Let’s Hope No One Draws Parallels between the Abductees and the Two American Journalists…

Joe’s comment here gives me good chance to unleash yet again a couple of my pet peeves—regarding the abductees and Prime Minister Koizumi. No, those canards do not come up in Joe’s comment, but it’s clear that they lurk behind the media reports that go into forming the background of his take.

There are good reasons why nothing has been achieved with regard to the following Japanese demands:

1) Give a full and credible accounting of the fate of the remaining abductees;
2) Return remaining survivors; and
3) Punish the people responsible for the operation.

The North Korean authorities claim that they have already accounted for the remainder—they deny some of the Japanese claims—and that there are no more survivors. They also claim that the people responsible for the operation were punished. There is a gap here. No, there is nothing short of regime change that can bring the North Koreans to satisfy Japanese demands. I think that this is hard not to see. But then, why does MOFA persist in making these demands?

One line of persistent popular among Western liberals is that this is the result of a successful rightwing campaign, who use this issue for some inchoate but undoubtedly nefarious purposes. Not so. This, as I have never tired of explaining, is a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding based on a few undeniable facts regarding Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. To wit, Koizumi:

1) paid his respects at Yasukuni Shrine (to fulfill a campaign promise);
2) dispatched troop to Iraq (after the war was over); and
2) was succeeded by Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister.

In fact, the Japanese demands are supported in public by most politicians across the entire political spectrum from the nationalist-nativists to JCP spokesmen as well as just about every editorial writer in the mainstream media from Sankei to Asahi. The key phrase here is “in public.” For it is the Japanese public that was the driving force behind these demands; Koizumi would have lost his job if he had stayed the course after his first trip to Pyongyang, and Abe was the grateful recipient, not the instigator, of the popular outcry over the North Korean revelations that helped propel him into the Prime Minister’s office. Public sentiment regarding the issue has very much cooled, but no one in any position of responsibility is willing yet to touch this political third rail. And that’s things stand today. If you doubt me, read the election manifestos.

If you want to know more about thoughts regarding Koizumi and how he fits into the big picture on this, you are free to search my blog or, better, pay me to write an essay on this subject. If you don’t have the time or money to do so, then you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Random Shots regarding the Rapid Fire from North Korea

Another nuclear test. That, and more missile launches. They are coming fast and furious.

North Korea poses the prototypical dilemma: talk, and demands escalate; ignore, and actions escalate. At bottom, the North Korean authorities cannot survive democracy, unification or non-. In that, they resemble the Tamil Tigers. As long as China (far less importantly Russia) does not isolate them, they can maintain their nuclear weapons and missile programs. In that, they resemble Israel with its West Bank settlements.

I defer to the experts regarding explanations of North Korean behavior both long-term and in the immediate instance. They all more or less look plausible to me. Barring a Chinese handcuff on North Korea, though, they mostly point to one conclusion: Short of a peace treaty with United States, there’s little reason to believe that North Korea will irrevocably give up its nuclear weapons program. Even that elusive peace treaty thing looks like a dubitable proposition to me; openness of any kind will destabilize the regime there and I don’t think the authorities can tolerate that. They could want the very best for their people, but self-interest will always win out.

By the way, China must be doing a lot of legitimate business with North Korea. Otherwise, we would be hearing more—hell, something—about North Korea’s needs-based activities in the counterfeiting and drug trafficking fields, wouldn’t we?

So what is Japan going to do, other than the inevitable, more UN resolution-based sanctions from a rapidly dwindling table of possible measures? Well, LDP hawks are pushing for the inclusion of preemptive striking power in the new National Defense Program Guidelines which will be released by the end of the year. Leaving aside for the moment the increasing likelihood that very different people will holding the reins of Japanese government by then, their proposal begs the question: preempt what? Unless there’s a way to locate and conduct pinpoint attacks on most if not all of 200 or so Rodongs or the relevant command centers, we’d have to obliterate most of North Korea to “preempt” a nuclear attack. What’s undeniably within our powers in principle does not appear to be feasible in reality.

Kissinger on China North Korea

…
Now, if Japan, China, Russia, the United States together cannot convince or -- a country of the size of North Korea by creating enough pressure, what is the sense of talking about an international system at all? And I believe that China and we and Japan should be able to bring about the denuclearization of North Korea.
…
[I] f we cannot deal with a country that has no natural resources that others want, no significant trade, totally dependent on its neighbors for supplies, then what is the sense of talking of an international system?

