Seoul criticizes Tokyo over calls there to rearm

Vice Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told his Japanese counterpart, Shotaro Yachi, yesterday that Seoul was concerned about possible changes to Japan’s pacifist constitution.
A government official, speaking to reporters here on background, described some of the contents of the two men’s wide-ranging discussions.
He said Mr. Yu also noted that a former Japanese prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, had urged the development of nuclear weapons. The official said Seoul wanted its points noted before a new prime minister is installed in Tokyo next month.
Mr. Yachi reportedly distanced his government from Mr. Nakasone’s comments.
Japanese media have said that Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s likely successor, has pledged to revise Japan’s postwar Constitution. Conservatives have long chafed under the renunciation of warfare as an instrument of national policy, which until recently was interpreted as barring Japanese troops from any foreign deployment.
Another Korean official yesterday conceded that North Korea’s military adventurism was a major stimulus for the increasing calls in Japan for a “normal” military establishment.
The North’s adventurism, this official said, was making it easier for Tokyo to point to North Korea and its unpredictability to justify its own rearmament and desire for a more robust international posture.

by Brian Lee