Japan tests North Korea sanctions waters
By Matthew Rusling

TOKYO - Japan has imposed what amount to maritime sanctions against North Korea by requiring that all ships - not only North Korean - must carry hefty insurance against oil spills and other liabilities, and most of Pyongyang's ships do not buy that costly coverage. Japan has started random checks of ships of various nationalities entering Japanese waters.

This is a first, relatively minor step, and a concession to Japanese public opinion and shrill calls for sanctions to punish Pyongyang for abducting Japanese citizens over the decades and then lying about the full extent of the kidnappings and sending back bogus "remains". Tokyo is holding off, however, on major, economic sanctions authorized last year, as it still hopes that North Korea will return to the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament. Full-fledged sanctions could give Pyongyang another reason not to participate.

In its frustration over the abductee issue Tokyo has revised a law that will require all ships weighing more than 100 tons and docking in Japanese harbors to carry expensive indemnity insurance. Such a hefty cost - the lowest premium is 100 million yen (about US$950,000) - may be unaffordable and thus tantamount to sanctions for impoverished North Korea.

The revised law, which took effect on Tuesday, was written after a North Korean freighter ran aground at a port in Ibaraki prefecture in December 2002, resulting in a fuel spill that cost the prefectural government 650 million yen.

Knowing that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has said specific targeted sanctions (approved by the Japanese Diet last year) would amount to a declaration of war and are thus not an option right now, Japan has opted to take more gradual action in requiring substantial maritime insurance that affects North Korea as well as some other countries. As Japan is an island nation dependent on maritime industries, clean waters are essential to the nation's survival. It would be difficult for neighbors to justify criticizing a law attempting to safeguard the environment.

On February 28, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported that Japanese officials in talks in Seoul over the weekend said relations between North Korea and Japan were worsening because of the abduction issue and Pyongyang's failure to disclose what happened to missing persons. The newspaper quoted a Japanese official as saying, "If there is no movement [on the nuclear and abduction issues], we will have no option but to take severe measures ..."

This has put Japan's leadership in a difficult situation. On the one hand, its growing frustration over the abduction issue is evident. On the other, it knows the risks of political confrontation with North Korea, which now says it has nuclear weapons. In a clear reference to North Korea, Japan recently gave its Defense Agency authorization to shoot down incoming missiles without first consulting the cabinet.

The Harbor Office at Niigata said that, at the moment, no one knows whether any North Korean ships will be able to dock at Niigata's West Port, the site at which North Korean ships usually land. Written into the new law is Japan's ability to search and seize ships violating insurance requirements.

Calls for sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom intensified in Japan after DNA tests revealed that the purported returned remains of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted by North Korea in 1977, belonged to someone else. Pyongyang said she killed herself in 1994.

Also, on Tuesday, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported that about 10 North Korean ships entered Sakai port in Tottori and were inspected.

The Sankei Shimbun website reported that North Korean ships landed at Maizuru port in Kyoto and Sakai port in Tottori on Tuesday. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation boarded and inspected the ships; the results of the inspection were not immediately known.

On Monday, four North Korean ships entered Sakai port in Tottori, fueling speculation that they were taking advantage of the last day before the law went into effect. Time will tell whether and how strictly the law will be enforced, and whether ships will test the law.

According to Japan's Sankei newspaper, 16 North Korean ships might obtain insurance by March 25 from the Montana Municipal Insurance Authority (MMIA), a New Zealand-based insurance company. However, this does not include the Mangyoubon, a ship used to carry passengers and cargo, including expensive foods from Japan for the North Korean elite. It has been speculated that the Mangyoubon also was used to transport abductees to North Korea. It is not known whether it has the required insurance.

In an e-mail to the Asia Times Online, Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, a US-based non-profit educational foundation sponsoring programs on national security, foreign affairs, and human-rights issues, said, "I think the abduction issue is an illustration of just how out of touch with human feeling Kim Jong-il is - I think he believed if he confessed that [North Korea] did this, it would all go away. I don't think he realizes that human beings care about their loved ones."

The law went into effect at a time of increasing uncertainty in the region, especially after North Korea's recent claim of having a nuclear device and statement that it was suspending participation in the six-nation disarmament talks. It later said it might rejoin under certain conditions, not publicized.

In response to these claims, China said it would persuade North Korea to rejoin the six-party talks as soon as possible. North Korea's official news agency reported on February 21 that Kim Jong-il said to visiting Chinese envoy Wang Jiarui, "[North Korea] has never opposed the six-party talks but made every possible effort for their success."

