Japan's Relations With North Korea and the Recalibration of Risk by Ra Mason

Author:Ra Mason [Mason, Ra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Ethnic Studies, General, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781317915829
Google: bi5zAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22149004
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

The 2001 spy-boat shoot-out: the risks from North Korea close in

The second North Korean maritime incursion, or “spy-boat” engaging with the JCG, represented an important milestone in Japan’s recalibration of risk in response to the DPRK. Not least, this is because it showed a clear differentiation from previous risk calibrations and (risk-taking) counter-measures, such as those applied in the 1999 incident. Therein, in the 2001 incident, the risks of violating Japan’s constitutional constraints and international maritime law, and those of escalation into a full-fledged military contingency, were reprioritized subordi-nately to those of North Korea making further sovereign violations, i.e. based on the justification of ameliorating apparently greater risks being posed to national security by vessels illegally entering Japan’s EEZ (Black, 2006). In essence, the December 2001 sinking of the DPRK-registered vessel demonstrated that Japan had not only recalibrated the risks framed against North Korea, but also that it was willing to justify assertive responses and actions towards them, based upon a perception of their increasing salience. 9

When the Diet resumed in the early months of 2002, North Korea was very much an issue at the forefront of parliamentary debate. Yet, direct references to the spy boat incursion were still limited in scope and volume when compared to the flux of vociferous addresses made in the wake of successive events in the years that followed. However, the shoot-out had clearly allowed the framing of the DPRK to pick up pace within Japan’s policy community, and was, thereafter, rolled into a snowball of rapidly increasing size. Through the first half of 2002 this included abduction (though far more so post-September 2002), nuclear proliferation, ballistic missile, spy-boat incursion, and humanitarian issues which were regularly lumped together as “all the North Korea problems” (kitachōsen no shomondai). Representative of this position, and adhering closely to terminology expressed by then Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō (main session, February 4, 154: 9), was government minister Kawaguchi Junko. In her address to the Security Committee on February 26, 2002 (154: 21) Kawaguchi listed the 2001 “armed suspicious ship” (busō fushinsen) incident as a central element in the dangers facing the regional security environment, sandwiching it between those stemming from the multiple 9/11 terror attacks and the proliferation of WMD. 10 This demonstrates a remarkable attribution of risk in response to North Korea, towards which, conversely, the subject of diplomatic normalization was relegated to a brief statement buried later in her passage. Furthermore, the springboard provided by the 1998 Taepodong launch and following years’ maritime incursions (1999 and 2001) are suggestive of how specific events were used, metaphorically speaking, as increasingly large dots which could be joined together in creating and inflaming an image which framed the DPRK as an expanding source of multifaceted risks (attached to nuclear, abduction, WMD etc. issues). The combination of such risks was then mediated between the state, market, and society at increasingly higher calibrations, as a single phenomenon, to the point where Japan was apparently required to tackle the North Korea problems head-on.11

In addition,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.