Tension becomes intensified in the Korean Peninsula, which is the highest since the Korean War. Premier Abe has immediately supported determination of US President Trump. Belligerent rulers have two targets; one is an enemy nation, and the other is their own people. They brainwash to rule people, restricting their freedom.


LET’S VOICE LOUDLY NO! TO WAR


The Japanese society is surrounded by a weird atmosphere lately, facing directly a possibility of a second Korean War. TV and weeklies keep discharging sensational news endlessly as if ‘a missile of North Korea’ should fly over the nation tomorrow. News commentators talk as if they spoke in the virtual space. If their explanation were real, it would involve several hundreds of thousand of lives of people.


People’s voices to demand the US to halt military actions have been shut up. Instead, so-called ‘academicians’ leads an aggressive trend, claiming ‘Japan should be prepared, too’ and ‘it is necessary to amend the Constitution immediately to make Japan a usual state’.


Lessons of 1994 Crisis


Japan was astounded, too, in the 1994 Korean Peninsula crisis triggered by a declaration of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to leave the NPT, or the Non Proliferation Treaty of nuclear development program. The US was planned to bomb nuclear facilities in Yongbyon and demanded the Japanese administrations led by non-LDP (=Liberal Democratic Party) coalition leaders of Hosokawa and Hata cooperation in transporting materials to the US military, using airports and seaports and supporting US refugees escaping South Korea. A relevant office inside the Japanese government compiled ‘a plan to cope with situation in the K Peninsula’, which prompted debates on legislation over national contingency. These developments led, partly, to ousting of the Socialist Party from the cabinet to collapse the non-LDP coalition government.

Meanwhile, the then-President Kim Yongsan of South Korea desperately persuaded the then-US President Clinton to give up attacks. Because, he relied on an assumption that during the first three months from a break of war 50 thousands of US soldiers, 490 thousands of South Korean soldiers and several millions of refugees would be produced. Then a visit to Pyongyang by former US President Carter and formation of the Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea worked effectively to evade a war.


Japanese Governments Arranged War Legislation


It is over 20 years since then. The situation is much worse. The Japanese government, learning from ‘the failure’ in the 1994 event, arranged a series of legislation: Law to Cope with Situation Surrounding Japan in 1998, three Acts on National Contingency in 2003 and the controversial war legislation in 2015. The administrations worked to shape the nation to be ready for a war.


The national contingency acts will take effect at a stage of assumption of a break of a war, a commercial airport like Haneda, for instance, will be open to military aircraft.


The government told, reportedly, to join vessels of the Self Defense Forces (SDF) of Japan to the US strike fleet led by the nuclear aircraft carrier which navigates to the water off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. The war legislation specifies a mission of the SDF to defend US ships, the risk of which is far greater than that of peacekeeping operations in South Sudan.


The Abe government asked for the US authorities to have ‘prior talks’ necessary to decide on joint military actions, while the counterpart accepted positively. In the Japan-US Security Treaty there is ‘a secret pledge on Korean contingency’ by which the US military could make a sortie from the bases in Japan without prior consultation with the Japanese government. The US side just saved face of Premier Abe Shinzo. The ruling LDP proposed the government to ‘possess capabilities to attack enemy bases’. The bill to criminalize conspiracy, which is under parliamentary discussion, will serve to crack down anti-war movements beforehand.


Labeling as Spies of North Korea


The 1994 crisis was dealt with cautiously and tacitly. It was several years afterward that commercial media reported of ‘a possibility of a brink of war between US and DPRK’. The first testimonies of former US military officers emerged in 2002. The authorities were afraid of social responses.


Look at today. A crisis was jointly fabricated by the neo-liberal, reactionary regimes of Japan and US. Mass media agitate in the war mode. People who appeal peace in the street, they are to be criticized as ‘spies of North Korea’.


Let’s voice loudly No War.



April 25, 2017