An enduring crisis: Assessing the state of Japan’s North Korea policy
An enduring crisis: Assessing the state of Japan’s North Korea policy
WRITTEN BY SEBASTIAN MASLOW
9 December 2021
Japan’s national security has gradually departed from its post-war pacifist posture. In facilitating this change, policymakers in Japan have utilised crisis narratives that emphasise the North Korean threat. Securitised into pivotal policy focus in Japan’s national security discourse, policymakers and diplomats in Tokyo have found it difficult to reinitiate dialogue with Pyongyang to end the bilateral stalemate and to normalise the two countries’ diplomatic relationship. The arrival of the new Kishida government in Japan promises little change as the conservative LDP-led administration pushes for further change in Japan’s security posture to include pre-emptive strike capabilities and an increase in the defence budget.
From dialogue to diplomatic stalemate
Almost two decades have passed since the leaders of Japan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, henceforth North Korea) convened in Pyongyang on 17 September 2002. This was the first summit between the countries’ heads of state since the collapse of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula in 1945. In compliance with Japan’s precondition for diplomatic rapprochement, North Korea acknowledged its Cold War-era involvement in state-sponsored kidnapping of Japanese citizens and issued an official apology. Signing the Pyongyang Declaration initiated the process of normalising diplomatic relations and committed North Korea to defusing tensions over its missile and nuclear programmes. Amidst Washington’s labelling of North Korea as part of the ‘axis of evil’, Tokyo’s approach to securing peace and stability in Northeast Asia marked a major success in post-war Japanese diplomacy.
Unfortunately, the summit did not result in the normalisation of Japan-DPRK diplomatic relations but triggered a wave of anti-DPRK sentiment in Japan steered by outrage over the abduction issue. Quickly, the initial narrative of diplomatic success tilted towards fierce criticism of Japan’s post-war pacifist security system, which was blamed for having endangered the safety of the Japanese population and deemed incapable of securing the nation in light of a ‘rogue’ North Korean state. While North Korea has declared the issue ‘resolved’, Japanese policymakers defined the immediate return of all abductees, provision of reliable information of all abduction cases, and the handing over of all North Koreans involved in the kidnappings a precondition for any future engagement with North Korea. Officially, the Japanese government has identified 17 victims. While five returned to Japan in 2002, and their families in 2004, the fate of the remaining twelve victims remains unknown.
With the US pushing its agenda of ‘integrated deterrence’ in Asia and North Korea testing new missiles, pressure on Japan to obtain capabilities to strike enemy bases will likely gain further momentum.
Thus backed by a powerful political movement that was formed in support of the abductees and their families, the DPRK threat was elevated to the top of Japan’s security agenda while Tokyo’s DPRK policy shifted from dialogue to pressure. The spotlight on North Korea and the abduction issue ensured that a new brand of conservative elites in Japanese politics was able to entrench their power. They pledged a ‘departure’ from a ‘weak’ and ‘vulnerable’ post-war state, limited in its military capabilities by the principles and norms of pacifism most prominently enshrined in the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. At the front of this movement was Shinzo Abe, who secured his first though short tenure as prime minister in 2006 as a result of his long-standing support of the abduction victims. His calls for a tough policy against North Korea resulted in a series of unilateral and multilateral sanctions, increased pressure against North Korea-affiliated groups within Japan, and new government institutions devoted to coordinating Japan’s domestic and international actions to promote awareness of the abduction issue as part of North Korea’s human rights violations.
North Korea as a national crisis
The abduction issue has been known since the 1980s and politically acknowledged since the late 1990s, while the DPRK’s missile and nuclear development has been a political and national security concern in Japan since the early 1990s. Yet, it was only in 2002 that North Korea turned into Japan’s nemesis, rendering diplomatic initiatives impossible. No significant progress has unfolded since. The reason for the absence of diplomatic progress is twofold, first, North Korea has become instrumental for conservative policymakers to redirect Japan towards a proactive security and defence posture, and second, Japan has failed to sustain a credible diplomatic channel to the DPRK. Following his return to power in 2012, Abe renewed his pledge for a ‘strong’ and ‘new’ Japan while announcing a ‘proactive pacifism’ as the nation’s new security doctrine. The government introduced a new National Security Strategy and new security institutions such as a National Security Council. In 2014, the constitution was reinterpreted to allow for Japan’s participation in collective self-defence operations in support of key security allies. The Abe government implemented all these changes with clear reference to ‘an increasingly severe security environment’, a bellicose North Korea in particular.