That’s Kissinger, on the Fox News channel. I’m sure he understands perfectly well why it’s not happening. (That, or he’s really, really gone off his rocker.) But what does he mean by “international system”?

ADD* (25 May): Kissinger asserts that “China and we and Japan should be able to bring about the denuclearization of North Korea”. Perhaps, but if so, he, as an expert and practitioner of international relations, should not be throwing up his hands over “the international system” like some petulant blogger and instead should be telling us something the rest of the world has not been able to figure out so far. After all, if a key component—in this case China—in pursuit of its interests fails to put the squeeze on the transgressor—in this case North Korea—then the “system” will obviously not achieve its goal. And it’s pretty obvious that China has what it perceives as quite sensible reasons from a national interest perspective to take its current tack.

* ZI’s comment reminded me that I failed to explain my criticism of Kissinger’s comments in my original post. This addendum is intended to rectify that omission.

More Thoughts around the Taepodong Launch (and a Notice)

”The last time North Korea tested such a missile, in 1998, it sent a shock wave around the world, but especially to the United States and Japan, both of which North Korea regards as archenemies. They recognized immediately that a missile of this type makes no sense as a weapon unless it is intended for delivery of a nuclear warhead.”
Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy”, The Washington Post (22 June 2006)

The North Korean perfection of a long-range nuclear missile capability against the United States, Japan, or the Republic of Korea would pose an imminent threat to the vital interests of our country.
Philip Zelikow, “Be ready to strike and destroy North Korea's missile test”, Foreign Policy (22 February 2009)

The first op-ed, by a former Defense Secretary (Perry) and an Assistant Defense Secretary (Carter) in the Clinton Administration, came on the eve of the first launch of the Taepodong 2 and called on the Bush administration to conduct a preemptive strike if the North Korean authorities continued preparations. We know how that turned out. Zelikow, a career diplomat and counselor to Secretary of State Rice at the time (2005-2007), had opposed a preemptive strike at the time, by his own account arguing:

“(1) attainment of a long-range or intercontinental missile capability would require more tests, so this one did not place North Korea at the threshold of an operational capability; and (2) given point #1, it was better to use the test to draw a ‘red line’ with support from the international community.”

Zelikow believed that the conditions had been satisfied and urged the newly-minted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to draw a red line. We know how that turned out as well, less than two months later.

Note that both op-eds assume that the Taepodong is a threat to Japan in the same way that it is a threat to the United States (though Carter and Perry are somewhat less explicit on that point). This is odd, since the long-range nuclear missile capability that a Taepodong 2 with a nuclear warhead poses makes sense only as a means to reach U.S. targets. Instead, it is the 200 or so land-mobile midrange Rodongs that pose an imminent danger to Japanese security.

The long-range Taepodong’s deployment may affect U.S. strategic thinking regarding retaliation under the mutual security treaty in the event of a North Korean missile attack on Japan. This is by no means trivial even if it is merely a matter of perception, since this could affect the deterrence value of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the emergence of a North Korean threat to its 50 states will change the balance of U.S. concerns between counter-proliferation and deterrence—the second rising in relative importance—and align them more closely to Japan’s.

I’m not sure where this is leading to, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

In the meantime, let me go back to the op-eds that started this train of thoughts and ask: Where did this implicit assumption by top officials that there is no discernable distinction between U.S. and Japanese interests regarding the Taepodong come from?

I think it all goes back to the late 1990s, when the Japanese government was still reluctant to sign on to the expensive and experimental missile defense system that the United States had been urging Japan to adopt. But it all changed in 1998, when North Korea flew Taepodong 1 over Japan. This was not in itself out of the ordinary if you believed that North Korea’s claim that it was a satellite launch and North Korea had observed, instead of neglected, the proper protocols regarding such an event. Of course no one believed North Korea’s claim and North Korea dispensed with the niceties. So the launch caused great public consternation in Japan and became a material factor in the Japanese government’s decision to sign on to the U.S. program (which Secretary Gates is now trying to pare back under the Obama administration). In other words, it was the Japanese public that bought into the notion that the Taepodon was a threat to Japan. The writers of the op-ed, with nothing else to go by, have unthinkingly accepted this Japanese conventional wisdom.

