo:

Anti-Korean Voices Grow in Japan
The Wall Street Journal

As Japanese nationalism is fueled by friction with neighbors over territories and World War II legacy issues, hostile demonstrations against the country's Korean residents are gathering steam, raising concerns among political leaders and setting off soul-searching among Japan's largely homogeneous population.

While attendance at the rallies is small and such extreme actions are far from entering the mainstream of Japanese politics, the demonstrations of nationalist activists using hate speech and intimidation have grown in size and frequency in recent months. One target has been the central Tokyo neighborhood of Shin-Okubo, known for Korean restaurants and shops selling South Korean pop-culture goods. Starting in February, groups of 200 or so demonstrators have descended on its busy weekend streets, waving Japanese flags and carrying signs that read "Roaches" and "Go Back to Korea." They shouted in unison: "Let's Kill Koreans," language that passersby told local television they found shocking.

[snip]

Many of the virulent rallies are organized by a conservative group called Zaitokukai and organizations that are sympathetic to it. The group was formed in 2006 to protest against "special privileges," such as welfare payments, that it says are abused by ethnic Koreans, who make up 99% of foreign permanent residents in Japan. Its membership has grown to 13,000 from 10,000 two years ago, according to its website. Unlike Japan's traditional right-wing organizations that have gathered members through grass-root groups, Zaitokukai relies on the Internet to attract members. Videos of its rallies and speeches are made available on YouTube and used as a recruitment tool...

(Link)

In 2011, which is the most recent year for which there are comprehensive figures, Japan had 2,078,508 non-Japanese residents. Of these, 987,525 had permanent residence status. Of these, 598,440 were "permanent residents" and another 389,085 were "special permanent residents."

Of the "permanent residents" 60,262 were citizens of either the Republic of Korea or the Democratic Republic of Korea. Of the "special permanent residents" 385,232 were either ROK or DPRK passport holders.

So it is not true that ethnic Koreans "make up 99% of foreign permanent residents in Japan."

What is true is that 99% of the holders of special permanent resident status are ethnic Koreans -- many of whom cannot speak Korean and who lost their Japanese citizenship in 1945 or are the children or grandchildren or great-grand children of such persons.

But then, being an ethnic Korean who lost Japanese citizenship or whose ancestors lost their Japanese citizenship is ostensibly what "special permanent resident" status means.

The total number of Koreans (ROK+DPRK) of all statuses living in Japan in 2011 was 545,401. This puts Koreans in second place among nationalities, below the Chinese at 674,879 and way ahead of the Brazilians at 210,032 (who themselves just barely pipped the Filipinos, who numbered 209,376 in 2011 and who likely have since passed the Brazilians to take over the #3 spot).

I suspect that an editor's zeal was involved in the error.

Then again, if not for the error, I would not have looked up the official figures. And I would have remained ignorant as to the most recent statistics on foreign residents.

So it is all to the good.

B2 Or Not B2

The United States practice bombing runs by a pair of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers (Link) have sent the rhetoric of the government of the Democratic Republic of Korea soaring into the stratosphere (Link). If the U.S. government goal had been a warning to the DPRK government to calm down or else, sending the B-2s on their expensive (Link) and roundabout training flights was a big flop.

However, as Max Fisher, blogging at the Washington post suggests, the flight by the B-2s most likely had the simultaneous purpose of demonstrating to South Korea the reliability of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. (Link)

There has been a lot of talk in South Korea of late regarding the desirability of restarting a program toward an independent nuclear deterrent (Link), talk that the U.S. government would prefer to be too wacky for polite society in the best of times.

These are not the best of times -- and not just because the Kim regime in Pyongyang is going through a prolonged period of internal strife due to a premature transition of power.

The U.S. and South Korea are trying to nail down a renewal of the “123 agreement” on U.S. nuclear power generation technology. Without a 123 agreement South will find itself in a tough spot as regards its ambitious civilian nuclear power program. (Link)

What is holding up the agreement's renewal is the South Korean government insistence that South Korea have the right to use the U.S. technology it has licensed to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel and enrich uranium.

South Korea has 23 operating reactors and 4 more under construction (Link). It has another 7 nuclear power stations on the drawing board. Long term storage of spent fuel is a critical problem, as it is in Japan.

