DPRK's most successful public relations campaign ever… The country is now more favored than China and Japan among South Koreans, so as Kim Jong-un more favored than Xi Jinxing and Shinzo Abe. This is unprecedented for an @asaninst survey! pic.twitter.com/kooAWNE0D5
Cold War era South Korea was host to many deadly and bizarre incidents. On March 31, 1970, Japan Airlines flight 351, a 727 aircraft flying from Tokyo to Fukuoka was hijacked and eventually flown to Seoul adding to the long list of bizarre incidents involving South Korea.
From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes
This hijacking known as the “Yodogo Hijacking” in Japan, would be the second one in four months involving South Korea. On December 12, 1969 a civilian South Korean airplane was hijacked and flown across the DMZ by North Korean agents. This time the JAL aircraft was not hijacked by North Korean agents, but instead communist sympathizers from the left wing Japanese Red Army Faction.
The “Yodogo Hijacking”
As the aircraft was flying to the city of Fukuoka in southern Japan, nine members of the Japanese Red Army, known as “Sekigun” in Japanese, wielded samurai swords and pipe bombs to take control of the plane with its 122 passengers and 7 crew members. It is amazing to think that airline security was so lax back then that this many weapons could be smuggled on to the plane. After seizing the plane the Red Army Faction, composed of students ages 16 to 27, tied up all the passengers to their chairs. They originally planned to fly the plane directly to Pyongyang, but allowed it to land at Itazuke Airbase outside of Fukuoka once they learned from the pilot, Captain Shinji Ishida that the plane did not have enough fuel to fly to Pyongyang.
The hijackers had mistakenly thought the plane could fly all the way to Havana and were shocked to learn the plane could not even fly across the Pacific much less to Cuba. In need of fuel, the hijackers agreed to release 10 women, 12 children, and one elderly male passengers in return for enough fuel to fly to North Korea. From Fukuoka they planned to fly to Pyongyang and then figure out a way to get to their ultimate destination of Cuba.
From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper
The Ruse
The plane spent a total of five hours on the ground at Fukuoka before lifting off again to fly to North Korea. As the plane flew towards the DMZ it took warning fire from ROK air defense batteries and was escorted by fighter jets to Kimpo Airport at Seoul in attempt to make the hijackers think they were in North Korea. To continue the ruse, authorities in South Korea also decorated Kimpo International Airport to look like an airport in North Korea. They did this by removing all South Korean flags and flying North Korean ones instead and placing placards welcoming the hijackers to North Korea. They even had personnel at the airport dressed in communist uniforms. Like I said before bizarre things happen in South Korea.
After the plane landed Korean Airlines official Chung Man-jin approached the JAL aircraft and over a megaphone welcomed the hijackers to Pyongyang. The hijackers yelled back down at Chung through the pilot’s window that they believed they were in Seoul. The ruse was failing because they saw no pictures of Kim Il-sung posted anywhere. ROK authorities then quickly got a picture of Kim Il-sung posted for the hijackers to see. After six hours of negotiations the ROK authorities gave up on the ruse after the hijackers spotted a US Northwest Airlines plane parked on the tarmac.
From the April 1, 1970 Stars & Stripes
The Negotiations
After giving up on the ruse, ROK authorities began negotiations with the hijackers. The negotiations were high contentious as the hijackers threatened to blow up the plane multiple times. It wasn’t until the Japanese Transportation Vice Minister Shinjiro Yamamura agreed to be a replacement hostage that progress was made. A deal was made where a tire that had popped during the landing was repaired and the plane refueled in return for releasing 50 hostages.
From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper
After the release of 50 hostages Mr. Yamamura would then board the plane to become a replacement hostage. Once Yamamura was on board another 50 hostages were released. It can’t be understated how brave this decision by Yamamura was because some of the hostages from the December 1969 Korean Airlines hijacking never came home. Plus the crew from the USS Pueblo had been held hostage for nearly a year in North Korea and were tortured before being released. Mr. Yamamura when he volunteered knew that he risked never going home again and being tortured, yet he went anyway.
