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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Dec-04
North Korea says Japanese sanctions will trigger "war" and an "effective physical" response

Web Log - December, 2004

North Korea says Japanese sanctions will trigger "war" and an "effective physical" response

Japan has threatened to freeze food aid to North Korea and impose other sanctions after catching North Korea in a lie over a matter or Japanese national honor.

Megumi Yokota pictured before her abduction in 1977 <font size=-2>(Source: BBC)</font>

Megumi Yokota pictured before her abduction in 1977 (Source: BBC)

Megumi Yokota was just 12 years old when the Koreans abducted her on a Japanese beach. She was one of a dozen or so 1970s Korean abductions of Japanese for the purpose of teaching spies Japanese language and culture.

In recent years, Japan has demanded return of the abductees, or their remains if they're dead, as claimed by North Korea.

Korea returned some ashes and bones to Japan in November, saying that they were Yokota's remains.

However, the Japanese public was infuriated when DNA tests revealed that the remains contained the bones of two persons, neither of them Yokota.

Japan said it will suspend food aid to North Korea and consider other possible economic sanctions.

North Korea responded yesterday by saying that any sanctions would be viewed as a declaration of war and would hit back with an "effective physical" response.

Now, this exchange has a deep reverberation in history, something that newspaper accounts are missing.

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. and that triggered the worldwide oil embargo and economic sanctions against Japan, led by American and Britain and enforced by the League of Nations. In 1933, Japan walked out of the League of Nations and invaded China. One thing led to another, in Europe and Asia, and Japan finally bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Americans have forgotten all this, of course, but you can be sure that the Koreans haven't. Imperial Japan colonized Korea during the first half of the 20th century, and later, during WW II, used tens of thousands of Korean women as "comfort women," for the Japanese armed forces.

If we follow the Generational Dynamics principle that no one ever remembers the atrocities they commit on other people, but no one every forgets the atrocities that others commit on them, then you can be certain that North Korean president Kim Jong-il, and the North Korean people themselves, are still infuriated by Japanese actions at that time. And after being victimized for "comfort women," you can be sure that the North Koreans really don't give a damn about Japanese anger over the abducted 12-year-old girl, Megumi Yokota.

And when Japan threatened last week to impose economic sanctions, Korea's response yesterday was essentially this: "We'll consider that an act of war, just as Japan considered economic sanctions against it an act of war in 1933."

The implied threat is that while Japan waited 8 years (1933 to 1941) to build up its military and launch the attack on Pearl Harbor, Korea is ready to launch an attack on Japan today, and won't wait 8 years. Indeed, North Korea is known to have developed missile technology that can easily reach Japan, and might even reach California, and North Korea is thought to have an arsenal of six to eight nuclear weapons that could deployed with those missiles.

Furthermore, North Korea, which is in a generational crisis period, has a million man army ready to flood across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to overrun Seoul, South Korea. Generational Dynamics shows that this are exactly the kinds of things that happen in crisis periods, whether they are rational or not. During crisis periods throughout history, war becomes like sex, and the drive to commit genocidal war becomes an overwhelming drive related to the human "survival of the fittest" instinct.

Why didn't Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 trigger an immediate larger war involving America? Well, one reason is that we had no major national interest in defending Manchuria and China in a regional war with Japan.

Things are quite different today. We're obligated by treaties to defend Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (as well as Israel). That means that a regional war in any of these areas will pull in America, and probably trigger a worldwide war. As I've recently described, these are among the six most dangerous regions of the world, in that a regional war in any one of them would almost certain spiral out of control into a world war. (16-Dec-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Dec-04 North Korea says Japanese sanctions will trigger "war" and an "effective physical" response

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Dec-04
North Korea says Japanese sanctions will trigger "war" and an "effective physical" response