But this begs yet another question: Why did the Japanese authorities also buy into this idea and agree to purchase a missile defense system that, if you agree with Keiichiro Asao, does not address the main Japanese concern—the hundreds of land-mobile Rodongs whose main targets are on Japanese territory—but was instead actually geared toward the relatively small number of the more expensive and cumbersome long-range missiles that nations such as North Korea and Iran might launch against the United States. But here again, I am at a loss; I can do some speculating, but I don’t have enough dots to connect to make it anything more than a list of possibilities.

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Sorry, my explanation regarding the significance of the three sets of bureaucratic appointments by Prime Minister Aso within the context of the broader relationship between politics and the bureaucracy is still on the backburners. If it turns out to be too long and complicated to deal with on a blog, I’ll put together the main points of my argument and post that.

Would a Preemptory Attack on the Rodong Arsenal Work?

Keiichiro Asao, Defense Minister for the DPJ’s “Next Cabinet” appeared on TV Asahi today and said something eminently sensible: “If all the [200 give or take a few dozen] Rodong Missiles that North Korea has came flying at us, we wouldn’t be able to shoot them down all of them.” So true. I suppose that is what the U.S. nuclear umbrella is there for: to act as a deterrent so that the North Korean authorities don’t start thinking that they could use the threat of a nuclear attack to wrest some serious concessions from Japan (and a nuclear Japan does not become anything more than a conservative nationalists’ pipe dream.) But then Asao went on to say: “We shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, but unless we have the capacity to strike at the other side’s bases, we won’t be able to hedge the risk.”

Now Rodongs are land-mobile , which means that they could be stationed anywhere in North Korea. Given their use of liquid fuel, they could have fixed-location fueling stations that could be vulnerable to attack. But do the Japanese or, more likely U.S., authorities know where they are? If not, then Asao is really talking about a Japanese retaliatory capacity.

Did the North Korean Go Exactly as Planned? (2)

A real pro asking the same question and giving us technical information indicating that the answer is yes, likely.

Did the North Korean Launch Go Exactly as Planned?

The North Korean authorities have told their people that they successfully launched a satellite into orbit with their two-stage rocket Unha 2 (That’s “Milky Way 2” for you kanji-illiterates); the rest of the world says no, that the payload never separated from the second stage, which fell well short of North Korean projections as transmitted to the signatories of the Outer Space Treaty. So, did this venture end up somewhere between “mission accomplished” and a catastrophic crash into metropolitan Tokyo? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. I mean, what if they got exactly what they had planned for?

North Korea does not need a communications satellite. They don’t plan on giving their public a lot of bandwidth any time soon, and Kim Jong Il’s quite satisfied with basic cable, thank you. If they’re thinking of selling communications satellites, their surely very primitive technology will face stiff competition; we’re not talking about no-questions-asked nuclear weapons or ballistic missile technologies. So there was never much incentive for North Korea to put a satellite on top of that rocket. In fact, it would have been a waste of time and resources that the regime could ill afford.

Looked at as a pure two-stage, long-distance, ballistic missile test though, and the whole affair makes sense. There are only two things that really matter: the launch, and separation between the first and second stages—the test cleared them both. And the distance that the second stage flies can easily be controlled by the amount of fuel loaded onto the rocket. As corroborating evidence that the North Korean authorities knew exactly what they were doing, they never bothered to inform the international telecommunications authorities of the details regarding their intentions, which they would have had to do before putting a communications satellite into orbit. (It’s getting crowded out there.)

There’s the nasty little matter of the Americans and the Japanese telling the rest of world that your rocket failed its mission. But hey, politics, like history, is always local, and you can—did—tell your people what you want them to hear. Meanwhile, your military is happy, the Iranians are happy. So you have all your constituencies covered.

Okay, I can’t prove any of this. But it must make as much sense as any explanation that you’re going to hear in the coming days.

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Will this kind of analysis do?