From the April 4, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper
Surprisingly when Mr. Yamamura boarded the plane the hijackers were quite congenial with him. For example one of the hijackers playfully pretended to stop Yamamura from running away from the plane. Another hijacker carried his luggage on to the plane and they had a final wave and farewell before entering the plane. The hijackers were apparently quite congenial with the passengers as well. Two of the last hostages to leave were Americans Herbert Brill, a Pepsi-Cola executive and Reverend Daniel MacDonald. When both left the plane they were smiling and shaking hands with the hijackers before departing.
Escape to North Korea
On April 3, 1970, JAL 351 with the nine hijackers, the three crew members, and the Transportation Vice Minister flew from Kimpo Airport, across the DMZ, and landed at Mirim Field outside of Pyongyang. When they landed in North Korea the hijackers exited the plane and struck karate poses in excitement of what they had done. They were then treated as heroes by the ruling Kim Il-sung government and given political asylum in North Korea. Fortunately for the hostages they were treated well by the Kim regime and after some initial stalling, they allowed the plane and the hostages to fly back to Tokyo on April 5th.
From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper
Historical Japanese news footage of the JAL 351 hijacking at Fukuoka and Kimpo Airport can be seen in the below video. Additionally footage of Shinjiro Yamamura walking into the airplane at Kimpo followed by the release of the passengers can be seen:
Who Were the Hijackers?
Most of the hijackers were students from Doshisha or Kyoto University which were the two top universities in the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto. Eight of the students were leftist nobodies, except for one student, Moriaki Wakabayashi. Wakabayashi was the bass player for a popular Doshisha University based underground rock band called Les Rallizes Denudes.
From the April 5, 1970 Stars & Stripes newspaper
The band was formed by Takashi Mizutani who was a studying sociology and French literature at the time. His French literature background is where the name of the band, that he was the lead singer for, came from. Takashi was offered to participate in the hijacking, but declined to become involved. The band would have eventually faded off into obscurity if Wakabayashi had not helped to hijack JAL 351. After the hijacking the band remained together for many years afterwards. You can listen to a sampling of their music by watching the below video:
After initially arriving in North Korea the hijackers may have been treated as heroes, but their ultimate goal of traveling on to Cuba was denied to them. From the Kim regime perspective letting them travel on to Cuba would be embarrassing because the perception would be that North Korea was not good enough for them. North Korea was after all sold as being the “worker’s paradise”, thus the hijackers were forced to stay in North Korea.
Interestingly the mastermind of the hijacking, did not take part in the actual operation. His name was Takaya Shiomi. He was arrested in Japan and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released from prison in 1989 and worked as a lowly paid parking garage attendant. After his release he joined the anti-US movement in Okinawa and wrote several books about the Red Army Faction. He died in Tokyo in 2017 of heart failure.
The 9 hijackers on the other hand were forced to settle into life in North Korea. One of the things the hijackers eventually wanted to make life more bearable in North Korea was to have wives. There was no chance of them being given North Korean wives because of the racial ideology of the Kim regime that promotes the importance of keeping the Korean bloodline pure. Because of this they worked on encouraging Japanese women with their same leftist ideology to defect to North Korea. Incredibly they were very successful with five Japanese women traveling to North Korea in 1992 to marry the hijackers.
It is unknown what jobs all the hijackers have held in North Korea, but something they are believed to be involved in was helping with the abduction of Japanese nationals abroad. It is believed that the Korean Workers Party in North Korea was using the hijackers to help create a Japanese revolution based on Kim Il-Sung’s doctrine. Two of the hijackers that were allowed to travel abroad were arrested. The youngest hijacker, Yasuhiro, Shibata was only 16 years old when he participated in the hijacking. In 1985 he was sent to Japan to help raise money for the Red Army Faction. Shibata was able to operate in Japan for three years before being arrested in 1988.
From the May 12, 1988 Stars & Stripes newspaper.
