Category: Japan

According to the Chinese Xinhua News Agency full body tatoos are a growing fad in Japan. I really hope this is one fad that does not make it to Korea.

Apparently the crackdown on prostitution in Korea has created a surge of sex tourism in Japan.

South Korean men are pouring into Japan to use the country’s imaginative sex businesses, literally creating cultural friction, but that by no means suggests there’s any trouble, says Shukan Post (6/3). Korean men having a proclivity for Japanese sex workers is nothing new.

Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il’s son and once heir apparent, revealed when he was nabbed in Tokyo in 2001 that he frequented high class brothels in Tokyo’s Yoshiwara soapland district.

But now growing numbers of average Korean businessmen are partaking in the pleasures of the flesh like never before.

And I thought Kim Jong Nam only wanted to see Disneyland. I wonder if Bae Yung Joon made stopped by one of these soap lands during his last tour of the country?

Here is something that will make all Koreans proud:

Bubble babes, the women working the soaplands, are pleased to fire up the men from the Land of the Morning Calm.

“I’ve serviced about five Korean guys so far. They’re all very gentlemanly at first. They’ve all had military training, too, so they’re fit, really go it hard and want it time and time again. I start feeling it for real and am exhausted by the end of a session,” one worker says. “I suppose the biggest impression left on me is that all the time we’re going at it, they keep asking me in broken Japanese, ‘Am I better than a Japanese guy or what?'”

This is probably going to please many Koreans when reading this but keep in mind that this only further validates the point I made in my prior posting about the Korean inferiority complex. As long as Koreans feel like they have to compare themselves to Japan even when having sex with a prostitute, the country will never fully recover from the Japanese colonization. Koreans need to learn to just be comfortable with who they are.

Hat Tip to the Japundit.

Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister during a visit to Korea said that Japan is hesistant to share intelligence with Korea because the US does not trust Korea:

The official scoffed at reported remarks by Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi to the effect that Tokyo is unable to share intelligence with Seoul because Washington “can’t trust South Korea.” “It’s below my dignity as a Korean official to ask the Japanese why they said something like that,” he commented. He also dismissed reports in the Japanese press that Seoul’s unceremonious scrapping of a Korean-U.S. military plan for contingencies in North Korea, dubbed OPLAN 5029, would be a key topic when President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush meet next month. The matter had not made its way on the summit agenda, he said.

It is pretty odd for a Japanese official to say something like that so publicly. It may be an interesting summit for President Roh coming up.

Plunge has put together a great series of posts about the use of atomic weapons against Japan by the US during World War II. Here is a summary of the article:

Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki ended the war with Japan and saved millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese. The bombing of these two cities forced a surrender that was nearly unfathomable to the military leaders in Japan at the time. If it wasn’t for the atomic bomb, the US likely would have been forced into a long, deadly struggle to end the war with Japan, a struggle that might have been far too long and difficult for the American public to have accepted. While Japan would still have most likely surrendered, in my opinion, it would have been a negotiated surrender that would have meant more war in the future.

Read the entire series that validates the above summary.

My thoughts have always been that World War II was a conflict that was fought with the “Total War” doctrine where the bombing of cities was justifiable to break national will power to gain “Total Victory”. After World War I no total victory was ever achieved which led to World War II. If the Japanese had not surrendered and just negotiated an end to the war who is to say they wouldn’t just rearm and 15 years later start fighting again which would take more lives?

I visited the Atomic Bomb Memorial in Hiroshima 4 years ago and it makes the US look really barbaric for nuking Hiroshima. They parade all the school children into there to indoctrinate them about why the US was wrong for nuking Japan. Seeing the pictures of all the melted bodies on display the kids looked at me like I was some kind of devil. No mention is made at the memorial about the US rational for using nuclear weapons or the mention that Japan started the war to begin with.

After the battles to take Iwo Jima and Okinawa it was becoming very clear that any battle to take over the Japanese home island would cost many American lives. The nuclear bombing was a way to get Japan to surrender without having to endure heavy US casualties. When I was in college I actually debated this point with a Japanese classmate who countered that the US should of nuked a nearby coastline to display the might of the atomic weapon. The display of the power of the atomic weapon would have surely caused the militarists to surrender. That is probably what the Japanese educational system taught him as kid as he toured the A-bomb Memorial. I countered his claim by simply stating that nuking Hiroshima didn’t get the Japanese to surrender. It took two nukes to get Japan to surrender. They didn’t get the message after one nuclear bombing what would have a display of the power of a nuclear bomb have done? Plus the US only had two operational nuclear bombs at the time. They couldn’t afford to expend one on a show of force. I always felt that if the US was so barbaric and just looking to kill people the US could of just as easily nuked Tokyo or Kyoto. Instead the US chose smaller, militarily significant cities to hit. So in short yes it was right to use nuclear weapons in that conflict.