After a brief interlude of rapprochement during 2014 and 2015 and bilateral attempts to end the diplomatic stalemate caused by the abduction issue, Japan-DPRK relations quickly deteriorated again, as North Korea demonstrated its increasingly potent missile and nuclear force. As tensions between the US and DPRK escalated in 2017, putting the Korean peninsula “on the brink” of war, Abe embraced Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ doctrine as he pushed for further change to Japan’s security system. As North Korea fired its missiles over Japanese territory, schools conducted evacuation drills, alerts were sent to mobile phones and train services were put on halt. The Abe administration put North Korea at the core of a declared ‘national crisis’, its competent handling, of course, only to be ensured by a conservative leadership in control of national security. Amplifying the DPRK threat, Abe and his LDP in 2017 secured an electoral landslide victory.
In light of the 2017 DPRK crisis, Japanese strategists called for new defence equipment including state-of-the-art fighter jets and an upgrade of ballistic missile defence, initially introduced in 2003 following Tokyo’s abrupt shift towards pressure against North Korea. As Japan moved to introduce the Aegis Ashore ground-based defence system and a fleet of new F-35 aircraft, 2017 saw a record-high defence budget. Scrapping the one-per cent budget ceiling for defence was again debated, as was exploration to develop pre-emptive strike capabilities to deter the North Korean missile threat. Citing technological problems, budget concerns, and local opposition, Tokyo eventually cancelled the Aegis Ashore deployment in 2020, replacing it with a revised missile defence plan based on Aegis destroyers and SM-6 missiles. Japan’s current missile defence consists of a two-phase mechanism with Aegis ship-based interceptors targeting missiles in mid-flight, and PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles targeting projectiles that penetrate Japan’s initial defence shield.
Despite repeated pledges from Japanese leaders, the resolution of the abduction issue has seen no progress since 2015. Bilateral talks have stalled with Japan ranking low on Pyongyang’s foreign policy agenda and lacking credible diplomatic channels to the DPRK. Instead, in Japan, North Korea has become an easy-to-deploy frame to push for fundamental changes to the post-war security system. This has made it difficult for leaders to respond to sudden diplomatic initiatives such as Trump’s 2017 change of course towards North Korea, leaving Japan isolated in mitigating the Korean Peninsula security crisis.
Attacking the enemy
North Korea’s testing of its Hwasong-8 ‘hypersonic’ and submarine-launched missiles in September and October this year have raised concerns over the capabilities of Japan’s missile defence. As a result, the North Korean threat has continued to determine the direction of Japan’s security discourse. To further strengthen Japan’s defence, the debate on developing an enemy base strike capability continues. During the recent LDP presidential election, contenders for the party’s top post and thus the country’s premiership have demanded hikes in Japan’s spending on defence and new defence options including pre-emptive strike capabilities. To address the 2017 DPRK missile crisis, Abe already pushed for legal and technological capabilities to strike North Korean missile bases. Such capabilities, framed as counterstrike capabilities in Japan and not considered unconstitutional, have been a topic of debate since the 1950s. With the US pushing its agenda of ‘integrated deterrence’ in Asia and North Korea testing new missiles, pressure on Japan to obtain capabilities to strike enemy bases will likely gain further momentum.
While pledging to resolve the abduction issue through dialogue with the DPRK, Kishida has already indicated that he will not ‘desecuritise’ the North Korean threat. Now seen by some as a critical juncture in further shifting Japan’s defence policy towards becoming even more militarily proactive, Kishida, long considered a ‘dove’, has amplified the DPRK threat, thus continuing the policy line of his conservative predecessors. Following his electoral success in October, Kishida has suggested strengthening Japan’s defence capabilities further, including enemy strike capabilities.
This debate will gain momentum as his administration is slated to review the nation’s medium-term defence programme, defence guidelines, and the National Security Strategy in 2022. Already, Kishida has announced adding USD 6.1 billion to Japan’s 2021 defence budget, which marks the largest-ever such supplementary budget and surpasses Japan’s one-per cent defence budget celling, long considered a hallmark of the country’s post-war pacifism. Bottom line: as Japan continues its drive towards revising the nation’s defence posture, North Korea will remain instrumental in facilitating that change. Thus securitised as Japan’s key threat, dialogue with Pyongyang remains unlikely, despite pledges to the contrary.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Sebastian Maslow is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Sendai Shirayuri Women's College. His research covers post-war Japanese politics and East Asian security affairs. A long-time resident of Japan, Sebastian has commented on Japanese and East Asian security affairs for various media outlets, including The Guardian, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Deutsche Welle, Japan Times, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. His research has been published in Asian Survey, Asian Security, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and Pacific Affairs. He is the co-editor of Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State (SUNY Press, 2021), and Risk State: Japan’s Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Routledge, 2015). Image credit: Flickr/Mark Fahey.