Shibata was eventually tried and sentenced to 5 years in prison. One of the things that authorities learned from Shibata was that one of the hijackers, Yoshida Kintaro died of illness in Pyongyang in 1985.
Another hijacker Yoshimi Tanaka was arrested on the Cambodia-Thai border by Cambodian authorities. He was caught after a high-speed car chase across the country after Cambodian and US Secret Service agents were tipped off by an anonymous tip that Tanaka and North Korean diplomats were smuggling millions of counterfeit US dollars into Thailand.
From the April 6, 1996 Stars & Stripes newspaper.
Tanaka was deported to Thailand where he was acquitted of counterfeiting, but deported to Japan to face punishment for his role in the JAL 351 hijacking. He received a 12-year jail sentence from the Japanese court. Tanaka would never see freedom again since he died of liver cancer in 2007 while still serving his prison sentence. He was 58 years old.
From the June 25, 1999 Stars & Stripes newspaper.
While he was in jail Japanese authorities learned from Tanaka that another hijacker Takamaro Tamiya died in 1995. Tanaka’s death brought the number of hijackers remaining in North Korea to five. Over the years the hijackers requested to return to Japan, and wanted to open negotiations with the Japanese government to surrender if they did not do jail time. The Japanese government has so far expressed no interest in giving immunity to the hijackers. In 2001 and 2004 the Japanese government did allow various wives and children of the hijackers to return to Japan. In 2014, Japanese journalists were able to visit the “Japanese Village” in North Korea and interview the remaining hijackers.
Japanese Village in North Korea
What they found was that the village which was once luxurious, has since decayed, but is still quite nice by North Korean standards. The hijackers even have email access and their own satellite TV dish. There is currently only 4 hijackers remaining in the village since one of them Takeshi Okamoto is believed to have been killed with his wife while trying to flee North Korea.
The four remaining “Yodo-go” hijackers being interviewed by the media in Pyongyang (From left to right: Kimihiro Uomoto, Takahiro Konishi, Shiro Akagi, Moriaki Wakabayashi) (September 2004) (Photo: Kyodo Press)
Here is a quick summary of the fate of all nine of the JAL 351 hijackers:
Takahiro Konishi – Still in North Korea
Shiro Akagi – Still in North Korea
Moriaki Wakabayashi – Still in North Korea
Kimihiro Uomoto – Still in North Korea
Yasuhiro, Shibata – Arrested in Japan in 1988 after traveling to Japan on a false passport to raise money for the Red Army. Was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Yoshimi Tanaka – Arrested in Cambodia in 2000 trying smuggle counterfeit US dollars. Died in 2007 of liver cancer while serving a 12-year jail sentence in Japan.
Takamaro Tamiya – Died in 1995
Yoshida Kintaro – Died in 1985
Takeshi Okamoto – Believed killed trying to flee North Korea with his wife
Conclusion
The hijacking of JAL 351 was the first hijacking by the Japanese Red Army Faction and began a nearly two decade long run of terrorism committed by the left wing group. The most notable was the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972. Three members of the Japanese Red Army were trained by Palestinian terrorists to conduct an attack that left 26 people dead and 80 more injured. The only Red Army terrorist that survived the attack, Kozo Okamoto was the brother of JAL 351 hijacker Takeshi Okamoto. The last deadly attack by the Red Army Faction occurred in 1988 when they bombed a USO nightclub in Naples, Italy killing five people.
Fortunately for the passengers of JAL Flight 351, the terrorists that took them hostage did not resort to deadly force. The responsible actions by the Japanese and ROK authorities, even though the ruse at Kimpo Airport failed, did manage to ultimately get all the hostages and even the plane returned to Japan. Though not all the JAL 351 hijackers have been captured, they have in a way experienced their own confinement in North Korea for the rest of their lives. Fortunately with the advances in aviation security such a hijacking should never happen again, though it would be fun to see ROK authorities try to disguise Incheon International Airport as a North Korean airfield.