South Korea corporations also want to construct nuclear power stations in third countries. Having U.S. permission to enrich uranium -- another pathway to nuclear weapons status – would enable South Korean bids to be one of a full nuclear power package, rather than just a building with no fuel in it. (Link)

It must be galling for the South Korean government officials and possibly the public at large to know that their country, a staunch U.S. military ally, has been denied the use of U.S. technology for reprocessing and enrichment, when an ambiguous ally like Japan and non-allies like India are allowed them, with the international community clapping (unhappily, most of the time) at the scene.

The Obama Administration is highly reticent to approve either reprocessing or enrichment in the new 123 agreement. It has very little to show for its supposed rock hard commitment (Hello, Nobel Prize Committee!) to global nuclear disarmament. Permitting South Korean reprocessing and/or enrichment would seem like the utmost hypocrisy.

(Which is why it is not surprising that U.S. Republicans and U.S. Republicans-associated think tanks would be tilting in favor of a U.S.-South Korea agreement allowing reprocessing and enrichment.)

Sending the B-2s would be a decent preamble for a U.S. announcement that the new 123 agreement will not allow South Korean reprocessing or enrichment. The message to South Korea would be long but simple: "Look, you are doing fine in terms of access to fuel, you have sold reactors overseas without fuel enrichment, reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for civilian use is a hopeless nightmare (Link) and there is no doubting our extended nuclear deterrent. So what do you need?"

The B-2 flights have an ancillary benefit, of course, of reinforcing the U.S. extended deterrent promised to other non-NATO allies – most particularly in this instance, Japan. Seeking reassurance of the U.S. capability to deliver nuclear weapons in way that does not light up Russian and Chinese early warning radars – the problem with a strategic-missiles-only-deterrent-for-East-Asia-allies -- has led Japanese officials to take trips down some back alleys they later had to recant in convoluted fashion.

So the B-2 flights are not as stupid as they seem – and given the boost they have provided to the DPRK government's already histrionic war paranoia, they sure do seem stupid. The flights have provided a new, truly threatening subject for DPRK propagandists to harp on. They have also transmitted to the governments of South Korea and Japan messages those two governments probably needed to hear.


Tips of the hat to Our Man in Abiko and Robert Koehler for directions.

Where The Crazies Are

In the weekly The Tokyo Diplomat (subscription service) Michael Penn points out that fretting over Abe Shinzo's provocative foreign policy and economic prescriptions ignores the other elephant in the room: the return or accession to the Diet, via the protest and regional pride vote for the Japan Restoration Association, of a coterie of radical revisionists too hard line for even for the Liberal Democratic Party.

Ishihara Shintaro
Nishimura Shingo
Yamada Hiroshi
Nakayama Nariaki

Add to the above the Democratic Party of Japan's Matsubara Jin, returned to the Diet via his double listing on the proportional list and a close second-place finish to Ishihara's "other son" Hirotaka (What the blazes is going on in Tokyo District #3?) and you have as fine a bag of nuts as can be acquired at Yuletide.

Once the presidential contest in South Korea ends, the South Korean news media will turn their gaze upon the incoming Diet.

Ignition. Combustion. Explosion.

Janne Morén, in one of his sadly too infrequent posts on politics, this week expressed concern that the arithmetic of Japanese elections, where a party can win 61% of the seats in the House of Representatives with the support of less than 25% of the electorate in the district vote and 16% of the electorate in the proportional vote, means that "a populist, far-right xenophobic party could well capitalise on the same political weakness." (Link)

Herr Morén, your fear has already been realized.

Spokespersons In The News

It is easy to swallow the constant parade of shaded truths and evasions uttered by the government's main spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, as he fumbles through his daily press briefing. With his "let me look at my notes here" and soft delivery one gets the impression, that not particularly deep down, he does not believe what he is saying.

Contrast this with the martial verbal stomping of Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the People's Republic of China Hong Lei. His jut-jawed aura of certitude, on display most recently in the response to the rubber bullet killing of Chinese fisherman by the South Korean coast guard, where the crew of the fishing boat fought with "knives, saws, spears, shovels and axes" to repulse a boarding of their vessel (Link) was nearly parodic, demanding that Sought Korea take preventive measures against violent law enforcement behavior.

Why can Hong not say, "These men may have been fishing illegally and used deadly force in resisting a boarding of their vessel. The PRC government has no formal comment on the situation, as the investigation of the incident is still in its initial stages," like any normal spokesperson?

Were I a correspondent of a news media organization, assigned to Beijing, I would likely burn that organization's work visa in a moment. Attending a Foreign Ministry briefing, I would not be able to restrain myself from getting up from out of my seat and declaiming, "Please, Mr. Hong, I beg you. Please tell me one more impossible thing."

Japan's Island Conflicts: What, Where, Why?

A few days ago a friend mailed me:

"Why such a crisis in between Japan and China? Where are we? Where are we heading? Is there a competition for regional leadership? Or are we fooled while something else is happening or coming?"

Sourabh Gupta believes that everything is all a show: that the foreign ministries are all aware where the limits are. So move on, make money, nothing is happening here. (Link)

Those of us watching the extraordinary images of yesterday's non-lethal reenactment of the Battle of Trafalgar (Video J - warnings on link rot apply) in the waters about the Senkakus might be less than confident about the ability of career bureaucrats of the region keeping matters within limits.

Indeed, even prior to yesterday's free-for-all in between a smattering of JCG vessels, 40 Taiwanese fishing boats and 12 Taiwan coast guard escorts, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the governments of the regions do not have matters under control.

One example is very helpfully provided by Mr. Gupta himself. He links to a translated Yomiuri Shimbun article detailing the internal deliberations of the Cabinet over how to best proceed following the government's purchase of the islands from their private Japanese owner. Plans were ranked A to H in terms of likelihood to provoke, "A" being the doing of absolutely nothing and "H" being the deployment of Self Defense Forces on the islands. Prime Minister Noda, who likely wanted to deflect domestic criticism that the government was doing nothing, favored Plan C, which was -- and I am not making this up -- replacing the incandescent bulb in the Uotsurijima's lighthouse with an LED bulb. Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro and Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya talked the PM out of this plan, arguing that any physical act would be too much for the Chinese government to bear. (E)

This is the level of crazy we are at -- where the changing of a light bulb requires a Cabinet-level decision...

...and no, the foregoing the replacement of a navigational aid's current light source with a brighter, longer-lasting and more energy-efficient one in the end did not diminish one wit the extent to which the Chinese government lost its marbles over the island purchase.

Where is this headed? Ask the government of China. For all the cinematic grandeur of yesterday's maritime encounter, the government of Taiwan has yet to match its inaction with words. While President Ma Ying-jeou did praise those aboard the fishing vessels for their patriotism and those in the Taiwan coast guard for their devotion to duty (E) the government of Taiwan has so far avoided either threatening Japan or accusing the government of Japan of fomenting a state of crisis.

Not that it will not take an age, if that will be enough, to repair the damage yesterday's sea battle will have on Taiwan's previously vital relationship with Japan's right wing. The government of Taiwan will count the costs -- and find them huge.

The government of the People's Republic, however, has talked itself into a corner, ratcheting up the level of rhetoric so high that whoever is unfortunate enough to take over the reins of government from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao will have to either have to demolish the Sino-Japanese relationship or engineer a deeply wounding climb-down.

Not a great way to start what is supposed to be a decade in power.

As for Japan's other inflamed island dispute, the South Koreans, already in the international doghouse for allowing its obsession over the Dokdo/Takeshima issue to mar the Olympics, yesterday raised their delusion level a notch, with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan taking his turn at the podium at the United Nations to simultaneously support and denounce the use of international law for the use of solving international political disputes. (E)

The English language readout of the UN presentation is a study in self-absorption and victimhood:

3. Minister Kim emphasized that the rule of law should be based on indispensable values such as justice, morality, territorial integrity and sovereignty. He also highlighted the rule of law should not be used as an instrument of powerful nations to coerce weak nations as shown in the (sic) history; or one to advance political agendas.

4. Before Minister Kim's remark, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba took the floor to state that "The International Court of Justice(ICJ) is an important instrument to resolve the international disputes peacefully, and I call on every member states (sic) to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ."

※ 67 countries out of 193 UN member states in total, accepted compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, stipulated in the second clause of Article 36.
- The US, China, France, Russia(permanent members of the UN Security Council), Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia are among those countries which have yet to accept the ICJ's compulsory jurisdiction.

[An aside, but clearly MOFAT-ROK and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have different standards when it comes to English-language press releases. MOFA would discipline officers and their supervisors for releasing a text like the above.]

In a side bilateral meeting, the South Korean and Chinese foreign ministers had what seemed to be extremely cordial talks (E). With the South Korean Foreign Minister to come out from the bilateral meeting and to say that historical issues -- i.e., the behavior Japanese Imperial Forces and the national government of Japan during the period 1868 to 1945 -- should be brought before the UN (J), one cannot fault Japanese news media for finding a zero-sum game underway, with Sino-South Korean friendliness coming at Japan's expense.

