The meeting held on June 12 between the top leaders of US and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has produced possibilities to end the Korean War and to reunify Korean people. The event meant a severe blow to the Abe government as is zealous to amend the constitution taking advantage of contingency that stems from the conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Those who are to rewrite the constitution in Japan, however, have committed in a new round of campaign through shrewd propaganda tactic and agitation. Let’s get ready and let’s support efforts of Korean people to reunify the country.

LET’S INTENSIFY STRUGGLES TO COUNTER CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS!

The Abe government has been sneering at endeavors of President Moon Jae-in of Republic of Korea (ROK) for months since the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang. It has maintained posture to follow the Trump administration obediently, advising to keep ‘pressuring on the North’. When President Trump hinted cancelling just before the scheduled US-DPRK summit meeting, the Japanese government became the only one nation to endorse his words. But when the US-DPRK joint statement was agreed between the top leaders, Prime Minister hastily rectified his attitude without protest, exposing his ugliness.

We, people of Japan, let’s appreciate the historic turning point with sincere honor.

Constitution Amendment Campaign Has a New Dress

Firstly, a point is that realization of the top leaders’ meeting was not an outcome of deterrence. The Moon government of ROK made a breakthrough by proposing dialogue when the deterrence competitions reached the maximum edge. The conservative regime was overthrown in ROK. This fact drastically changed the fundamental relationship between the US and the DPRK as a war became impossible on the Korean Peninsula.

The US-DPRK statement means a US approval of the Panmunjom Declaration. Japan’s constitution-amendment forces still cling to a fiction that pressure is the sole way to correct the North. For us, people of Japan, a slogan is ‘a military power cannot defend peace’. Let’s voice loudly in a realist manner.

Secondly, we have to prepare for new campaigns to revise the constitution. The government gets ready to cope with a changing military situation in East Asia. In a situation in which US forces in ROK will be reduced to withdraw, the revision-forces claim more noisily that ‘the existing power balance collapses to make security of Japan risky’. They convert national contingency of ‘threat of missiles of the North’ to that of ‘US military retreat’.

They assert ‘influence of China will be stronger and the Sea of Japan, instead of the 38 degree line, is the most forward line to cope with China’, an imaginary tale to amend Article Nine. The Abe government has signed to purchase US weapon systems which cost an extraordinary sum in parallel with the host nation support and urging of the on-going construction job at Henoko, Okinawa, to build a new base so as to retain US troops in Japan.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) proposed June 1 a target to spend 2% of the GDP on military expenditure on the assumption that the nation faces the most acute crisis situation today since WWII. The LDP recommended the Abe government to discuss ‘acquisition of capabilities to attack enemy bases’ and convert military vessels to aircraft carriers.

Thirdly, we must focus on responsibilities of Japan. A sovereign state in the Korean Peninsula was destroyed by the Japanese colonial rule. After Japanese defeat in the war its troops left the peninsula, and the territory was temporally mandated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and the United States.

A unified election, which was confirmed by the United Nations to build up one nation, was frustrated by the conflict between the USSR and US. The US occupation forces cracked down people’s revolts of the Chaeju Island and enforced unilateral election in the southern part of the peninsula. Since then the division has remained untouched.

Notion of Japanese People Must be Changed

Then the Korean War began. Capitalists in Japan regained power, enjoying a special economic boom from the war. The capitalist system recovered to usher in the high speed growth era. The Japanese government negotiated only with the authority of southern part of the peninsula through the Japan-ROK Treaty to finalize the war. As for the northern region, the Japanese governments have not taken any responsibilities not only for the wartime sexual slavery but also other issues. The successive governments have done nothing to redress, which has lasted today.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Kono Yohei clearly told ‘Japan must make an official apology to the authority of North as the first step’. Many Japanese see and criticize the US-DPRK summit from an interventionist point of view. The notion must be changed.

June 26, 2018