Some Thoughts around the North Korean Missile/Projectile/Rocket Launch

I am watching Sunday Project, a one-hour, forty-five minute news show; this week it’s the Taepodon 2 launch, from start to finish. Among other things, they’re showing an estimate based on known facts that the rocket will reach Japanese territory within two minutes of launch and leaves it within four of it. Moments later (or so I remember) the regular news room breaks in with the announcement that the Taepodon 2 has launched successfully at 11:30. (Good thing I changed my mind about the likely launching schedule.) I look at the clock; it’s 11:35, going on 11:36. And it’s a good clock. So, by the time the information reached the Japanese public, the projectile was already on its way over presumably safer international waters. That wasn’t a warning call; it was for all practical purposes an all-clear.

Experts gave a variety of explanations for North Korea’s insistence on actions: a) a deterrent—against the U.S., on both offense and defense; b) negotiation tactics—like the 2006 “nuclear” test that led to the bilateral negotiations (which the Bush administration had been resisting fiercely; c) (on a related point) getting the United States to pay attention—the Obama administration has been putting “Asia” on the backburners; d) cash cow—as in $1.5 billion in annual missile sales including what looks like a joint-venture relationship with Iran; and e) domestic politics—impressing the masses and placating the military. Though there’s no way of knowing what goes on in the individual and collective minds of the North Korean leadership from Kim Jong Il down, each explanation seemed to me to have a measure of truth to it. All in all, they reinforce my conviction that there is little short of regime change that would induce them to give this up, or the nuclear weapons program.

This does not directly impact Japan in terms of national security; our main concerns are the smaller, mobile, rapid-fire Rodongs—all 200 of them with nowhere to aim at except Japan. However, this does change the game for the United States, as I’ve mentioned before, and that impacts Japan. There has been an underlying tension between the two allies regarding North Korea’s nuclear program; to grossly simplify the situation, Japan fears an attack while the United States fears proliferation. From Japan’s point of view, taking North Korea off the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors did nothing, but it at least bought time for the United States.

Incidentally, we don’t hear about their drugs and counterfeiting operations anymore. What gives?

The Real Issues at Stake with Regard to the North Korean Rocket Launch

There’s a small but non-negligible chance that the North Korean projectile will fall on Japanese territory, causing damage, and the Japanese media and political establishment are up in arms about that. This means that the most important issues are being given short shrift. They are:

1) A successful launch will have little impact on Japan’s national security profile. Most of the fallout, as it were, will come down on the United States.
2) A failed launch followed by a failed MD intercept, as Matt Dioguardi casually intimated in a comment to my earlier post, will significantly harm the defense system’s deterrent effect.

The first, most likely outcome—after all, North Korea must have a lot of confidence in its rocket to launch it to such fanfare; the Iranian connection must be bringing clear, tangible benefits—is the most favorable one for Japan if you limit considerations to security issues in an actual sense (that is, the abduction issue is treated as a social interest story). It brings U.S. national interests more closely in line with Japan’s, and that can’t be bad for the latter. (I’ve commented before on the Japan-U.S. gap regarding North Korea’s nuclear program and its consequences.) The second outcome is the most damaging one for both allies, though Japan’s ruling coalition has far more to lose in terms of domestic politics. There are other failed launch scenarios, but I don’t think it’s worth the time to go over them.

Finally, I think the launch will come later, rather than sooner. North Korea has the world as a stage; that hasn’t happened in a while, and they’re going to hold onto the karaoke mike as long as they can.*

* ADD April 5: I take this back. North Korea will launch at the first technically viable chance, since the window of opportunity is short.

What Should We Do with the North Korean Projectile?

If the rocket or any of its major components go on a trajectory that would likely cause it to fall somewhere on Japanese land, then it wouldn’t make sense not to try to intercept it. The North Korean authorities appear to be making threats in this regard, but they’re leaving themselves enough room to talk their way out of having to make a counterattack without losing face by claiming that the Japanese actions did not turn out to be an attack. Besides, what can the North Korean authorities do? Impose a trade embargo? What’s more intriguing is this: Will the U.S. Aegis destroyers in the area also fire their missiles at a falling (or about-to-fall) projectile? I’m not sure that point has been adequately addressed publicly. I assume they will; if they don’t, that will surely unsettle the Japanese public and seriously impact the bilateral security relationship. Either way, it’s a matter that cannot be tabled until the occasion actually arises.

But why shoot it down if it’s likely to fall into the sea, even if it’ happens to be our territorial waters? Even in Tokyo Bay, the chances of a hit causing damage should be lower than getting a hit on your number in a turn of roulette—not that I would recommend taking that chance, but still. Shouldn’t we take the claims of the North Korean authorities at face value and retrieve it for them, check the device to make sure that it was indeed a satellite launch, then hand it over in the spirit of neighborliness…after, of course, they reimburse us for costs incurred?