Someone, perhaps Mr. Gupta, will have to reassure me that the South Koreans are not so stupid as to make common cause with China against Japan.

Why all are all these different island disputes coming to a head right now? A full answer to that question would fill a book....and needs to be left for another day.

Essential reading on the outlook for the immediate future is Stephanie Kleine-Ahlebrant's Foreigh Policy article "Dangerous Waters" (Link). Her pessimistic conclusion: China's recent moves in submissions to international organizations guarantee a constant Chinese presence in waters Japan considers its own. That in addition to fighting off a crowd of ships from Taiwan, the JCG had to keep an eye on 10 Chinese fisheries and maritime safety agency ships sailing in the same waters indicates that Japan is in for long, enervating and expensive confrontation with its larger, resentful and possibly ungovernable neighbor.

China's leadership, for reasons both temporary and potentially permanent, seems to have taken to abandoning Deng Xiaoping's advice to leave the issue of the sovereignty of the Senkakus to a later and wiser generation. Instead, the leadership seems to be acting on the geology lesson at the heart of the movie The Shawshank Redemption: all one needs to break through to what one's heart desires is time and pressure.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan is in the process of selecting a new leader. Ishiba Shigeru and former prime minister Abe Shinzo, both of them the hardest of the hardliners in the five-way race, survived the first round of voting, the one that combined the votes of local chapters and members of the Diet. Ishiba ran away with the votes in the local chapters, winning over 50% of the local votes. Abe, however, squeaked into the second round with a strong second to Ishihara Nobuteru among the members of the Diet.

In the runoff between the two first round leaders, the decision is in the hands of the members of the Diet alone. Given that Abe has a history of failure and collapse, the election lights are shining on Ishiba.

Tien An Men...Or Should I Say "Ten An Mon?"

Retired officials and think tankers...they really are not just allowed to have their own opinions...but their own facts.

What Roosevelt would do in the South China Sea
The Financial Times

James Clad and Robert Manning

Planting flags on islets, declaring cities where there are too few residents to fill a restaurant, and huffing and puffing over uninhabited rocks are acts more suited to a Gilbert and Sullivan farce than to nations in the 21st century.

Absurdities aside, the tensions in the South China Sea could shape the balance of power in Asia and put at risk the $18tn east Asian economy. However, a century-old diplomatic idea used by a former US president offers a solution to the crisis.

[snip]

To find something new, we might try looking backwards - to a type of split-the-difference US diplomacy last deployed after Russia and Japan had fought a war in 1905. The next year, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace that lasted three decades, allowing China, Europe and the US to adjust to Japan's rise as a major power.

(Link)

Mr. Clad and Mr. Manning, please elaborate, in written form, precisely which three decades of peace, starting when and ending when, you are talking about. Please send the results to the following addresses (since these are local addresses, you will be saving on postage):

2450 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008

and

3505 International Place NW
Washington, DC 20008

I am sure the recipients will be surprised...though I cannot guarantee it will be pleasantly so.

The Great Peace of Portsmouth: we all remember it so well.

The Longer The Explanation...

...the more strained the metaphors, the more hyperbolic the rhetoric ("This has arguably brought bilateral ties to their worst nadir..." -- oh please, consult a dictionary and find out what "nadir" means) the less likely the essay in question will make its point...or has a point to make.

"South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan"

Dr. Hornung's affiliations tell you why this essay was written. A man has to do his job(s). I cannot fault him for that.

However, one has to do one's job well. If one is going to pummel President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, do not segue into the "Japan-has-apologized-enough-and-here-let-me-run-down-the-list" routine. Is there not a better way?

The other question is, with Jason Miks no longer at the helm at The Diplomat -- Miks having moved on to CNN -- who is letting this flotsam and jetsam over the transom?

Your Serve, Region

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave a live press conference last night, outlining what his government is doing regarding the territorial disputes with the Republic of Korea over Dokdo and China/Taiwan/Hong Kong over the Senkakus. (J)

The approach the Noda government will take is quite simple: it will assert its claims, which it has heretofore done quietly, mostly in the form of including the disputed territories in official maps, wherever appropriate in its interactions with the international community, leaving international opinion to judge the validity of Russian, South Korean and Chinese/Taiwanese behavior.