However, this topic gets me thinking to why didn’t the US just nuke Pyongyang and Beijing during the Korean War to break the North Korean and Chinese will to fight. The Korean War wasn’t fought by the “Total War” doctrine which General MacArthur was used to playing by during World War II. The Cold War and the creation of nuclear weapons had made the “Total War” doctrine obsolete because the amount of destruction that would result on both sides would make any war to costly to wage.

General MacArthur couldn’t learn to play by the new “Limited War” Doctrine and was ultimately fired by Harry Truman because of it. The use of nuclear weapons during the Korean War had the possibility of bringing the Russians into the war which the US did not want to have happen. A combined fight against the Chinese and Russians in the mountains of Korea was the wrong war at the wrong time for the US. Preventing World War III was determined to be more important than achieving Total Victory.

History has shown that Truman was right and the “Limited War” doctrine did prevent World War III but the lack of Total Victory during the Korean War continues to cause problems here on the peninsula to this day and probably for many years to come.

Interesting read in this Asia Times article about the continuing clashes between President Roh of Korea and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan.

Against all these recent favorable social and cultural exchanges by the peoples of the two countries, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun recently, on February 25 and March 1, repeatedly urged Tokyo to continue grappling with its past. On March 1, in his speech commemorating an uprising against Japanese colonial rule 86 years ago called the March 1 Independent Movement of 1919, he urged Japan to offer a heartfelt apology and settle its past history with Koreans – invasion, occupation, enslavement and forced labor, comfort women – by paying compensation if necessary in order for real reconciliation to take place.

Japan has offered its apologies and, in effect, compensation in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and grants. South Korea, however, has been planning a probe of collaborators with Japanese occupiers, a sore point with Japan and something that could embarrass some of South Korea’s top families who benefited during the occupation. The opposition wants to probe collaboration with North Korea.

Why is President Roh continuing his Japan bashing with so many positive social developments between the two countries?

While Roh is apparently trying to maintain buoyancy for his administration – his ratings have fallen significantly, far below the 70% in his prime just after his inauguration in February 2003 – by playing politics with the past, he also seems to have conveyed an unspoken warning to Tokyo, reflecting domestic public opinion: Many Koreans are alarmed by changes in Japan’s traditional pacifist military posture and growing right-wing bias in Japanese politics and society.

Could President Roh actually be using Korean nationalism to raise is low approval rating? Say it ain’t so. For Japan’s part they are not doing much to help themselves with the whole Dokto dispute. I still don’t get what Japan hopes to get out of the whole dispute. Korea will never give up those two islands. The Asia Times offers some other things Japan can do to improve relations:

For Japan’s part, it should reconsider postwar education policy in its modern history. Japanese education appears to have emphasized postwar Japan as a defeated nation, which suffered from aggression by great Western powers and which received two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war – not as aggressor and victimizer in Asia. Because of this reluctance to face up to the past, in the postwar period Japanese education and ordinary parents seem to have avoided teaching much about neighboring countries’ history and geography. Perhaps most high-school students cannot cite the name of five cities in South Korea now, although they can probably cite names of five cities of the US. (This, of course, is thanks to major-league baseball, Japanese baseball players Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees’ Hideki Matsui, among others.)

For Japan, to face up to its troubled past and reconcile with neighbors is also strategically important to establish regional diplomacy, especially when South Korea and China are vigorously opposed to Japan’s permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council.

Japanese education about past history is really as white washed as many Koreans claim. I remember going to the National Museum in Tokyo and seeing Korean artifacts on display. The displays would say certain artifacts were gifts from Korea but in reality they were stolen during the Hideyoshi invasion of Korea in 1592. They had no display about World War II in the national museum but I did find a display at a different museum that honored the Japanese Kamikazes. This display called World War II the Greater East Asia Co-properity War. The Japanese were just trying to free the Asian people from colonialist Europeans and Americans and that Americans were evil in dropping the two nuclear bombs on them.

Their view of history is definitely misguided but I see as much chance of them changing their approach to history as Korea ever giving up Dokto. So each country just needs to learn to live with the other because neither country is going to change to much to accomodate the other. But as long as there are politicians who need to raise their approval ratings both countries will continue to use nationalism to bash each other with.

If nationalism against the Japanese doesn’t work for Korean politicians, there is always low quality English teachers and GI’s to bash on too. These fits of nationalism seem to run in cycles. First it is GI’s, then low quality English teachers, and now they have moved on to the Japanese. I guess that means they will be coming after us GI’s again next. I better enjoy this quiet time while it lasts.