Incidentally, the English-language media is calling it both a “missile” and a “rocket”. It appears to hang on the whim of the reporter (or the copy desk). The Japanese media, except for that one example that I referred to, consistently calls it “misairu”, or “missile”.

Misairu? You must be kidding

I expressed my displeasure over BBC’s headline jazzing up the Japanese response to the North Korean launch. It is only fair then, to mention that the Japanese media have been leaning in the other direction with its reference to the North Korean (dando) misairu, or (ballistic) missile. Every definition of “missile” tags it as a weapons system. Now the North Korean authorities have no business spending time and money launching a “satellite” while they go around begging and cajoling the international community for food; and yes, their military objective is hard not to see. Still, technically, this one is a (ballistic) projectile, not a missile, until shown otherwise. So it is with delight to see that today’s hardcopy evening version of the Yomiuri (though not the online version) put misairu in quotation marks in the headline and referred to it as hasshatai, or “projectile”, in the text itself.


I realize it may trivial, but these things bug me, okay?

Ozawa Wants Jejudo…Not. But Who Wants to Know?

“Mr. Ozawa asks, ‘What do think about Tsushima?’, so I’m like, ‘I’m very worried about Tsushima now. It’s likely to be bought up by the won economy,’ and Mr. Ozawa replies, ‘That’s true. But more than that, if that’s what you’re going to worry about, there’s a great opportunity now.” So I ask him, “Why”, and he’s going, “The yen is appreciated now, so buy Jejudo.” The reason I’m telling [this story] is because such incredible things come out of that seemingly serious and upright mouth of his”.

That’s more or less how the conversation went between the two, at least according to Kiyoshi Sasamori (former head of Japan Trade Union Confederation aka Rengo), who related the story on Wednesday at a party for a DPJ Lower House candidate in Nagasaki Prefecture, where Tsushima belongs*. The roots of the conversation lie in a conservative-nationalist campaign that Sankei has been pushing over the influx in recent years of South Korean tourists and investment into Tsushima, a Japanese island lying between the Kyushu mainland and the Korean Peninsula. Some South Koreans like to press territorial claims against the islands, likely in a tit-for-tat against Japanese claims on Takeshima, the uninhabited outcrop that is currently administered by the South Korean government. South Korean claims lend piquancy if not quite credibility to the national security worries of a South Korean invasion on the part of Takeo Hiranuma and his conservative, mostly LDP, Diet-member colleagues. However, given the labor union’s overall support for progressive causes, Sasamaori’s intent was unlikely to have been intended to whip up such nationalist sentiments with this story.

So, against this background, there were at least three possible ways to go with this story:

1. Ozawa is stupid enough to believe that we can/should put together Japanese money to buy up Jejudo.

2. Ozawa had said in effect, Chill out, guys, it’s not as if the South Koreans are going to chop up Tsushima and ship the pieces back to Korea. We could buy Jejudo and that wouldn’t mean jack either.

3. Ignore it.

This being an Ozawa story, the Japanese media did not take the sensible route (guess which one), nor either of the other two, and just reported Sasamori’s comments without commentary, most of them initially touching only on Ozawa’s purported words. The last point seems to have confused the South Koreans, who are up in arms over what is most likely an imaginary affront. The LDP and the Communist Party, comrade in arms, have taken this as the cue to pile on. Now I am no fan of Ozawa, but isn’t a politician allowed a little irony? However, Ozawa being Ozawa, he has done a poor job of ‘splainin. Which brings me to my next point:

Nobody is going to cut Ozawa any slack. The media don’t like him in the first place; they’re not going to give a Prime Minister Ozawa the benefit of the doubt. He has few if any friends in his own DPJ beyond the 40-strong contingency personally beholden to him, the opposition alliance is a marriage of pure convenience, and most of the other old-school politicians who might share generational sympathies are back in the LDP. (He has already alienated his erstwhile colleagues in what is now New Komeito.) Perhaps worst of all, Ozawa is ill-equipped to handle this constant public, often hostile, attention to every detail of his actions. Since the Nishimatsu scandal exploded over his head, he has been doing his best to be accessible, and smile at the camera and offer harmless non sequiturs, as his handlers have obviously telling him to. But he’s no Mitt Romney; he has a hard time playacting for a day, let alone forever—which is what the Prime Minister’s job will feel like.

