Japan Fears Being Left Behind by Trump’s Talks With Kim Jong-un - The New York Times
Japan Fears Being Left Behind by Trumpʼs Talks
With Kim Jong-un
Suh Hoon, South Korea’s intelligence agency chief, left, and Shinzo Abe,
the Japanese prime minister, in Tokyo on Tuesday. Japan, which has
hewed to a hard-line posture toward North Korea, is scrambling to
remain diplomatically relevant.
Yonhap, via European Pressphoto Agency
By Motoko Rich
(http://www.nytimes.com/by/motoko-rich)
March 13, 2018
TOKYO — (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/world/asia/south-korea-trumpnuclear.html?smid=tw-share)
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Now it’s Tokyo’s turn to be the third wheel. As recently as last fall, it was Seoul that appeared sidelined by Washington in its approach to North Korea, as President
Trump made fiery threats and accused South Korea of “appeasement” for
advocating dialogue. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, was Mr. Trump’s
closest friend among world leaders
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/world/asia/japan-trump-northkorea-abe.html).
But now Japan, which has hewed closely to the hard-line American posture
toward North Korea, is scrambling to remain diplomatically relevant as Mr.
Trump moderates his tone in preparation for a possible meeting with the
North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and South Korea takes the lead in brokering
talks.
On Tuesday, four days after Mr. Trump stunned the world by accepting an
invitation to meet Mr. Kim
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/north-korea-kim-jongun-trump.html)
personally to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program, one of
the South Korean envoys who delivered that invitation met with Mr. Abe in
Tokyo.
The optics of the meeting — with Mr. Abe asking Suh Hoon, South Korea’s
national intelligence service chief, to brief him on the exchange of messages
between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim — made the Japanese leader look a little
like a forgotten friend asking for details of a party he missed over the
weekend.
It has been a particularly bruising few days for Mr. Abe. Last Friday, he
belatedly learned of Mr. Trump’s decision to accept Mr. Kim’s invitation
when Mr. Trump called just as Mr. Suh and Chung Eui-yong, another South
Korean envoy, were delivering the news to reporters
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/world/asia/trump-northkorea.html)
outside the White House.
Just hours earlier, Mr. Abe learned
that Mr. Trump was imposing stiff steel and aluminum tariffs on countries
including Japan.
Meanwhile, a long-simmering scandal reared its head again on Monday,
when Japan’s Finance Ministry released a report showing that officials had
tampered with crucial documents
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/world/asia/shinzo-abe-japanscandal.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fmotokorich&action=click&contentCollection=undefined®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&ve
related to a suspicious sweetheart land deal that may implicate Mr. Abe.
“That’s a pretty deadly combination,” said Daniel C. Sneider
(https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/people/daniel_c_sneider), a lecturer in East
Asian studies at Stanford University. “
I can’t imagine that he hasn’t had a
few troubled moments since then.”
South Korean envoys outside the White House last week, where they
addressed reporters as President Trump called Mr. Abe to tell him he
planned to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
For now, Mr. Abe is likely to be most preoccupied with trying to save his
political career. On Tuesday, the Japanese news media reported that a
Finance Ministry employee in a regional branch who had committed suicide
left a memo saying that his office had been ordered to alter documents
under direct instructions from headquarters.
Farther afield, analysts said Mr. Abe was probably disappointed that the
close relationship he had worked so hard to build with Mr. Trump
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/world/asia/japan-trump-northkorea-abe.html)
— cultivated over rounds of golf — had not kept him on the
inside track.
Immediately after learning of Mr. Trump’s plans, Mr. Abe announced he
would visit the president next month.
“You feel compelled immediately upon the news about the meetings with the
North Koreans to go rush off to Washington in order to reassure yourself?
That’s interesting,” Mr. Sneider said.
“It means that it’s a kind of relationship
that requires that kind of constant shoring up personally.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Abe kept short his public remarks about the briefing with
the South Korean envoy, reiterating Japan’s desire to curtail the North’s
nuclear and ballistic program as well as seek the return of Japanese citizens
abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and ’80s
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/world/asia/north-korea-kidnapjapanese-trump.html).
Underscoring Japan’s continued hard-line stance, Mr. Abe said he wanted
North Korea to take “specific actions toward denuclearization,” although he
did not say what those steps would look like. North Korea has already fired
ballistic missiles over Japan, which could be at the front lines of any conflict.
But just as the South Koreans spoke for Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim last Friday
in Washington, Mr. Suh, addressing Japanese reporters in Tokyo, said Mr.
Abe had “expressed his respect to President Moon’s leadership to improve
relations between South and North Korea and maintain peace toward
denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.”
South Korea’s presidential palace, known as the Blue House, also issued a
statement in which it quoted Mr. Abe saying that he did not believe North
Korea would use the talks “simply to buy more time.”
A spokesman from Japan’s Foreign Ministry declined to confirm that Mr.
Abe had made either of the remarks during his meeting Tuesday with the
South Korean envoy.
Mr. Trump with Mr. Abe before golfing at the Kasumigaseki Country
Club in Tokyo in November. Mr. Abe’s supporters said restoring his
close relationship to Mr. Trump could also help him domestically.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
For Japan, there are risks to Mr. Trump’s speaking independently to Mr. Kim
without consulting it or South Korea.
“North Korea has been playing a game of saying one thing and later on
saying, ʻOh, what we really meant by this was this and that,’” said
Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies
Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. So,
for example, North Korea could agree to stop tests of strategic ballistic
missiles but then claim such language did not cover shorter range missiles
that could target Japan or South Korea, Mr. Michishita said.
Mr. Abe’s supporters said he might yet restore his rapport with Mr. Trump,
which could also help him domestically.
“The Japanese people know Abe has close ties with President Trump,” said
Yoichi Takahashi, a former Finance Ministry official and professor at Kaetsu
University in Tokyo. “People believe Japan should not be isolated from the
U.S.-North Korea deal, and they know Abe is the best politician and no one
else can be as active as Abe.”
Other analysts said better communication with Mr. Abe was no guarantee
that Mr. Trump would not act impulsively or make damaging concessions in
a meeting with Mr. Kim.
“My own concern is the way this summit meeting was granted to North
Korea,” said Fumiaki Kubo, a professor of political science at the University
of Tokyo. “This itself was a huge concession.”
Mr. Kubo added that Mr. Abe “might be able to persuade Mr. Trump” to stick
to a firm plan for denuclearization, “but Mr. Trump might forget what he
was told or instructed or advised.”
For now, analysts said, Mr. Abe will have to remain pragmatic. “Abe’s
advisers understand that Japan is not the major player on the North Korean
issue,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior research fellow at the Sasakawa
Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “So I think they are not so optimistic that their
voice is going to be reflected in the current situation.”
And with Mr. Trump susceptible to changing his mind,
“a strong policy
position is not so helpful,” Mr. Watanabe said. “Japan needs to be flexible.”
Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.
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