North Korea's ballistic missile tests on July 5 have pushed Japan to impose further trade restrictions against Kim Jong Il's bully-boy regime.
Japan swiftly slapped a set of sanctions that focus on punishing the North Korean capital city of Pyongyang. Perhaps symbolic of Japan's use of trade as a defensive weapon, a North Korean cargo and passenger ferry was banned from docking in Japan for the next six months.
Japanese trade with North Korea has already been cut in half since 2002 when Kim Jong Il admitted that North Korean agents had abducted 13 Japanese citizens during the Cold War, coercing them to teach Japanese language and customs to Jong Il's spies.
Although tensions between Tokyo and Pyongyang have a long, complex and bitter history, traditional trade between these two east Asian rivals evokes simpler times. Japan's principal imports from North Korea are sea products including fish, snow crabs and sea urchins as well as agricultural products like matsukake mushrooms.
Fearing a consumer backlash, many Japanese supermarkets stopped selling North Korean food in 2005 when the Japanese government required retailers to reveal the origin of on-sale seafood.
Tokyo-based clothiers now outsource much of their sewing operations to China despite North Korea's low labour costs.
Similarly Japan's leading steel, chemistry, electrical machinery and automobile manufacturers have been reluctant to do business with Pyongyang for almost 5 years.
Japanese companies point to two practical reasons for avoiding trade with Jong Il's regime:
- Japan has restricted any exports to North Korea that can be converted into weapons
- Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law has empowered the Japanese government to suspend overseas money transfers from Japan that could impede payments for imports.
And The Winners Are...
When North Korea fired its test missiles, Japanese hardliners won the political capital necessary to strengthen spending on their missile defense systems.
Tokyo has lifted restrictions on military exports so Japanese companies can share technologies with U.S. firms. In June, the Japanese ship Aegis participated when the U.S. Navy cruiser Shiloh tested its sea-based interceptor missiles off Hawaii.
Interestingly, the U.S. has increased its exports to North Korea from U.S.$2.7 million in year 2000 to $5.8 million in 2005 but with no imports from the rogue state. Although relatively small amounts, let's hope that the U.S. exports are for food and water, not guns and ammunition.
After all, the real losers here are the people of North Korea - many of whom are dying of starvation yet remain deathly afraid of their tyrannical leader.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, Daily Yomiuri
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