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| Korea |
| Japan mulls N. Korea self-defense strike |
| 2003-02-13 |
| Japan would launch a military strike against North Korea if Tokyo had firm evidence that the Stalinist state was ready to attack with ballistic missiles, Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said. "It is too late if [a missile] flies towards Japan," Ishiba told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "Our nation will use military force as a self-defense measure if [North Korea] started to resort to arms against Japan," he said, adding that Japan could regard the process of injecting fuel into a missile as the start of military attack. That's why they call it a Self Defense Force. Ishiba, known as a hawkish defense expert, also said Tokyo should develop a missile defense system with the United States since it lacks the capability to defend itself from missile attacks from North Korea. "To develop and deploy [a missile defense system] is one of the major options. Our nation should pursue this," he said. Ishiba, who took over the defense portfolio last September, said that in the longer term Japan could boost its military strength in order to reduce dependence on the United States. While this is a good thing for Japan and for the US, I doubt that Japan's neighbors will look at it that way. Ishiba's remarks come as tensions run high over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program and Pyongyang's insistence that it is free to launch ballistic missiles. In 1993, North Korea upset Japan by test-firing a medium-range Rodong-1 missile into the Sea of Japan. And in August 1998, North Korea launched a three-stage Taepodong-1 missile over Japan, demonstrating that parts of western Japan were within the estimated 1,000-km (600-mile) range of the missile. This woke a lot of people up. U.S. officials said on Wednesday that Pyongyang had a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile that could reach the West Coast of the United States, but that the missile had not been tested. Washington also says North Korea probably has one or two atomic weapons, but Ishiba declined comment on whether Japan had any independent confirmation of that assertion. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Right. I laughed out loud when I read that. Whatcha wanna bet that some day soon they'll say "Hey! We found it. Somehow it rolled itself up into several spheres which rolled downhill and nestled themselves into some old left-over rockets that we also lost." |
| Posted by: ray 2003-02-13 20:56:01 |
| #3 Hmm, remember that article from a few weeks back that mentioned all the plutonium that had gone missing in Japan? Enough plutonium to build 20 or so atom bombs? |
| Posted by: Patrick Phillips 2003-02-13 17:44:08 |
| #2 I think we should use the threat of an emerging Japanese military over China and South Korea in order to get them to take a harder stance on NK. |
| Posted by: Jon 2003-02-13 15:17:47 |
| #1 What he said, only I've said it for over a month. The Japanese are going to solve North Korea if push comes to shove, I think. Remember, they still think of Korea as that vassel state that got away. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-02-13 13:23:15 |