Japan and North Korea

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Haruko Satoh

Published:

2024

Publisher:

Routledge

This chapter explains why Japan’s role may be limited in future regional and multilateral efforts to engage with North Korea. It does so by taking into account the historical layers in the structure of Asia’s regional relations that are now playing out, the rise of Southeast Asia, its demands to be heard as the voice of the Global South, its calls to govern its own future, and Japan’s complicated relations with North Korea. Japan’s limited engagement with North Korea lies in the fact that the challenges Asia faces today are not the same ones besetting the region when Japan first took part in the Six-Party Talks in the 2000s. The international security environment has significantly changed, if not deteriorated. ASEAN countries have the advantage in dealing with North Korea because they have formal diplomatic ties with Pyongyang. This asset is built on trust and is something that Japan does not have with the North. Thus, ASEAN and other countries that have built up trust with North Korea should extend confidence-building diplomacy to the North and socialize the country into opening up and partaking in the fruits of Asia’s economic prosperity. Japan, in the meantime, has to confront its past more earnestly and do so with a conscious view of reconciling with the Koreans. This is a long overdue domestic job that would enhance Japanese standing and diplomacy in Asia. Until this is achieved, Japan runs the risk of once again being a spoiler to the regional effort to change North …

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