This approach is in line with the standard procedures of normal democratic states. Authoritarian regimes can enforce, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, the sweeping of competing claims under the rug for later, wiser generations to resolve, with the obvious postscript: "In the meantime, let's stay in power by letting our people make money." Democratic states cannot -- voters like problems resolved in clean, simple and tidy ways.

Adjusting to the new stance will lead to some fumbling. Even foreign policy experts will not "get it" -- see this CNN op-ed by Jimbo Ken, where he argues at the beginning that status quo policies are no longer operative, only to argue at the end that the conduct of relations between Japan and China needs the kinds of personal relations that lubricated and protected the status quo approach.

However, the chances of the new assertiveness' succeeding in freezing further escalation of territorial disputes are at least 50-50. All the governments in the region ex Japan remain at least semi-authorian -- the exception being Taiwan, which has opted out of the current round of the fighting over the Senkakus despite being led by a man whose law degree is based upon studies of Chinese claims in the East China Sea (E and E). The semi-authoritarian regimes can still rely upon considerable powers of persuasion to repress populist behavior - if the regime in question wants to do so. China has deployed both its 50-cent Party of Web commentators and its police forces (E) in a short-circuiting of anti-Japanese mob action in relation to the visit of Hong Kong activists to the Senkakus. That the South Korean president has gone in the other direction, choosing to heighten regional tensions rather than use his presidential powers to tamp them down, over a territory where South Korea has dug-in military forces, is...to be honest, not something I do want to delve into right now because it will be, inshallah, discussed in a future op-ed for Al-Jazeera.

The takeaway from last night's speech is that the balls are now in the courts of the nations surrounding Japan. The government of this blessed land is not going to keep quiet, as was demonstrated in the most recent Defense White Paper where the government put it writing That Which Must Not Be Said: that the civilian government of China and the People's Liberation Army may not be reading from the same piece of sheet music.

It will be up to the governments in the region, coping with their own internal instabilities and tensions, to come up with new narratives to cope with Mr. Noda's New Reality.

He Just Keeps Getting Better And Better

Over at Japan Security Watch and the search-engine-optimization-hostile σ1, Corey Wallace takes a grand tour of East Asia and the pitfalls looming in the massive wave of government changeovers this fall.

READ IT. (Link)

Mr. Wallace hedges in his final paragraph, describing the post's viewpoint as as "mostly cynical."

You can relax, Mr. Wallace: no one has ever lost any money on "mostly cynical" -- ever.

I Shall Not Henceforth Share With Thee

The New York Times, somehow wrenching its gaze from the Mideast and Central Asia to some place not named Venezuela, has decided to offer, as it seems it believes it must to every human government, its advice on how the government of South Korean should be running its affairs.

A Lost Deal for South Korea and Japan
The New York Times

Nearly 70 years after World War II, old animosities are still making it difficult for South Korea and Japan to establish a reliably productive relationship. The result is self-defeating for both countries and for regional security.

Last week, at the last minute, South Korea postponed signing a limited military agreement with Japan. The deal would have encouraged the direct sharing and protecting of sensitive military data about North Korea and China and missile defenses. Such intelligence is now shared indirectly through Washington. The agreement was supported by the Obama administration, which has been working to strengthen a trilateral alliance with the two countries, America’s most important Asian allies.

Although Japan’s cabinet approved the deal, a political firestorm erupted in South Korea, and now its fate is uncertain. That is a huge embarrassment, for Seoul and Tokyo, creating more bad feelings between the two. President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea clearly mishandled the politics. The deal was negotiated in secret, with officials informing the public and Parliament just one day before it was to be signed. This is an election year in South Korea; Mr. Lee’s five-year term ends early next year after a successor is chosen in December. He should have anticipated that his political opponents would lash out as they have, accusing the government of being pro-Japanese. Instead of presenting the agreement as completed, he should have made the case for it publicly and worked to build support for it in advance.

Even then, it would have been a tough sell because animosity toward Japan remains very much alive in South Korea. Japan ruled that country as a colony, often brutally, for several decades until the end of World War II. Although the two nations have growing economic and cultural ties, they still have bitter disputes over a set of islets and Tokyo’s rejection of talks on compensating Korean women used by Japan as military sex slaves during the war.

The United States and Japan have said little publicly to avoid inflaming the situation. But we hope they are working to calm the waters on this issue.

