ASIA

THE North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un very deliberately chose Japan for its greatest act of provocation to date.

• See A world dangerously close to the brink

Crucially, it wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of America’s key ally in East Asia – though Kim was playing on North Koreans’ savagely bitter memories of Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea until 1945.

Japanese was imposed as the only permitted language in schools, but few Koreans were able to master it well enough to get good jobs.

Any new businesses were owned and run by the Japanese. Only a handful of Koreans were allowed to go on to higher education.

The Thirties were the height of Emperor Hirohito’s Great East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, an initiative that purported to benefit all of East Asia but which, in reality, had the Japanese installed as the master race and ultimate beneficiaries.

Koreans were dragooned for forced labour and to be cannon fodder in Hirohito’s armies, while some 200,000 women were turned into sex slaves.

At that time Japan’s armies occupied a vast swathe of territory from Korea to New Guinea, and the troops needed company on garrison duty.

So-called ‘comfort women’ were provided by their caring imperial government – Korean women who were shipped around Hirohito’s Pacific Empire as well as into occupied China. They were not only degraded into forced prostitution, but faced the risk of being bombed by the Allies when they attacked Japanese bases.

After World War II, the ‘comfort women’ were deplorably treated by their own people.

They were regarded as collaborators and shunned. In North Korea – Korea was divided into North and South in the aftermath of the war – a charge of collaboration with the Japanese could mean death.

Imperial Japan neither apologised nor paid compensation. In South Korea today, the legacy of this exploitation is still seen as a humiliation for which Japan has not made amends.

Stoking more than a century of Korean-Japanese antagonism is part of Kim’s plan to split America’s allies. At the same time, he is bolstering his dynasty and ramping up national feeling by reminding North Koreans of the potent myth of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as a resistance hero, defying the Japanese.

In response to the North Korean threat, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to push through changes to his country’s post-war ‘pacifist’ constitution which renounces war and ‘the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’ And while other players in the regions such as South Korea, China and the Philippines don’t like Kim’s aggression either, they have lurking fears of Japanese rearmament.

What is most alarming for Abe is North Korea’s ability to overfly Japan. Japan’s Patriot missile defence didn’t intercept Kim’s rocket – but it was not because Tokyo chose restraint.

It couldn’t have stopped the missile if it wanted to, because it was launched from a new site in North Korea, most likely from a mobile launcher, and in a very unexpected direction.

This brought the issue of Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent to the fore.

For millions of Japanese, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by atomic bombs in 1945, is the only argument needed against going nuclear. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 has made even civil nuclear power controversial.

But North Korea’s apparent impunity and America’s dithering have brought out Japanese hawks who say their country must go nuclear. Washington is against such a move, but after events earlier this week Japan can legitimately ask if it can really rely on its ally to deter an attack.

JAPAN’S role in the world economy is huge and its forces – for the purposes of self-defence under that post-war constitution – are impressive. Since 1945, it has built up a large army and air force, and one of the biggest navies in the world (although the U.S. has made sure Japan lacks aircraft carriers capable of offensive action).

Given Japan’s mix of high-tech industry and nuclear power stations, it could make a nuclear bomb quickly. But there is another player in the region – China’s reaction to such a development would be off the scale.

In Europe, in the seven decades since the end of World War II, the idea of a war between the old enemies seems incredible. But in East Asia, while American power has kept the peace between Japan and her old foes, the deep-rooted enmity between the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese is never far from the surface. Disputes over sea borders, for instance, are just one symptom of the distrust between these nations.

So, while there is method and history attached to Kim’s madness, it does leave the Japanese government facing a huge dilemma. Whether the U.S. will still be able to bear influence over the direction that Japan’s military will take – in being able to properly defend itself –  is likely to be an issue that will gain increasing traction in the weeks and months ahead.

• Appendage

Koreas: Historical timeline