* The Japanese original comes from an excerpt posted here by Sankei, who taped Sasamori’s original talk.

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For what it’s worth, Tsushima is a group of islands 708.7 km2 and a population of 41,000, while Jejudo is an island with an area of 1,845.55 km2 and a population of 560,000. Tsuyoshi Shinjo, the former New York Met and sometime underwear model, is Tsushima’s most famous export, and I once had a crush on a girl from Jejudo when the Earth was young and the gods walked among us.

If North Korean “Satellite Launch” Impacts Japan-U.S. Alliance, It Will Be by Accident

Question: If North Korea claims that it is a launch of a satellite, would you still consider such a launch to be a target of interception?
Minister: As far as such a launch has any impact on Japan, I would consider it a matter of course to respond to it…According to Article 82-2 of the Self-Defense Forces Act, the subject of our interception consists of “missiles and other objects that are deemed to cause serious damage to human life and property due to their fall and are not aircraft”, so even if it is a rocket, an artificial satellite that has the possibility of going out of control and falling on our country is obviously included, so I think that it is natural to respond to that situation.
—from Defense Minister Yuichi Hamada’s March 3 press conference; the English-language abstract is available here

Sounds reasonable. The United States will be in a similar situation with regard to its own territory. So within minutes after North Korea launches the latest version of the Taepodong, the U.S. surveillance system will calculate the trajectory of the projectile and determine where it is likely to fall. If it is determined that it is likely to fall on Japanese territory, the two AEGIS-equipped destroyersescort vessels currently deployed by the JSDF will attempt to intercept it. (The Land Forces’ Patriot missiles will intercept it on the way down if the AEGIS system fails to do the job.) The half-dozen U.S. AEGIS-equipped vessels in the neighborhood should also be obligated to attempt an intercept under the Mutual Defense Treaty, although I’m not as sure on this point.

However, if it’s determined that the projectile is likely to land on U.S. territory, the Japanese AEGIS system cannot intercept it under the current official interpretation of the Japanese Constitution regarding collective self-defense. Although North Korean authorities would never dare to aim the launch at U.S. (or for that matter Japanese) territory, the rocket does have a long range if there’s any truth to the speculations, and there’s a fairly good chance that the rocket could accidentally go astray at or immediately after the launch.—at which point there is a small but undeniable possibility that this asymmetrical and technically remediable gap in the “mutuality” of the national security relationship will pass from the theoretical to the actual.

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Satoshi Morimoto, my favorite North Korea expert in Japan—he always seems to know what he’s talking about—has a fairly detailed explanation of the technical and political issues in a Sankei column.

No Mention in KCNA of Hillary Clinton’s Visits

The Korean Central News Agency is studiously ignoring Secretary of State Clinton’s trip to Japan, South Korea and China. It’s also ignoring her trip to Indonesia, although it did acknowledge (February 18) a visit to the site of the 13th Kinjongilia Festival by the third secretary from the Indonesian embassy in Pyongyang.

Seriously, were the third secretary and the Cuban first secretary the only foreign dignitaries to take an interest in the event(February 20)? You wonder what they won’t give to have the current U.S. Secretary of State attend one of their mass games.

North Korea Mum on Hillary Clinton’s Visit to Japan

Recently, North Korea has been making noises about U.S. plans for all-out war and throwing verbal stink bombs at South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak regime, all the while going through the motions of preparing for a Taepodon launch. However, it has been relatively quiet with regard to Japan and, unless I’ve missed something, has studiously ignored Hillary Clinton’s visit to Japan and her meeting with family members of the abductees—as well as her comments regarding its nuclear program. Instead, the Korean Central News Agency has chosen to focus on more groundbreaking news such as a third secretary from the Indonesian embassy and a first secretary from the Cuban embassy “visit[ing] the venue of the 13th Kimjongilia Festival on Feb. 18 on the occasion of the February holiday.” (February 18, folks. The site does not have direct links to individual articles.)

