Clingendael Diplomacy Paper: Projecting Economic Power - Japan's Diplomacy towards North Korea

Japan has made clear its belief that North Korea poses the greatest threat to its national security.

Yet it is not Pyongyang's nuclear devices and missiles that attract the most attention of the

Japanese government. The main focus of Japanese policy-makers and politicians has instead been

North Korea's alleged abduction in the 1970s and 1980s of some seventeen Japanese nationals

from Japan. Tokyo has imposed bilateral economic sanctions and refused to provide

(humanitarian) aid to North Korea, despite commitments in the Six-Party Talks. This stands in

sharp contrast to South Korea's and China's increased willingness to do business with the closed

country. Why Japan's emphasis on the consistent, deliberate denial of benefits to North Korea?

The importance of economic issues, in a comprehensive bilateral and multilateral context, goes

largely unnoticed in writings about the Korean Peninsula. This paper attempts to fill that gap by

analysing Japan's stance on a range of themes in the framework of its economic diplomacy.

Primary, secondary and tertiary goals and targets of Japan's influence attempts are discussed,

providing fresh insights into Japan's strategic thinking and foreign policy in East Asia.

From 2002 until at least mid-2007, the Japanese government acted from the premise that slowing

down bilateral and multilateral negotiations by taking an unaccommodating stance was in Japan's

national interest. It projected power through a one-sided policy, which aimed less to influence the

regime in Pyongyang than to enhance Japan's national security at large. The North Korean threat

was thereby used to justify Japan's controversial military enhancement in a context of uncertainty

about the US commitment and an increasingly stronger China.