Pompeo's and NK's contrasting descriptions of their meeting sounds like his/her post-blinddate talks with their friends: Him: The date went great! We really hit it off. I think she's my soulmate! Her: He's a loser but he likes to buy me things. I'll string him along for a while.
It looks like people are starting to realize that President Trump has been following John Bolton’s advice all along in regards to North Korea:
First, Trump could simply choose to shrug, continue to tweet that the North Korean threat has evaporated, and direct Pompeo to secure concessions in any way possible. This would be a likely path to appeasing Pyongyang, resulting in the United States giving up valuable leverage for virtually cosmetic North Korean concessions like the reversible dismantlement of tunnel entrances at the Punggye-ri nuclear site. North Korea has plenty of old and now out-of-use nuclear and missile sites it could happily detonate before the international press.
Second, Trump could simply allow the North Korea process that began on June 12 to quietly collapse and put the issue of its nuclear program and disarmament on ice—call it a return to “strategic patience.”
The problem here is that the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign is all but dead after the Singapore summit and it’s more likely than not that China, along with Russia, will ease up on the implementation of existing sanctions and perhaps even call for a removal of United Nations sanctions applied in 2017 on North Korean exports.
In this scenario, the U.S. loses interest and North Korea benefits economically while continuing to build out its nuclear program without constraints. This would be the equivalent of a continuation of the muddling-through approach that three consecutive U.S. administrations found themselves resigned to with North Korea, updated for the era of a considerably more capable North Korea.
Third, Trump could find himself left with nothing but the literal nuclear option. Feeling spurned and humiliated by Kim, Trump may find that the only way to move forward is to let John Bolton’s March 2017 prophecy come true.
Weeks before entering the White House as Trump’s advisor on national security affairs, Bolton, as a private citizen, had remarked on Trump’s acceptance of Kim’s invitation that “[The purpose of this process is to] foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.”
Gone would be the days of “all options” being on the table. Trump might conclude then that the only path to denuclearization is an all-out military strike on North Korea—a trigger to a nuclear war that would engulf Northeast Asia in tremendous destruction and likely parts of the U.S. homeland, given North Korea’s intercontinental-range ballistic missile capability.
None of these scenarios are appealing, though the third is quite clearly the worst. Trump’s Monday tweet offers the clearest glimpse of why diplomacy-for-diplomacy’s-sake with North Korea can be dangerous—even if it pulled us back from the brink of “fire and fury.” [Daily Beast]
You can read more at the link, but I have been saying this for quite sometime that I think the Trump administration is simply giving the Kim regime one last chance to rejoin the world community and denuclearize. It almost seems like they are checking every box to say they have tried every peaceful means to get them to denuclearize. If the Kim regime does not take advantage of this chance I think other options will be seriously considered and appeasement which this article suggests will not be one of those options.
This is NK’s propaganda narrative, so why are we subscribing to it? Since the Korean War, the only side engaged in a truly *hostile policy* has been NK. NK fears its own people more than it does the US. Its history of internal repression and external belligerence proves this. https://t.co/YszRyysMkO
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walks through the streets of Hanoi on Sunday. [AP/YONHAP]U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered North Korean leader Kim Jong-un the Vietnamese model of normalization of bilateral relations with Washington and economic prosperity, speaking in Hanoi on Sunday on the heels of a two-day trip to Pyongyang.
“In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for [North Korean] Chairman Kim Jong-un,” said Pompeo at a business event at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. “[U.S. President Donald] Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment … it can be your miracle in North Korea as well.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The North Koreans have now said more about why they are unhappy about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang, they want US troops removed from the peninsula before they do anything:
The next line of the more than 1,200-word statement may have captured the central complaint: “The U.S. side never mentioned the issue of establishing a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war,” an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman said.
The statement shows that Kim is willing to test Trump’s patience and not bargain away his arsenal without sufficient security guarantees. The regime’s belief that the weapons are needed to deter a U.S. attack dates back nearly 70 years to the still-unresolved Korean War, and will take more than a handshake to dispel. (…….)
