Although Japan, as an ally of the United States, mostly toes the latter’s regional security policy line, occasional divergences are common. Japan’s geographical proximity to and increasing economic interdependence with China have worked in both advocating moderation in US regional secu-rity policy and urging stronger US commitment to regional secusecu-rity. As US-China relations have had ups and downs, Japan’s stance toward China
Explaining Japan’s North Korea Policy 117 has not been in perfect synchronization with the United States, and the resulting divergence has affected Japan’s policy toward North Korea as well.
Japan has been ambivalent about China’s diplomatic role toward North Korea. At the outset of the nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, US bilateral deal-ing with North Korea left little room for inputs by Japan. Japan grudgdeal-ingly stayed behind US President Bill Clinton’s bilateral negotiation (through his special envoy former president Jimmy Carter), after lodging its opposition to military actions against North Korea at the time.9 Japan was not satisfied with two aspects of the outcome of the bilateral negotiation—assigning to Japan a large part of the light-water reactors construction in North Korea and not addressing North Korea’s ballistic missiles whose range had already covered the western half of Japan at the time.10
Behind the United States’ deal with North Korea was an optimism that North Korea’s regime would collapse soon.11 Japan was more cautious and also ambivalent about such an outcome, for instability in North Korea would most directly affect proximate countries including Japan. North Korea had violated a series of international agreements and later UN resolutions to refrain from launching ballistic missiles. North Korea’s test launching of a long-range Taepodong missile in 1998 nearly caused Japan to withdraw from funding of the light-water reactors, but the United States and others persuaded Japan to stay within the agreed framework. Japan demanded that the United States negotiate a freeze on North Korea’s ballistic missile program. Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s visit to Pyongyang, however, only produced a North Korea agreement to “indefinitely postpone” launch-ing of long-range ballistic missiles—ambiguous language to be abused by North Korea in the following years.12 The 1998 missile test became a major catalyst for Japan to overcome domestic opposition against participation in joint research on Theater Missile Defense (TMD) with the United States.
Consideration of China’s verbal opposition to the TMD13 yielded to the threat perception against North Korea, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koi-zumi in 2002 announced Japan’s participation.
The shift in the US approach to the North Korea problems under the George W. Bush administration was a welcome development for Japan, but did not solve Japan’s ambivalence. On one hand, the new Six-Party Talks (6PT) framework assured Japan a voice on the North Korea matters.
This was a relief for Japan, as it had struggled to be included in the face of South Korea’s efforts to keep Japan out through most of the 1990s. On the other hand, US reliance on China’s chairing of the 6PT reminded Japan of the Clinton-era “Japan passing” when the United States called China a “strategic partner.” The use of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) mechanism among the United States, Japan, and South Korea during the first term of the Bush administration was supposed to ease Japan’s fear that the United States and China might be calling the shots. However, South Korea President Roh Moo Hyun’s radically pro-North approach caused a major divergence from the other two countries, making the TCOG dysfunctional, and the United States in Bush’s second term stopped using the TCOG mechanism under Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. There also was a concern in the US government that Japan’s abduction issue could become an obstacle in the overall negotiation.
This fear was also a product of self-reflection among core members of the US negotiating team (such as the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, and Christopher Hill), who saw others in the same government (such as Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush) still wishing for a regime change. But, the major turn in the second Bush administration was that Bush saw opening, not isolation, of North Korea as the way to “regime change.”14 Japan has avoided being made a scapegoat for failed talks by staying in, despite a complete lack of progress on the abduction issue since 2004.
Japan’s abduction issue is in a catch-22 situation. North Korea is will-ing to approach Japan only when it is completely isolated from the other members of the 6PT, and Japan must negotiate the abduction issue without rewarding North Korea outside the 6PT framework. US negotiators have frequently forgotten that they too were in multilateral talks. In response, while Japan did not completely spoil the talks, it did express its dissatisfac-tion via withholding of financial contribudissatisfac-tions to multilateral efforts. The pattern was repeated when the United States delisted North Korea from the list of terror sponsors (thereby lifting part of its financial sanctions against North Korea) in 2008 in exchange for agreeing with the United States to start the first step of dismantling the nuclear capabilities. The last gambit of President Bush cost the United States 400 million dollars in aid, but North Korea only demolished a cooling-water tower at the Yongbyon
Explaining Japan’s North Korea Policy 119 complex. Japan did not join the aid group and maintained its financial sanctions against North Korea.
The repeated nuclear tests (2006, 2009, and 2013) and missile tests by North Korea and its two major military provocations against South Korea in 2010 have suspended the 6PT, and these issues have been referred to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). President Obama’s call to negotiate with North Korea “anywhere, anytime” was conditioned by a firm US stance not to reward North Korea for merely appearing at meetings. As this US stance became clear toward the latter half of 2009, North Korea announced that it would not return to the 6PT. This development did not increase Japan’s fear of US bilateralism. However, shifting of the center of negotiations to the UNSC increased the weight of China and Russia when negative (unlike the positives in the 6PT) inducements for North Korea were to be discussed. Japan was a nonpermanent member of UNSC, 2005–2006 and 2009–2010, and worked closely with the United States in preparing UNSC resolutions. In 2006, Japan played an important role in the prepara-tions of two key resoluprepara-tions. In response to North Korea’s missile test in July 2006, Japan sponsored UNSC Resolution 1695, which denounced the test, demanded North Korea suspend its missile programs, abandon nuclear programs, and return to the 6PT and the IAEA framework of inspection.15 Japan’s call for sanctions under UN Charter 7, however, met threats of veto from China and Russia, and a resulting US effort to persuade it to settle on softer language. North Korea’s defiance and a nuclear test three months later encouraged Japan to sponsor UNSC Resolution 1718, which incorporated the language of complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament of North Korea and added sanctions under UN Charter 7 to empower the demands of the resolutions.16 The UNSC Resolution 1874 in response to North Korea’s third nuclear test in May 2009 enabled maritime forced inspection of cargo ships suspected of carrying WMD-related cargo.17
Although credits are due to various actors for the improved cooperation in the UN Security Council, the close and patient diplomatic coordination between the United States and Japan in 2006 and 2009 to work the inter-national public opinion raised the diplomatic cost for China to continue behaving as North Korea’s guardian and eventually cornered China into agreeing to sanctions against North Korea. The UNSC Resolution 1874 in 2009 and absence of US bilateral flirtation with North Korea since then
have marked a limited success for Japanese diplomacy. However, given the experience of the failed 6PT in 2008, Japan is worrying about a similar misguided venture by Obama in his lame duck years.