Tag: Japan

The Japanese Foreign Minister is finding out that no one wants to hear that the North Koreans are already misbehaving before a deal has even been reached:

Foreign Minister Taro Kono got a scathing reaction from the international community over his call to not be taken in by North Korea’s latest charm offensive.

Kono insists that North Korea is gearing up for a seventh nuclear test, but his warning has fallen on deaf ears.

“(North Korea) is working hard for its next nuclear test,” Kono asserted in a lecture he gave in Kochi on March 31.

On April 2, 38 North, a website operated by Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that is devoted to analysis about North Korea, posted an article dismissing Kono’s contention based on current activity at the nuclear test site.

“Commercial satellite imagery from March 23 shows quite a different picture: namely, that activity at the Punggye-ri test site has been significantly reduced compared to previous months,” the article says.  [Asahi Shimbun]

You can read more at the link, but it seems a nuclear test would be within the Kim regime’s playbook to conduct if a deal to their liking is not reached in upcoming negotiations.

Does anyone know if this is something that Korean employers try to implement as well?:

Japanese worker has been reprimanded by her boss for “selfishly breaking the rules” after she became pregnant before it was her “turn”, according to media reports.

The woman was working at a private childcare centre in Aichi prefecture, north Japan, when she found out she was pregnant.

However, the timing reportedly clashed with “shifts” drawn by the childcare centre director, which listed when female staff were allowed to marry and have children.

The plight of the woman, who has not been identified, highlights the unsettling practice of some Japanese companies dictating when female staff are allowed to marry and have children, depending on their level of seniority.  [The Telegraph]

You can read more at the link.

Japan wants conditions attached to the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un: make North Korea promise to resolve the abduction issue and abandon medium-range ballistic missiles having Japan within range https://t.co/GFQUq4fJrQ

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) March 26, 2018

The Chinese government has long sought to break up the US-ROK and US-Japan military alliances that maintains the current security framework in Northeast Asia.  The THAAD issue is a perfect example of how they have created tension in the US-ROK alliance with disinformation.  The comfort women issue is another issue that Beijing has weaponized to create tension between the US, Korea, and Japan:

The “comfort women” issue appears, on the surface, to be a bilateral problem between South Korea and Japan. In reality, it is deeper. The key player is increasingly not South Korea, but China, and the ultimate target is not Japan, but the United States, as the comfort women are co-opted by Beijing in its anti-American information war.

China has been waging this war since Beijing realized after the First Gulf War that it would likely be unable to the United States on the battlefield. As the document Unrestricted Warfare, published by two high-ranking Chinese military officials, makes clear, the Chinese have chosen to fight the US, and particularly the US-Japan alliance, using desinformatsiya rather than hardware and troops.  (…)

Overseas Chinese groups have also pressed hard on the comfort women and Nanjing issues in the US and Canada: In San Francisco, Superior Court judges Julie Tang and Lillian Sing retired from the bench in order to co-found the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, which was ultimately successful in bringing a comfort woman statue to San Francisco. Chinese-American San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was himself a vocal proponent of the comfort woman statue.  [Asia Times]

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if Beijing isn’t fanning the flames of the anti-base sentiment in Okinawa as well to create further tension between the US and Japan.

Japan says South Korea's Moon promised help to resolve North Korea abduction issue https://t.co/5mFYWdoz5G

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) March 17, 2018

As is often the case, in an effort to save money increased costs were pushed on to servicemembers and their families:

The Defense Commissary Agency has saved tens of millions of dollars shipping produce to the Pacific since 2015. However, a recent inspector general report says the agency failed to provide effective oversight of its new contracts, leaving customers paying significantly more for fresh fruits and vegetables.

In the past, DeCA subsidized contractors’ produce shipments to commissaries in Japan and South Korea, costing the agency about $114.6 million from 2013 to 2015, the IG report said. When contracts were renegotiated in 2015, DeCA stopped paying for shipping, instead aiming to purchase more locally grown produce and having suppliers foot those costs.

Since then, DeCA has saved about $38 million per year.

After the deal was made, prices for fresh produce climbed at Pacific commissaries, according to the report. Between November 2015 and April 2017, customers in mainland Japan paid 20.9 percent more for produce. Over the same period, Okinawa customers saw an increase of 23.6 percent while those in South Korea paid 31.5 percent more.

The report’s findings were based on a review of prices for 239 unique fresh produce items in mainland Japan, 237 on Okinawa and 231 in South Korea.

The 2015 contract’s aim was to keep the quality and cost of produce on base comparable to what they were before the contract, but the IG report says those expectations were not met. It blamed DeCA for the price hike, saying the agency’s “market research did not adequately evaluate the feasibility of obtaining fresh produce items from in-country for DeCA commissaries in the Pacific theater.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Here is yet another example of a comfort woman statue being built outside of Korea:

A “comfort woman” statue is expected to be erected in France to honor the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery.

According to Ahn Shin-kwon, director of the House of Sharing, a shelter for surviving victims in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, the Gwangmyeong City Government and Koreans living in France are in favor of the idea.

“We are trying to figure out if there is a way to set up a statue in public place,” Ahn told The Korea Times Monday.

“We will surely face hurdles along the way just like we did during our San Francisco project. But we will keep pushing hard to make it happen.”

If erected, the statue will be the first comfort woman statue in France.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Japan does not want to be left out of the upcoming negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

With North Korea now engaged with South Korea and getting ready for talks with the U.S., it looks like Japan doesn’t want to be left out.  Tokyo says that if the North agrees to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities it’s willing to foot the initial costs up to 300 million yen, or about 2.8 million dollars.  That’s according to Kyodo News Agency, citing multiple Japanese government officials.  Analysts say Japan is trying to make sure it has a voice in the process of North Korea’s denuclearization and related discussions.

The Kyodo report went on to say that Japan will continue to pressure North Korea into taking concrete action on the nuclear issue.  Pyongyang hasn’t allowed in nuclear inspectors from the IAEA since 2009.  Inspections of its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon would cost up to around 3.7 million dollars, so Japan’s proposed contribution would foot most of the bill.  [Arirang News]

Here is a strange sexual assault story involving a Japanese woman running a boarding house in Hawaii:

A Manoa woman who recruited exchange students from Japan raped one of her clients as many as 10 times while he was bedridden with an injury, police allege in court documents.

Police said she also threatened the victim, a 16-year-old Japanese national, if he went to authorities, saying she’d accuse him of rape if he reported her.

The suspect has been identified as 36-year-old Rika Shimizu.

She’s been indicted on five counts of second-degree sex assault and four counts of fourth-degree sex assault. She remains in custody on $600,000 bail.  [Hawaii News Now]

You can read more at the link.

Pretty horrible whoever did this, but in this day in age of fake racism you never know if it was in fact a racist who did this:

The Marine Corps is investigating after a racial slur was posted to a base theater marquee on Okinawa.

The incident happened Sunday at Camp Hansen — home to 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, 9th Engineer Support Battalion and 12th Marine Regiment — Marine officials said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but you would think there would be security cameras around the theater that possibly recorded something to help catch whoever did this.