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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Under domestic political pressure, Japan threatens Nork sanctions |
| 2006-03-24 |
| From East Asia Intel, subscription. A senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party, in Japan’s ruling coalition, has called for legislation to invoke sanctions against North Korea if it does not move on the issue of kidnapped Japanese citizens. Public pressure has mounted on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has made repeated attempts to regularize relations with North Korea and enthusiastically participated in the six-power talks on nuclear disarmament. The sooner the Nork govt falls, the better off everyone will be. Shinzo Abe, a candidate to succeed Koizumi who has announced he will step down this year, supported the measure in a recent TV interview. Abe said North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il should take a leaf from Libya’s Moammar Khaddafy’s book to avoid being deposed by dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and allow UN, U.S. and British inspectors to visit the facilities. The current foreign exchange law prevents Japan from halting cash remittances to North Korea without a multinational agreement or a United Nations resolution. The revised law the LDP proposes would allow Japan to unilaterally imposed sanctions if the government deems them necessary to maintain peace and security. The LDP wants the bill enacted during the parliamentary session ending on June 18. I would hate to be beholden to the UN for my country's security. Although North Korea has admitted abducting 13 people, it claims eight are dead. The other five were repatriated in 2002. But the issue has become a hot button for Japanese voters who watched heart-rending television of reunions, some of them showing adults abducted as children returning after decades but leaving families behind in North Korea. There is a widely held suspicion in Japan that there may be more unaccounted abductees. Tokyo has been slowly tightening the economic noose on once-powerful North Korean financial front operations among the estimated 1 million Japanese Korean ethnics, many second and third generation Japan-born. Estimates of North Korean remittances to their kinfolk in North Korea had been as much as half a billion annually. More recently Japanese authorities have seen a sharp increase in the number of postal remittances to North Korea as the squeeze has been put on the North Korean-operated fronts. Mail remittances from Japan to North Korea are legal problems as insured mail under the Universal Postal Union treaty. Through Pyongyang-dominated organizations and clandestine activities with the Japanese underworld, including drug trafficking, money laundering and using the presence of relatives in North Korea for extortion, Japan has been one of the principal sources of foreign exchange for the Pyongyang regime. As Pyongyang’s economic crisis has deepened with the diversion of its meager resources to one of the world’s largest armies, conventional armaments and weapons of mass destruction, its Japan activities have become even more critical. But the Japanese government — with the agreement of American policymakers — has moved slowly on the issue, hoping to use North Korean economic dependence on Japan as leverage in the overall efforts to halt the nuclear buildup. Use every non-military tool in the box to bring down the Norks. That is the only way to be sure that the Norks have no Nukes. They are liars, drug dealers, counterfitters, murderers, and kidnappers, ya know. You cannot negotiate with the likes of these. |
| Posted by:Alaska Paul |
| #3 I don't even think the little bastards have working nukes. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-03-24 12:28 |
| #2 Fuck with Kimmie's private stash of Japanese women and you get the nukie. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-03-24 01:38 |
| #1 Give them their Money, Nukes, Empire, and International Recognition-Credibility, JAPAN - D*** YOU, dem dar law-abiding Norkies only abducted a mere 13 people without their consent. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-03-24 00:09 |