Nothing surprising here if you conceive all of North Korea’s actions and words as tactical moves in the service of a strategy that is intended to maximize economic returns without giving up and when possible enhancing its two bargaining chips. And what are they? One, we will pee on you (conventional and nuclear military power); and two, we will throw up on you (internal meltdown). Yes, North Korea is Bizarro baby. It does need a U.S. interlocutor, though, and likely figures that, with her Billary Albright associations, the Secretary of State is better than most.

Japan Provokes North Korea Threat to Resuscitate Yongbyon Reactors? Think Again.

If you read only this Reuters report, you might think that Japan’s refusal to provide heavy fuel oil under the 2007 October 3 Six-Parties Agreement is to blame for North Korea’s threat to stop dismantling its core nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. Not true. All the five powers had decided to suspend fuel shipments after the December Six-Party talks because North Korea would not agree to a verification protocol, as this State Department briefing notes (it is more carefully laid out in this VOA report), although Russia and China appears to have later denied agreeing to such a thing. Reuters obviously failed to factcheck the Kyodo wire report on which the report was based. Besides, the tab for the “Japanese” portion of the fuel aid was going to be picked up by Australia, with the understanding that Japan would shoulder a proportionately larger share of the burden further down the line.

Then why is North Korea blaming Japan weeks after the deed? If you could read the original Kyodo wire, you would find that the whole thing stemmed from a somewhat misleading press briefing that Yoshihiro Kawakami, a hardcore pro-North Korea parliamentarian gave in Beijing after talks with an North Korean Embassy official there. Kawakami essentially did the proverbial “awakening the sleeping baby”. As an enterprising Asahi reporter in Tokyo later found out by asking Kawakami himself, the North Korean official had told him that “it doesn’t matter if (Japan’s share of the assistance) is [coming from] another country, but if it doesn’t happen, (the disabling operation) will be to that extent suspended. (（日本の分の支援は）別の国でも構わないが、できなければ（無能力化作業は）その分だけ中断される。)”

Of course the　North　Korean　official　would　have　badmouthed　the official Japanese line; he was talking to a　sympathetic Japanese　Diet　member, who could be expected to follow suit. But even that Kawakami took note of the fact and duly reported that it was the fuel oil (or its equivalent) that counted, not the name on the CARE package. As an aside to this post but a matter very significant for the security situation in the region, I note that the North Korean official indicated a proportional suspension of disablement, not a reversal thereof. This may have been a slip of the tongue by the official (unlikely) or misunderstanding by Kawakami (possible), but if true, it would be signal from the North Korean side that, for the time being, a freeze of the status quo—North Korea retains strategic ambiguity regarding its nuclear capacity but makes no overt move to enhance it—that I predicted more than a year ago is in store, at least until President-Elect Obama has settled in and is ready to deal with the issue, not a sure thing during the first years of his administration.

The New York Times actually gets a lot of the facts right in its December 29 editorial, although it predictably manages to misrepresent the Japanese position on fuel aid. To quote:

Japan was already reneging on its commitment to supply fuel aid, and Australia, which had stepped into the breach, announced that it would withhold its contribution.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the Japanese position and shows a lack of understanding of the October 3 Six-Parties Agreement, which states:

The DPRK and Japan agreed to make “sincere efforts” to normalize their relations.

Although it requires heavy reading between the lines, this essentially meant that Japan would give North Korea upwards of a trillion yen if the latter came clean on the abductees. Like it or not, for Japan, this is part and parcel of its rights and obligations under the Six Parties Agreement. From the Japanese perspective, it is North Korea who has reneged. I know that Americans think that Japan is nuts for insisting on putting the abduction issue on the Six Parties agenda, and I have been critical of the Japanese government and media on this matter. But it’s a whole nuther thing to ignore it as a fact of life like the NYT editorial does.

The Kimster Appears to Be Well Enough to Make the Rounds. But It’s Probably Not What You Think It Is

I say this picture is for real. Why? Because the picture says he has thermoregulatory problems. And his face looks visibly aged. I am now convinced that he did have a stroke, and that it shows. You may ask, don’t the North Koreans know how to photoshop the Dear Leader? Of course they do.

My guess is, the North Korean regime is preparing its subjects for the inevitable by uploading images of the beginning of the end of Kim Jong I

Why Totalitarianism Is Bad for Efficiency and Other Unspeakable Matters

Read this post on the Daily NK. It’s a reminder that as bad as the market economy can be, it could be worse.