(Link)

Why the New York Times should be wading into the failure, at the last minute (Literally -- according some reports, the South Korean side told the Japanese side it was backing out 20 minutes before the signing ceremony), of governments of the Republic of Korea and Japan to sign a General Security Of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) perplexes me. Not because the United States government wants Japan and South Korea cooperating and the Times in the last two decades has become the lap dog of the Washington think tank establishment. What makes Washington unhappy makes the Times unhappy.

What perplexes me is how Washington so enwrapped itself in its own logic that it forgot the hurdles in the way of such an agreement. South Korean activists have been carrying out an almost parodic global war on things Japanese, publishing full-page broadsides about Dokdo to the confusion of the world's dwindling number of newspaper readers, expending energies trying to convince the world's cartographers to change the Sea of the Japan to the East Sea (East of where? Be specific. You are not England and this is not the 18th century. Even the Chinese do not get to call their favorite bodies of water the "the East Sea" and "the South Sea") and turning the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces issue (E) into a bottomless chasm in between the two neighbors.

In order to overcome these domestic political hurdles to intelligence sharing with Japan, the government of ROK would need to be receiving from the GOJ cooperation of such a vital importance to South Korea's security that ROK authorities could just tell its critics to shut the fork up.

However, it seem there is nothing in the agreement that guarantees the government of the ROK gets anything from the GOJ (E) and/or vice-versa.

The GOJ knows after after the debacle of April 13 that it needs real time data on DPRK rocket launches. As for the government of the ROK, it probably wants everything the Maritime Self Defense Forces can tell it about what is going on under the surface of the waters around the ROK, anti-submarine warfare being the one area where the SDF has world-class capabilities.

However, the ROK military would be reticent sharing real time launch data with a non-ally. As for the GOJ side, sharing ASW information with anyone except the United States would go crashing against the current interpretations of Article 9 of the Constitution.

So effectively, a promise of nothing for nothing.

However, the situation for the ROK government is even worse than the above indicates.

First, the national interests of Japan and South Korea are not in sync. Japan wants to stay a non-nuclear state in a nuclear neighborhood with minimal impacts from the presence of U.S. forces and no part in American messianic adventurism. The South Koreans want self-determination for the peninsula even as it China's immense shadow grows. South Koreans lash out at the Japanese to turn attention away from their really problematic neighbor. Lashing out at Japan provides oxygen for the Japanese right wing's effort to revive Japan's ardor for military adventure, for seventy years after the fact, Japan's neighbors still hang on to outdated stereotypes. Respect, the right argues, flows from fear, and fear only comes through strength.

Perversely, signing GSOMIA makes the most sense if Japan is on a remilitarization course favored by Japan's right wing. If remilitarization of Japan has stalled, as it seems to have done, then chances are that Japan will never find the funding for the protocols, the training and the forces necessary to implement the minimal goals of the pact.

Besides, if the government of the ROK were to share sensitive information with Japan, which has no espionage law or law controlling the leakage of information, it would be taking a chance that what should be kept secret suddenly appears three weeks later in the pages of SAPIO or the Sankei Shimbun.

Finally, if an ROK official were to set sail against a sea of troubles and seek to share vital intelligence with the GOJ, whom would he/she call? Ministries in this blessed land do not talk to other ministries. Ministries do not share in a timely fashion with the Public Security Intelligence Agency or, Amaterasu forbid, the Prime Minister's Residence. At times, agencies inside ministries do not share information with the secretariats of that ministry.

So instead of wringing hands, consider a bullet dodged. For good or ill, the government of this blessed land has not prepared this land for participation in the Great Game.

Those Damn Islets, Northwestern Edition

For every step in the right direction toward closer and deeper relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, there is the ever spiraling nuttiness over Dokdo
/Takeshima/ the Liancourt Rocks.

In a piece for The Diplomat, Rajaram Panda of the Instite for Defence Studies and Analyses chides South Korea for spending money on a deep water naval pier for the island of Ulleung, the spot of dry land nearest to the DTLR (why not coin an acronym?). What is fascinating is not the article itself, which is a level-headed plea for level-headed thinking about the ROK's actual security needs. It is the comment string afterward, which demonstrates just how insanely worked up South Korean activists can get about a set of islets which Japan will never, ever do anything about, save make pro-forma statements about how they are a part of Japan.

India, of course, has recently completed work on an agreement nailing down its disputed border areas with its least threatening neighbor and moving now on to new, less lethal means of enforcing that border, all so that the Indian government can concentrate on its border disputes with the two countries that really matter to Indian security.

Seen from New Delhi, South Korean wackiness over the DTLR must look like a tremendous waste of money and emotion.