North Korea, while announcing that it has nuclear weapons and is suspending participation in the talks, said the stalemate in the talks is attributable to the "US hostile policy" toward North Korea.

Rodger Baker, senior analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, said this statement "offered nothing new. In fact, [Kim] re-clarified that it was the US stand that hampered the resumption of six-party talks. There was nothing in his statement that was conciliatory ... It still lays out that the US must change its stance on DPRK [the Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and regime change for six-party talks to resume.”

This and other statements and actions from the leadership have left some observers wondering just what it is that North Korea wants. Some say its prize is US diplomatic relations. Baker told Asia Times Online via telephone that Pyongyang wants nothing less than full diplomatic ties with Washington, in order to legitimize the regime. That North Korea's announcement came not long after the inauguration of US President George W Bush to a second term was no coincidence. Baker said, "North Korea wants to lay out Bush’s agenda ... and make [itself] the center of US attention."

Relations with the US would establish North Korea as a member of the international community. Having watched the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as China’s economic transition, North Korea's leaders are keen geopolitical observers. Baker said, "North Korea is looking for economic change that will not require a change in the North Korean political system."

But there have been signs that neighbors besides Japan are losing patience. China has historically supported the Kim family, both because of North Korea's geographical position as a buffer state and because of the potential costs of a regime collapse. But some believe Chinese generosity has its limits.

"I don't see China bailing out North Korea any more than it already has. I think they have just about had it with him" (Kim Jong-il), Scholte said in an e-mail to Asia Times Online.

In March 2003, China shut down the gas pipeline to North Korea for three days, saying repairs were needed. Some observers viewed this as a clear statement to Kim Jong-il, although China denies this. But Baker believes that China's influence in the current crisis is limited, and that North Korea is "not willing to bend even to the Chinese".

Like its neighbors, China approaches the topic of sanctions with caution. Professor Lee Sung-yoon, Korea expert at Tufts University, said that "all parties, in one way or another, are wary to impose sanctions on North Korea". He said, "It would ... raise the pressure on the DPRK by another notch, and also create expectations for immediate changes in North Korea's behavior."

If sanctions did not have immediate positive results, Lee said the US would "run out of policy options".

For sanctions to be effective, they would have to be coordinated among several different nations. Whatever North Korea cannot get from Japan, it can get from China (until and unless it loses patience) or South Korea, which sees the North as tragically misunderstood and still wants to engage Pyongyang.

Masaharu Nakagawa, a member of Japan's Diet and co-founder of International Parliamentarians' Coalition for the North Korean Refugees and Human Rights (IPCNKR), said in a telephone interview with Asia Times Online, "Sanctions against North Korea could be a diplomatic card, but to make any real headway we must talk to the Chinese and the [South] Koreans."

But South Korea would be unlikely to support sanctions. Lee, from Tufts University, said, "It's understandable that the leftist government in South Korea opposes [sanctions], as ardently bent upon staging another inter-Korean summit as it is. The South also might fear the possibility of North Korean military provocation."

Baker said one might roughly estimate a 20% chance that the North would ever attack the South. But this number, although probably viewed with relief in Washington, has a different meaning for Seoul, located just kilometers from the demarcation line.

Last November in Los Angeles, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun flatly ruled out sanctions. North Korea has requested 500,000 tons of chemical fertilizer for this spring, but in a break from Seoul's usual stance, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hong-jae told reporters last week, "At present, the government is prudently considering whether to sanction the fertilizer aids."

Lee said UN-endorsed sanctions against North Korea would not be an impossibility, especially if the regime were to test a nuclear device. In that case, "sufficient international pressure would have built up for China and Russia to abstain from casting a veto [against sanctions] in the United Nations Security Council. This would further legitimize and internationalize the US position."

Kim has often demonstrated his sensitivity to the issue by saying sanctions would force him to turn the Korean Peninsula into a "sea of fire", a statement that has caused some observers to speculate that sanctions would indeed affect North Korea's top brass.

Lee said, "Sanctions, even if they were to disrupt 10% of North Korea's trade, would certainly bear ill effect on the flow of amenities into the hands of the leadership - food, drinks, clothing, TV sets, cars, etc. Facing disgruntled generals and middle-class officers is not in Kim Jong-il's best interest."

Lee said, "Japan today is the only country the US can trust to take action in squeezing North Korea." Seventy percent of Japanese now say they support sanctions against North Korea in response to Pyongyang's duplicity in the case of abducted Megumi Yokota.

"Although no one can say with certainty that sanctions would create conditions for the collapse of the Kim regime," Lee said, "they just might push the Dear Leader one step closer to that which he most fears."

Matthew Rusling is a freelance writer based in Osaka, Japan.

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