Speaking of North Korea, did you know that a tenured academic gave a talk at an institution of education that should have known better than to give it a platform? It claimed that all the problems that the rest of the world has with North Korea would go away if only Japan sincerely apologized for its war crimes. At that point, I walked out, so I don’t know what more it had to say about North Korea—its main claim to fame is its eloquent defense of the Khmer Rouge back in the day, so go figure—but let me know if you were there. On second thought, don’t.

Then there’s the academic who claimed intimate knowledge of Barack Obama, then went on to vent its hate of the President-Elect. The funny thing was, the only facts it could come up with were a rehash of the two books that Obama had written. It also managed to slander the University of Michigan Law School on the occasion. Mind you, this is such a slimy character that it refused to speak on the record, although there was no such notice on the announcement of the event.

These two things are the best argument against tenure. Or allowing academics to speak out beyond their professed area of expertise.

Shoichi Nakagawa’s Choice of Regrettables Is Not by Accident

The English-language media seized on the “extremely regrettable” comment that Shoichi Nakagawa, Finance Minister and well-known hardliner, made with regard to the U.S. delisting of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and took it as the expression of Japanese displeasure. There was one article that even speculated that Japan might stop the U.S.-DPRK agreement at the Six-Party Talks. In fact, Mr. Nakagawa’s words had served only to let off steam. That should have been clear from the circumstances and the wording.

First, the easy one. The Finance Minister does not speak for Japan on North Korea’s nuclear issue. He has as much authority with regard to the Six-Party talks as the death penalty. Or reproductive rights. And the list goes on.

Second, for “regrettable”, he used, “残念”, more a show of disappointment than “遺憾”, the word used in officialdom to register a protest or issue an apology. (It totally depends on the context; I know, that’s weird and somewhat weasely, but no more so than the “I’m sorry if you were offended” apology favored by American public figures.) “残念” lacks direction; it does not make any demands, explicit or implicit, on the Bush administration. In today’s Upper House Budget Committee Q&A, Prime Minister Aso used the word “不満”, or “dissatisfied”. Mr. Aso also avoided the most obvious choice of words if he had intended to register an official protest. The two political veterans knew what they were doing; “不満”, like ”残念”, are emotive words. What the two men did was to use words that are high on emotion but low on action in order to soothe local discontent while minimizing friction with the Bush administration.

What all this means is that North Korea is now a nuclear pseudo-power; China and South Korea will provide its upkeep, but Japan will not, and the abduction issue will recede into the background, until North Korea sees a way to use it to its economic advantage. That is the new status quo, the new equilibrium.

North Korea Delisted; Life Goes on

Last January, I made the following speculation on what it would take to move beyond phase two:

It is barely conceivable that the lame-duck Bush administration could bring the North Koreans around to a deal on the declaration that it can defend against Congressional accusations of caving in. But that would require North Korea to make a couple of difficult decisions, at least one of which would completely strip North Korea of the strategic ambiguity that it currently enjoys.

First, the two sides must come up with a plausible explanation of the scope and extent of North Korea’s uranium program, or, much less likely, a convincing case that there is no such thing… [S]econd, the two sides must come up with a plausible explanation of the scope and extent of North Korea’s plutonium stockpile and nuclear arsenal, such as there is.

I was highly skeptical about this. In any case, the United States delisted North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism somewhat short of my guesses. So much for my powers of prediction. I’m not sure that the Six-Party process has moved beyond phase two though. It seems more like the twilight zone dada-dada, dada-dada… between phases two and three… which looks a lot like what I most recently talked about here:

I still think that by far the most likely better-case scenario for the foreseeable future is North Korea disabling its three facilities but holding onto its current nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles system at their current levels, enough to allow China and South Korea to keep sustaining the current North Korean regime without incurring US disfavor, but well short of normalization of the US-DPRK relations.

As for the abduction issue, I’ve long believed that nothing of note will happen without regime change in Pyongyang. The Fukuda regime sought to push the process forward with the agreement on a new survey on the fate of the rest of the abductees—which would have led to ultimate disappointment. With the U.S. delisting in the bag, my money is on an indefinite delay on the part of the North Korean authorities until they feel the desire for another political fix, likely when (not if) North Korea-U.S. relations comes to an impasse again.