The Asian Times continues to produce some great articles about North Korea. This article about, Kim Myong-chol, a North Korean advocate living in Japan is really interesting.

Meet Kim Myong-chol, perhaps North Korea’s only avid and available Westernized talking head for one of the world’s most mysterious regimes. This very unofficial diplomat is a short, graying, gregarious man of 60 who lives in Japan, talks non-stop and rapid-fire and prefers the United States to Japan, where he now lives. Of course, he loves North Korea, and his mission is to try to educate the world about the Pyongyang government and how people there live, but he does so – despite his pointed messages – in a tactful, friendly manner, not as a shrill, angry polemicist who alienates his audience.

A friendly, warm, North Korean advocate. This guy really is different. Here is a little bit about his views:

Kim said he feels more comfortable in the United States than in Japan, though he did not expand beyond saying that he likes the people and has quite a few friends among US military officers, scholars and university professors. He has no problems with Americans as people – it’s the government policies on the Korean Peninsula and North Asia that he objects to.

Kim frequently delivers sharp messages about the correctness of North Korean policy and what he calls benighted US policy. But he’s no clone of the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). He views politics as distinct from people and enjoys engaging the press and pundits on North Korean theory. He has an intimate knowledge of Korean culture and history and how it relates to the current political atmosphere with both Japan and the US.

Kim travels to the US several times a year, giving talks and speeches at universities and think-tanks about North Korea.

I’m not surprised that he is being payed to spread communist ideology in American college campuses. When I was in college I had to listen to a communist preach his views on globalization during a economics class. When he found out I was in the Army reserves he called me a war criminal for various reasons. That guy I found out was payed a $1,500 speaking fee by my university. I’m sure Mr. Kim here is probably raking in something comparable. You got to love communists that use capitalism when it benefits them. Anyway, there is more:

Although he holds Japanese citizenship and lives in Japan, Kim is firmly Korean, attracted to North Korea because of its policy of self-reliance and independence from the outside world. “Why do I like North Korea? Its political will to be independent from all foreigners – from China, from Russia – this is a point that attracts me,” Kim said. “Which is better, hungry wolf or fat dog?”

If he is trying to imply North Korea is a hungry wolf I would have to disagree. North Korea’s leadership are all fat dogs just like Mr. Kim is a fat dog living in Japan.

Kim also believes the US should sign a peace treaty ending the armistice with North Korea.

Kim, who is the executive director of his own organization, the Center for Korean-American Peace, which he founded in 1999, does offer a colorful, impassioned perspective on North Korea and how the country deals with the outside world. Kim says that to make progress on the nuclear issue, the United States must sign a peace treaty with North Korea, officially ending the 51-year-old armistice agreement.

The United States has shunned North Korea’s bid for a bilateral peace treaty with Washington, seeing it as a move by Pyongyang to splinter ties with allied countries who participated in the 1950-53 Korean War. “From the North Korean point of view, unless America is willing to concede on that point, North Korea has no reason to give up nuclear deterrence,” Kim said.

The only way the Norks will get a treaty is by allowing in a bunch of inspectors with unrestricted access to the country. The Norks would never allow this so I wouldn’t count on a treaty any time soon. Here is the scariest part of his rhetoric:

Kim scoffed at the widely quoted US Central Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea may have one or two functioning nuclear weapons. He said the country has between 100 and 300 weapons based on a nuclear program active since the 1960s. He maintains that it was North Korea that aided Pakistan with its program.

Nuclear weapons, Kim says, are the only way for a small country such as North Korea to balance the scale against the United States. Nuclear weapons are also cheaper than conventional forces, Kim said: an army must be fed, and soldiers could be prone to division.

“For the moment, North Korea sees no sense in selling nuclear technology,” Kim said. “But as long as America remains hostile, we have every reason to sell whatever we have.”

That kind of talk causes US policymakers to bristle: an estranged North Korea aiding terrorist groups with nuclear technology is among the worst imaginable scenarios. Kim Jong-il is unlikely to give up his nuclear card easily even though he wants a peace treaty and diplomatic relations with the United States, Kim Myong-chol asserted.

“Kim Jong-il’s goal,” his unofficial spokesman said, “is to neutralize or nullify the American military presence.”

I cannot imagine North Korea having 100-300 nuclear weapons and if they ever sold one to a terrorist group I cannot believe the US would allow that to happen. I wish the Asia Times would of challenged the guy on the North Korean defector issue and rising anti-Kim Jong Il sentiment in the country with the recent release of anti-Kim Jong Il tapes. I think his answers would be interesting. However, it does appear that this guy is just like every other North Korean advocate, full of hot air; even if he is a friendlier, warmer, talking head.

Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has offered an invitation for Japanese Emperor Akihito to visit Korea according to the Japan Times.

SEOUL — South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun said Thursday his country would welcome a visit by Emperor Akihito, despite the sensitive issue of Japan’s past colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
However, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said in Tokyo later in the day that the time is not ripe for the Emperor to visit South Korea.

“It’s not at such a stage yet. The Imperial Household has a full schedule for the family,” Koizumi told reporters in response to Roh’s remark.

Roh told a news conference that Emperor Akihito has a “standing invitation” to visit. The country was under Japan’s colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.

“We are ready to welcome him and he would be met with the most cordial reception here,” he said during the nationally televised conference from the Blue House presidential office.

A visit to South Korea by the Emperor is a highly contentious issue because of lingering anti-Japanese sentiment over Japan’s colonial occupation. Japan has been reluctant to proceed with such a visit due to such animosity.

This would really be a great opportunity for Japan to offer an apology for past war crimes against Korea but apparently either Prime Minister Koizumi does want to make such an apology on his watch or he doesn’t want the spectacle of massive protests that are sure to happen if the Emperor ever did come to Korea. Probably a little of both. However, a compromise on this might be on the way.

Tokyo is reportedly considering sending Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako to South Korea this fall to deepen relations between the countries. 2005 is the 40th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between Japan and South Korea.

A trip by the Crown Prince and Princess could help pave the way for a visit by the Emperor.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda would not confirm whether such a trip is being planned by the Crown Prince and Princess.

If the Crown Prince comes to Korea and offers a real apology about past Japanese war crimes this should really set conditions for a visit by Emperor Akihito. Hopefully the Japanese offer an apology to finally let history be history but I just don’t see the Japanese doing it though. If they don’t do it there will always be a level of animosity towards the Japanese in Korea.

North Korea is once again threatening Japan. North Korea is threatening to not allow Japan to participate in the six party talks regarding their on going nuclear program if the Japanese government continues to persue economic sanctions and a bill promoting North Korean human rights.

This diplomatic issue began when the remains of a kidnapped Japanese citizen were returned to Japan and the DNA test of the remains proved they were not of that person. North Korea denies the allegations.

The North’s Central Television Broadcasting Station blamed Japan in a Thursday report for its alleged manipulation of DNA tests on the remains of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese national kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1977.

“It has become difficult for us to sit down with Japan at the six-party talks because Japan has little faith and few morals,” the North’s official mouthpiece said.

Calls for sanctions against North Korea have risen in Japan ever since the remains that Pyongyang returned to Tokyo in November turned out to be inconsistent with Megumi’s DNA type.

The Pyongyang regime swiftly declared that it would consider any sanctions a declaration of war.

Obviously Japan is not to concerned about war because they are moving forward with the sanctions. So in response North Korea is just trying to play what little cards they have left to influence Japan’s decision making. I doubt it is going to work. If I was Japan I would state that if I was left out of the negotiations, I would feel obligated then to build my own nuclear deterent. That would really call North Korea’s bluff and get China greatly involved in solving the nuclear issue.

What I find really amazing but not really suprised by is the stance of the South Korean government.

Paik and other North Korea experts in Seoul said they believe the current diplomatic row between Pyongyang and Tokyo was caused by the North’s mistake, not an intentional move to anger Japan.

“(North Korea’s leader) Kim Jong-il is in a position to court financial aid from Japan,” Paik said. “It’s unlikely Pyongyang has sent false remains to Tokyo intentionally, given that Kim Jong-il has tried to improve the North’s relations with Japan.”

Lee Jae-joung, senior vice president of the constitutional Advisory Council on Democratic and Peaceful Unification, also believes the North has nothing to gain by irritating Japan.

“I think it’s wrong to interpret the mistake as something conducted on purpose,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “There could be some mistakes during or after the cremation of her in Pyongyang. I think it’s more proper for Japan to officially ask North Korea to remedy the situation.”

The Seoul government is keeping a low profile over the alleged “false remains” issue. Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told reporters on Thursday that it is not appropriate for Seoul to express its stance on this bilateral issue between North Korea and Japan.

Has nothing to gain from sending false remains? These Japanese citizens trained spies. Some of these spies are probably still operating in Japan. The Norks have everything to lose if they sent the correct remains. Also, how do you call sending the wrong remains a mistake? A mix up at the crematory? Some how I don’t by that. Well, if the Korean government can ignore thousands of North Korean defectors, ignoring this issue is really easy.