That’s why the vague 1-1/2 page agreement Kim signed with Trump on June 12 called for establishing a new relationship and a “lasting and stable peace regime.” The pledge to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” was listed third.
Practically, assuaging Kim’s security fears could require risky choices for the U.S. and its North Asian allies, such as rolling back America’s nuclear umbrella or pulling back its troops in South Korea. The desire for a broader security realignment explains why Kim agreed to “denuclearization” and not disarmament.
Trump has already faced criticism for being too quick to make security concessions to Kim, including his unilateral suspension of military exercises with South Korea. The North Korean statement indicated such gestures hadn’t gone far enough, saying the U.S. moves were “highly reversible” and left its military force intact “without scraping even a rifle.” [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link, but I am sure the Kim regime cares little about the irony of them complaining about “highly reversible” actions taken by the Trump administration when they have done the same thing. There is not one thing the Kim regime has done as part of the ongoing nuclear negotiations that cannot be easily reversed if so desired.
With that said remember the North’s nuclear weapons has nothing to do with security guarantees as discussed in the article; the North’s conventional weapons have kept the US and South Korea in check for decades because of the threat to Seoul. That is why you will not see the North Koreans push their artillery away from the DMZ despite ROK requests to do so.
The North’s nuclear weapons are linked to threatening the United States to get the US president to sign a peace treaty, withdraw troops, and remove the nuclear umbrella over South Korea. Once this is done, then the next phase of establishing the peace regime can occur which is essentially a confederation of North and South Korea on North Korean terms.
North Korea likely had no plans of giving up their nukes, but were willing to pretend for a while to string the US along. However, the sharp rebuke they gave this weekend to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit may be linked to the China trade issue:
Senator Lindsey Graham
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested on Sunday that China may have pressured North Korea to take a harder line against U.S. negotiators during a recent visit to the isolated country by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I see China’s hands all over this,” Graham told “Fox News Sunday,” citing an ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China as Beijing’s possible motivation. “We’re in a fight with China.”
You can read more at the link, but if China continues to violate sanctions to support the Kim regime I wonder if at some point the Trump administration will consider sanctions on China as well.
Media cliches are a trove of unintentional insight into the running 20-year failure of the engagement hypothesis. See also, "rare glimpse." https://t.co/khZ8LYTiVJ
This was an encouraging response from Secretary of State Pompeo to North Korean claims of “gangster demands”:
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha (R), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono pose for a photo during their talks in Tokyo on July 8, 2018, in this photo provided by Japan’s Kyodo News. (Yonhap)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday his country is making fair demands on North Korea in denuclearization talks, refuting its strongly worded criticism following his latest trip to Pyongyang.
The North openly expressed disappointment over what he put forward during a hourslong bargaining with Kim Yong-chol, a top North Korean official, on Thursday and Friday.
Pompeo presented a “unilateral and gangster-like” demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization (CVID), the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement issued after his departure.
“If those requests were ‘gangster-like’ then the world is a gangster, because there was a unanimous decision at the U.N. Security Council about what needs to be achieved,” the secretary said in the first U.S. response to the North’s assertion that added to skepticism over future negotiations.
He was speaking at a joint press conference with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts — Kang Kyung-wha and Taro Kono — in Tokyo. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the irony of this is that North Korea is often called the “Sopranos State” and they are ones accusing the US of gangster demands.
Probably the most positive sign in the article is that Pompeo says the sanctions will remain in place:
“Sanctions will remain in place until final, fully verified denuclearization,” Pompeo stressed. “While we are encouraged by the progress of these talks, progress alone does not justify the relaxation of the existing sanctions regime.”
The denuclearization of Korea covers not just nuclear bombs but also missiles, he said, adding North Korean officials also understand that.
On the trustworthiness issue, he said, “There will be a verification connected to the complete denuclearization.”
Like I have always said if the US drops sanctions for little to nothing in return then hit the panic button. People just need to be patient and let what I think is Kim’s final chance to rejoin the world community to play out.
