JAPANESE SECURITY AND PEACE REGIME ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA

Abstract

The sharp rise of North Korea’s threat to Japan’s security in recent years has prompted Japan to play a more active role in the uncertain peace-building effort on the Korean peninsula. Indeed, Tokyo has adopted a multifaceted security policy toward the management of problems associated with a divided Korea. On the one hand, it has committed itself as a major underwriter of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) and is a supporter of the Four-Party Peace Talks and other multilateral confidence and security building efforts in the region. On the other hand, Tokyo has also strengthened its long-standing bilateral military ties with Washington, sought ways to cooperate with Seoul on security matters, and unilaterally instituted measures to beef up its defense capabilities. In fact, Japan’s trilateral cooperation with the United States and South Korea on diplomatic as well as military measures has limited North Korea’s ability to exploit the inevitable differences in national priorities among the three democratic countries. The continuation and deepening of this cooperation should help in convincing Pyongyang that it needs to moderate its confrontational behavior. This should in turn increase the prospect of establishing a stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula.