Susumu Awanohara, an expert on U.S.-Japan relations with Medley Global Advisors, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the challenges Japan’s new leadership faces and the evolving relationship between Japan and the U.S.

Tokyo’s neighborhoods straddle between the need for modern development and the desire to maintain historical buildings and structures.

For instance, Fujiizaka, affectionately named “the slope for seeing Mount Fuji,” in the Nippori neighborhood, has been increasingly blocked by tall buildings that obstruct its view. Residents have banded together to push for preservation. The neighborhood cause is slowly gaining support as a growing desire to preserve historical places takes hold in Tokyo, reported the New York Times.

The city of Tokyo is geographically complex, with 8.5 million people living in 23 districts that span 620 kilometers.  The history of the city’s development is characterized by a continual process of restructuring and growth. It is a city that is renewed on average every twenty years, with few buildings surviving from the past.

This is due in part because as the capital of Japan since 1868, it has been used as a showcase for the Japanese modern age. It has also seen major development because of the need for new construction after World War II, earthquakes and the Olympics, according to the Goethe-Institut.

Chris Salzberg, a writer/translator living in Tokyo, Japan discusses the reaction to the recent development plan for the neighborhood of Shimokitazawa for Global Voices Online.

Tokyo has no lack of small, winding streets. Shibuya has its maze of criss-crossing shōtengai, Roppongi its club-lined back alleyways, Ueno its open-air street markets. But no neighborhood in Tokyo packs more complexity per square foot than Shimokitazawa, a neighborhood whose layout bears closer resemblance to a ball of thread than to anything an urban planner would come up with.

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Shimokitazawa’s spaghetti-like mess of streets and train lines evoke passion among some, frustration among others. The area has earned a name for itself as a breeding ground for creative young artists with its dozens of small theaters, art galleries and music venues. While eccentric characters like Rikimaru Toho fit perfectly into this urban environment, others see the maze of narrow streets as a dangerous fire hazard and a giant urban congestion knot in need of unwinding.

The entire area happens to lie in the path of a would-be thoroughfare running through Shimokitazawa to Shibuya, originally set forth in a “War damage revival plan” drafted all the way back in 1946. After several changes, that plan was brought back to life in 2003 and demolition and construction work has been slated to start in 2010. Should it be executed, the plan will split Shimokitazawa apart with a 26-meter wide expressway, Subsidiary Route 54 (補助54号線).

While the basic shape of those redevelopment plans had been known for some time, it was only a few weeks ago that the first glimpses of the new design finally emerged on the blog of Kuniyoshi Yoshida, a local landowner and head of the Shimokitazawa South [ja] shopowners’ union. Comments which began to appear on the blog, blasting the new design for its failure to respect the Shimokitazawa atmosphere, were swiftly deleted, but hostility against the plans only grew.

See this video of the streets of Shimokitazawa neighborhood below:

Kay Shimizu, a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss why the presence of 47,000 U.S. troops in Okinawa is causing controversy and why the new Japanese government may pull out its naval support of the war in Afghanistan.

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer at Worldfocus,  is a news editor at the “China Times” in Taipei.  She blogs here about an unusual proposal by the Japanese foreign minister, and the roadblocks to pan-Asian unity.

During a lecture at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan last week, Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada suggested that China, Japan and South Korea write a common history book.

The proposal set East Asian nations buzzing.

Japan has been notorious for its distortions of the historical record - propagated in the Japanese education system -  that whitewash the war crimes of Imperial Japan before and during World War II.

The  Japanese approach to history has caused turmoil in the region for decades.  According to a survey conducted by Chinese media,  Twenty-three percent of respondents said the biggest obstacle preventing trilateral cooperation among the three nations is “dispute over history.”

But after Japan’s general election in August,  the country seems to be at a turning point in many ways.  New Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is endeavoring to fix fragile trilateral relations by introducing the concept of “Yuai,” the Japanese term of fraternity.

China and South Korea apparently were pleased with the idea of a common history book.  “It is a good idea to make a textbook based on a common recognition of the past histories of the three East Asian nations,” a presidential spokesman in South Korea said, “however, it will be a long-term and painstaking project.”

Indeed, in Japan, conservative nationalists have already held several rallies, accusing Okada of being a “madman” or a traitor.”  The road to consensus building doesn’t look so smooth.

Still, there have been precedents for former foes sitting down to write history textbooks together. In 2006, France and Germany co-authored the textbook in response to calls from high school students of both countries. The history textbook not only touches on the arduous reconstruction during the post-war era but also examines the war crimes of Nazi Germany.

François Fillon, the then-French Minister of National Education, noted, “We have lived through centuries in which the interpretation and writing of history nourished a ferment of bitterness between us.  We are now seizing the opportunity to make it the bond that unites us.”

Can we Asians apply the European model here, despite the fact that hatred, mistrust and animosity have kept us apart for centuries?

To me, the answer is yes.

I believe the concept of “Yuai” is the first step in reaching out to one another. I believe there is something shared by all mankind — something strong enough to break the boundaries of time and space, gender and race — that could bring us together once again.

Kenji Kohno is the Washington bureau chief of the Japanese television network NHK and discusses what this historic election means for Japan and U.S. relations.

Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Institute of the State University of New York and a former NBC News correspondent and anchor and Rana Foroohar, senior editor of Newsweek’s international editions overseeing coverage of business and economics, join Martin Savidge to discuss the top stories of the week.

Steve Chao reports for Al Jazeera English.

Prime Minister Taro Aso.

Japan is set to head to the polls for parliamentary elections on August 30, and polling suggests Prime Minister Taro Aso’s conservative party will lose power after ruling for most of the past 54 years.

Some analysts suggest that this election may herald an era of a two-party political system.

Yoichi Funabashi is the editor-in-chief of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. He writes at the “East Asia Forum” about changes ahead for the Japanese political landscape.

Halfway through the 2004 U.S. presidential primaries, a taxi driver engaged me in conversation as he drove me from a hotel in Qingdao, in the eastern part of China’s Shandong province, to the airport.

‘In the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats appeal to the public by highlighting the differences in their policies. That is why there is dynamism in their politics,’ he said. ‘In China, with the Kuomintang in Taiwan becoming more realistic, what would happen if a two-party system was set up with the Communist Party and the Kuomintang and have the two alternate in government? By the way, what is the situation in Japan? Are there two major parties in Japan like in the United States? Are they competing with each other? What are the choices presented to the people?’

Reflexively, I responded: ‘Of course they are competing,’ I said. ‘In Japan, it comes down to a battle between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. Like the United States, Japan has free elections.’

However, I soon caught myself pondering the issue more deeply as I began to realize that it was not entirely obvious what it is that the LDP and the DPJ are competing over.

What, in fact, are the choices that are being presented to the Japanese public?

There are other questions facing Japan right now. Will it have a two-party system like the United States? Is such a system even desirable? Will the Lower House election on August 30 be a choice between promoting that trend or not?

Five years down the road, has the time finally come when I can proudly respond to that taxi driver’s question?

[...] Scrutinizing the policies presented in the campaign manifestoes of the LDP and the DPJ, there is a blurring of the differences because the LDP appears to have come up with measures that simulate those of the DPJ in areas such as child-rearing support and education policy.

In addition, the record-level economic stimulation measures taken to address the global economic crisis have led to a confrontation between ‘big government’ and ‘big government.’

[...] If an age of two-party politics is to emerge in Japan, it should be one that pits a conservative force against a liberal one.

However, it remains to be seen if a two-party system in which both parties are capable of handling government will actually emerge.

The range of alternatives before the public will only expand if opposition parties present counterproposals to policies presented by the ruling party, and if the ruling camp subsequently presents even more counterproposals.

There can be no choice without alternatives. Alternatives must involve decisions on what should be changed as well as what should not be changed.

One reason for the current confusion in Japan is its failure as a nation to respond to questions such as whether it wants to continue to depend on exports or move toward a domestic demand-based economy, whether the environment and the economy are mutually exclusive, whether it seeks to become a multiethnic society and whether it will push reform or return to square one.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World Economic Forum under a Creative Commons license.

This map, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook, uses the “Sea of Japan” label, but Koreans demand it be called the “East Sea.”

Geographical names — the names of cities, countries and oceans — can kill.

You don’t think so? Try referring to the archipelago of 778 islands 300 miles off the coast of southern South America as the Falkland Islands, and an Argentinian may think you’re picking a fight. Their name for the British-controlled islands, for which they claim sovereignty, is Islas Malvinas. Britain and Argentina fought a war over the islands in 1982, and 907 people died.

A hapless Iranian journalist with the Associated Press in Tehran during the days of the shah received visits from the Iranian secret police, and was threatened with jail and worse every time the news agency described the portion of the Indian Ocean between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as “The Arabian Sea.”

“Please, please,” the poor Iranian reporter begged editors at AP in New York on a crackly telephone line. “Don’t call it that; call it the Persian Gulf.”

I’m reminded of all this by a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post (page A15, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009), in which a vaguely-named organization calls on journalists to use the name “East Sea” for the portion of the Pacific Ocean between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese Islands. The ad noted that the newspaper had used the geographical term “Sea of Japan” in a news story on July 5.

I suspect strongly that the Web site is linked to the South Korean government’s effort to change the recognized name of that body of water to East Sea. Some organizations, such as National Geographic, have been convinced to use both names together — publishing maps and gazetteers that read “Sea of Japan (East Sea).” That is somewhat appeasing to South Korean tastes.

South Korea has been lobbying for years that the body of water be officially renamed worldwide. The case hearkens back to Japan’s occupation of Korea in the 20th Century. South Korea (and North Korea is generally in agreement, in this case) argues that Korea was controlled by a colonial Japanese government when it accepted the world-recognized designation of Sea of Japan in 1929.

Japan argues that “Sea of Japan” predates the Korean occupation and denies influencing its international use.

The dispute has been considered without resolution by a commission on standardizing names at the United Nations.

What is remarkable to me is the fervor with which South Korea has dedicated efforts — and a considerable amount of money — to change the name. Diplomats, university professors and statesmen have been sent around the world to visit governments, news media and others simply to get them to change the name in their official usage.

I don’t have any advice for the Washington Post, my former employer, where I was once the editor in charge of Asian news, and where I once received an earnest and convincing delegation of South Koreans who wanted to discuss the issue. Days later, I also received a visit from the Japanese embassy, where officials apparently had gotten wind of the lobbying effort.

But wouldn’t there would be a lack of incentive to make a quick decision on changing the name? The latest advertisement must have added well-needed revenue to Washington Post coffers somewhere in the range of $40,000-60,000. Using the “wrong name” more than once could add up to real money.

P.S. I even suspect that a South Korean tracking program spotted the use of “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan” in this blog item. While it sounds like good money, WorldDesk doesn’t run advertising, doesn’t accept funding from government organizations and seeks to be balanced at all times. We’ll go with both names, right down the middle, for free.

- Peter Eisner

In 1998, just six Chinese companies were on the Fortune 500 global list of the world’s largest companies, while 185 American companies were included. Ten years later, 37 Chinese companies made the list, while U.S. companies had decreased to 140.

Brian Dumaine, Fortune’s global editor, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the economic rise of China and Japan and China’s role in recovery from the global recession.

Members of the International Monetary Fund meet with officials in the Maldives.

The battle over America’s pledge of new funds to the International Monetary Fund is shaping up and will play out in Congress this week during the negotiations over the war supplemental. Recall that the G-20 nations agreed in April to boost IMF lending capacity by $500 billion.

This extra capital is necessary because, in an effort to stem the economic crisis, the IMF bailed out a number of countries such as Pakistan and Iceland that may have otherwise gone belly up. Now the IMF needs additional funds that it can loan to other countries on the brink.

Opposition is coming from both sides of the political spectrum. There is the usual neo-con fearmongering that this money is a “giveaway”—more on why this is silly below.

There are also progressives who argue, with reason, that the IMF should be less strict in its demands from poor countries because past IMF conditions on loans to developing economies often caused great pain and were ultimately unproductive. All sides are demanding greater transparency in the IMF’s lending practices and governance.

Much room remains for improvement at the IMF, but we need to ante up. Congress should deliver the funds we’ve pledged, while also keeping up the pressure for reform. Here are five reasons why:

1. The IMF extends our dollars. Our share of the additional $500 billion pledged—$108 billion—is less than 22 percent of the total. That means that for every one dollar we contribute, other countries are putting in about $3.50. Japan already signed an agreement with the IMF to provide its promised $100 billion, and their economy is at least as bad as ours, and much smaller. The amount we owe is significantly less than what we needed to bailout one U.S. company (AIG), and these are countries at stake.

2. We are going to pay one way or the other. Let’s be serious. We aren’t going to let Pakistan’s economy collapse, or for that matter Hungary’s, Romania’s, or Guatemala’s. The potential national security consequences of any of those countries failing are too dire, not to mention the ultimately higher economic costs to America. Better the IMF prop them up — as they have — than us shoulder an even higher burden in funds and hassle.

3. This is a chance to show leadership again. American economic leadership has taken a serious beating lately. The world blames us for this crisis. This is a chance to do the right thing when countries are in need and gain back some credibility as an economic leader. Let’s not be the last country to pay what we pledged.

4. China is increasing its influence at the IMF. That’s largely good, because it comes with an increased contribution from them, and the IMF is developing into a forum to talk about their undervalued currency. But America will want to maintain significant influence at the IMF, too. We can’t have leverage if we don’t pay up. China has committed $50 billion of the $500 billion total.

5. The IMF will pay us back. These are bonds we are buying. And they’ve got gold to back them up.

- Nina Hachigian

This post originally appeared at The Center for American Progress.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Presidency Maldives under a Creative Commons license.

South Korea and Japan feel the most immediate threat from these military tests, but the actions also put North Korea on a collision course with the United States, Russia and China, which have been among those trying for years to persuade North Korea to give up any intention of becoming a nuclear power.

Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the threat posed by North Korea, how countries in the region have responded and what comes next.

Read more about Japan’s response from a Worldfocus contributing blogger: Japan powerless to halt North Korea’s nuclear program.

A map of North Korea the earthquake believed to have occurred as a result of the nuclear test. Photo: USGS

In the face of threat from North Korea’s nuclear program, Japan has seen growing calls to develop its own nuclear arsenal, despite a constitutional ban on nuclear weapons.

On Monday, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test, which was promptly followed by two short-range missiles fired Tuesday afternoon.

Following the nuclear test, a leading member of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party said that Japan should bolster its defense network and consider pre-emptive strikes.

Tobias Harris is a graduate student in political science at MIT who worked for a member of the Democratic Party of Japan in the national legislature for two years. He writes at “Observing Japan” to discuss Japan’s response to North Korea’s recent actions and calls for the country to develop its own nuclear arsenal.

A study in powerlessness

With its second nuclear test in three years, North Korea continues to illustrate the limits of the power of the US, China, and the international community as a whole.

The underground test, conducted on Monday, appears to have been more successful than the October 2006 test — although it is unclear just how much of a success it was. As Geoffrey Forden wonders, this test could have been a failed test of a 20KT device or a successful test of a miniaturized 4KT device. Pyongyang will undoubtedly be glad to keep its neighbors guessing which is the case.

The response from Japan and other countries has been predictable. Prime Minister Aso Taro spoke of the gravity of this latest development for Japanese national security and stressed cooperation with the US and the international community at the UN Security Council. The House of Representatives moved swiftly to draft a resolution condemning North Korea that could pass as early as Tuesday. The LDP leadership called the test “outrageous.” Okada Katsuya, the new DPJ secretary-general, echoed the government’s sentiments.

Japanese conservatives used the test to advance their argument for a more robust Japanese security posture. Komori Yoshihisa said that the test illustrates the limits of the multilateral management of the North Korean problem and argued that Japan, doing whatever it needs to do defend itself, should reopen the debate on a nuclear deterrent. [...] In other words, much like last month’s rocket launch, the responses of Japanese political actors to North Korea’s second nuclear test have followed wholly predictable patterns — and show just how powerless Japan is to stop or reverse North Korea’s nuclear program.

[...]The US is unquestionably capable of deterring a nuclear strike against Japan, but it takes compellent power over North Korea’s actions. Being unable to make a credible threat of regime change and visibly dependent on Beijing to pressure Pyongyang, Washington has little power other than its deterrent power. Japan, even with a nuclear arsenal of its own, would have even less power over North Korea. This is the unanswered question in the conservative response to every act of provocation by North Korea.

If the US is unable to guarantee Japanese security through its immense nuclear arsenal — again, the unstated (or occasionally stated) basis of the argument for a Japanese arsenal — how would a Japanese deterrent be any more powerful? I understand that they could argue that the problem isn’t US capabilities but US commitment, but I have yet to see a convincing demonstration that the US commitment to defend Japan from attack is flagging to the point that Japan would require its own nuclear weapons. I do not think the Japanese public is convinced either.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

From the $787 billion stimulus package in the U.S. to China’s $586 billion, world governments are hoping that they can lay the groundwork for economic recovery. Some analysts say the worst is over.

In Japan, the downward spiral is getting steeper, with exports falling and companies slashing production. In the first quarter of the year, Japan’s economy shrank more quickly than at any time in the past 50 years. The country has pumped $154 billion in stimulus into the economy. 

With unemployment now at 4.8 percent, Brazilians of Japanese descent who were welcomed just 10 years ago as guest workers are now being offered money to take a one way ticket and go home.

Blogger “Peter” in Japan visits a town populated mostly by Brazilians and describes the hardships there: 

My daughter recently asked me if I could drive her to the nearby town of Oizumi so she could visit a friend who lived there, and I was happy to do it. In my 18 years here I’d never been to the “Brazil in Japan,” famous for having the highest percentage of nikkei Brazilians and Peruvians in the country. […]

It was certainly interesting to drive down the street and see all the businesses sporting Brazilian flags, and walking into the all-Brazilian convenience store was a good excuse to buy some interesting chocolates and something called Inca Kola. The people of the town are largely dependent on factory jobs at companies like Sanyo, and times are very hard for them right now, prompting the Japanese government to take the unprecedented step of offering financial assistance to any guest worker who wants to go home but who is unable to for economic reasons.

From Germany, where there are signs that the worst may be over, an anonymous comment on a forum reflects the continued suffering of the country’s worst recession since World War II:

I was made redundant, I have several friends in Munich that have been made redundant, no point going home cause the situation is just as bad there. The industry that I worked in is in freefall with more job loses to come. It is absolutely unbelieveable and very scary. After a masters degree and several years of experience at very good companies, I have very little chance of finding a job. It’s like someone pressed the reset button on the economy. 

In Spain, where new statistics say the country’s economy actually contracted by nearly 2 percent in the first quarter of 2009, unemployment has reached 17 percent. Blogger Alex in Spain describes his experience:

Here in Spain, unemployment has reached an all-time high. Back in March my part-time job had to cut out my English as a Second Language class because the government severely cut back on funding to adult education. Then yesterday was my partner’s last day at his job and he is now on the unemployment line.

In Africa, economies have been growing at a rate of six percent a year since 2000. But the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that growth on that continent will be only 1.5 percent this year.  He called Africa “an innocent victim” of the recession and asked international donors to keep their aid commitments to Africa in the coming year.

Blogger “MrK” of “Zambian Economist” argues that aid is less important than economic reform: 

What is needed is fargoing nationalisation of industries. Reinvest profits from raw materials in other economic sectors, and the economies will grow. There really is a need for economic diversification, and using the mines is the way to do it. 

Economic reform, government reform, land reform, not more ‘aid’.

From Bahrain, blogger “Mahmood” describes how consumers have reacted to high vehicle prices:

There is an active campaign in Bahrain at the moment by consumers to force greedy car dealerships to reduce their prices. It’s apparently fashioned after a Saudi campaign which some say already bore fruit.

The essence of this campaign is to not buy cars, let the stock rust if need be, until dealers take active steps to make car prices in Bahrain comparable to world markets. 

Barbados is suffering from decreased tourism and mounting government debt. A blogger at the “Living in Barbados” blog reacts to the new budget announced by Prime Minister David Thompson:

I remember when I first got here most of the criticism I heard from Mr. Thompson, when in opposition, was that the economic ills, especially rising prices, could be put at the door of the government of Mr. Owen Arthur. Now that the hat has a new wearer he is quick to point out he was having to deal with ‘circumstances not of our making’, and much blame is laid on the world recession. I don’t have a problem with that observation, but I wonder what changed in the shifting of positions.

Much of the success in economic policy is about confidence and credibility. Barbados needs foreigners’ money and it comes in three main forms–from tourists, from those setting up and operating international businesses here, and from investors in real estate on the island. My own view is that the government did not see that nothing should be done to jeopardise any of those pillars especially in the current fragile economic conditions. People are fickle when it comes to putting their money to work abroad. Tough economic conditions in the UK, Canada and the US will crimp tourists arrivals and spending. Plans by the world’s economic ‘big boys’ to rein in what they call ‘tax havens’ have had Barbados and other countries with relatively low taxes scrambling to paint themselves as less harmful. But, I think the ball was missed in making foreign property investors less welcome, and I fear that once they turn their backs it will be hard to get them to change their minds.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user glennharper under a Creative Commons license.

Residents of Japan attempt to ward off swine flu with protective masks.

Japan has reported a big increase in the number of cases of H1N1 flu, with at least 191 confirmed. The government has closed more than 4,000 schools and canceled many community events.

Janne Morén is a Swedish researcher living in Osaka. He writes at his blog to weigh the government’s approach to combating the flu. 

Flu Closings Not Working As Expected

The number of infected is up to 191 people, and a lot of schools are closed for a week. Most infected people are high-school students so I guess it makes some kind of sense. Not all schools are closed, however; as the link above hints, jurisdiction over things like schools is an unholy mess of overlapping and conflicting responsibilities here. The Osaka prefecture, for instance, can order all schools in Osaka prefecture to close — except for those in Osaka city and Sakai city. They’re the biggest cities and their schools are not under prefectural control. And private schools are private and can’t just be ordered to close.

Of course, the incubation period of the virus seems to range from a day up to nine days, so a week-long break might really be too short to break the chain of transmission. Besides, it’s high-schoolstudents we’re talking about here; compulsive socializers, with a primal urge to see each other at any cost. The kind of people that would meet up during a hurricane just to show each other how cool and unimpressed they are. What are the chances that they simply meet each other out on the town instead, rendering the school closings ineffective? And true enough, the Osaka evening news featured a broadcast from Amerikamura where large numbers of middle- and high-school students have gathered today to celebrate a few days off school.

Day care centers are also closing. Which impacts young mothers that work part- or full-time. They can no longer go to work since they need to stay home with their kid. According to a television report this morning, many such young parents gather at each others home. That way the kids have friends to play with, and the parents can help each other out so some can go grocery shopping (or even go to work part time) while the others watch the children.

Great idea - except that it defeats the whole purpose of closing the day care centers in the first place. And instead of having the kids watched by trained nursery staff that knows to look for early signs of infection and knows what to do if they see it, you have parents that of course really have little clue about what to do.

To their credit, a number of people have begun speaking up about this current hysteria, and some of the media is giving them a voice. Some doctors have rightly pointed out that many of the current measures don’t really work. All they do is disrupt people’s lives and incite panic. Our Fearless Leader, Osaka Governor Hashimoto (who seems to be putting on some weight; might want to go easy on the takoyaki there) has called for a step-down on the pandemic response and start treating it more like a normal flu outbreak. The radical measures are out of proportion to the current severity and spread of the disease. 

Read more at the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Foxeo under a Creative Commons license.

The Pakistani government has been making concessions to Taliban militants in the north of the country, in the Swat Valley, for weeks now.

Ahmed Rashid, a leading Pakistani journalist and author of “Descent into Chaos,” joins Martin Savidge for a deeper look at the situation in Pakistan.

A satellite image of the rocket at the Musudanri facility in North Korea. Photo: Institute for Science and International Security

U.S. officials say North Korea appears to be on track for a rocket launch that could take place as early as this Saturday.

A satellite image from earlier this week showed the rocket on a launchpad. U.S. defense officials say that fueling is underway. Meanwhile, South Korea’s navy and coast guard are maintaining a heavy presence near North Korean waters. Although North Korea says the rocket will launch a satellite, South Korea, Japan and the United States think the North Koreans are planning a test of long-range missile technology.

In London on Thursday, President Obama discussed the implications of the launch with South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak. They issued a statement agreeing on “a stern, united response from the international community if North Korea launches a long-range rocket.”

Blogger Ben Luongo at “Creative Loafing” argues that Obama’s “soft power” approach to North Korea may prove effective:

The foreign policy over the past eight years has been aggressive with threats and likely to justify its actions through self-defense. This hasn’t always been a good thing though. Eight years of the Bush Doctrine has eroded much of our soft power, which in today’s globalizing era is more effective than our might. It doesn’t go unnoticed, then, when a new foreign policy takes a more pragmatic outlook.

[U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] Gates makes a smart move by saying that we’re not prepared to shoot down any launch and here is why. The only way to ensure security between the U.S. and North Korea, or North Korea and the rest of the world for that matter, is to encourage North Korea into the modern international system where we govern our actions by law. If the U.S. were to shoot down a North Korean launch then it would be taking the law into its own hands, which is essentially the same offense (non-compliance with law) that North Korea is guilty of. Rather what the U.S. and Japan should do is let the international legal system work as it should. Nothing is more counterproductive, more hypocritical, than acting outside the system that we work so hard to bring North Korea into.

Hopefully, a new foreign policy under President Obama would work towards encouraging North Korea into the international system, where Kim Jong-Il would learn that testing the system is less productive than working with it.

Blogger Peter Kang at “World Policy” disagrees, writing that Obama’s change in approach to North Korea may prove disastrous for South Korea:

In the long run, Obama’s approach, which emphasizes more engagement with, and acceptance of, Pyongyang than the policies pursued by Bush, is likely to grant even more precious time to the North.

In the end, the Obama administration may be writing the final chapter of America’s failed North Korea policy by bringing about a devastating U.S. surrender: abandoning the denuclearization effort, accepting the monstrous tyranny as a member of the world nuclear club, and opening the gateway for the North to take over the South.

It is too simplistic to think that the United States can still protect South Korea under its nuclear umbrella. Most likely, North Korea’s strategy will not involve waging a full-scale war, which Pyongyang knows it cannot win. Instead, it will focus on the following approaches: 1) conducting guerrilla and terror attacks against the South; 2) enlisting the support of China, which wants to preserve a Communist dictatorship as a neighbor; 3) weakening South Korea’s will to defend itself by stirring up the already vicious infighting in the South between the majority pro-American conservatives and the minority but very aggressive progressives and leftists sympathetic to the North; and 4) using nuclear brinkmanship as a barrier against U.S. support for the South.

[...]The most urgent thing now is to issue a stern warning to Pyongyang clearly indicating intended punishments for the missile launch. Washington should do this regardless of what North Korea says about the Six-Party Talks, about reversing the denuclearization process, or about conducting a second nuclear test.

An American living in Korea writes at the “Elephant Talk” blog about Japan’s position and its relationship with both North and South Korea:

As we get closer to North Korea’s missile launch, Japan becomes a more interesting player. The thought of Japan preparing for a North Korean provocation begs several questions: Would Japan really take an aggressive stand on this? Would Japan ever go to war with the DPRK? And the bigger one: If they did engage fully in war with the North, what would South Koreans think of that? All Koreans, it seems, share a collective dislike when it comes Japan.  [...] If the DPRK landed a few missiles in Tokyo, or took control of Dokdo island, would there be a little tiny squeal of collective joy from the south? I asked a couple Korean friends this recently and one admitted, laughing, yeah, maybe a little.

For more on South-North Korea relations, see Wide Angle’s “Field Trip to the DMZ,” showcasing North Korean defectors living in South Korea.

The rocket will likely fly over Japanese territory, and the country has begun implementing countermeasures in northern Japan, ordering the military to intercept any debris. Blogger Tobias Harris in Japan discusses the political ramifications for Japan’s leaders:

I recognize that the Japanese government is unable to treat the rocket launch as nonchalantly as the U.S., by virtue of geography (the U.S., after all, doesn’t have to worry about debris falling on its territory), public opinion (overwhelmly supportive of the government’s response, according to a Sankei poll — even JCP supporters tended to be more supportive than not), path dependency (having pursued a hard line up until now, the government could hardly do otherwise), a desire to somehow rectify Japan’s unpreparedness when North Korea launched a Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998, and Prime Minister Aso’s ideological tendencies. But the government better hope that should North Korea go through with the launch, no debris falls on Japan, because the damage it could cause in the likely event that an attempted intercept fails would be enough to destroy the Aso government, which has enjoyed a slight recovery in its support of late.

As the two men met today, they reaffirmed their strong partnership and its importance in helping the world recover from the grip of a deep recession.

Japan’s economy — dependent on exports — is shrinking three times faster than the U.S. economy, and Prime Minister Taro Aso’s popularity is falling even faster. One public opinion poll in Japan put his popularity rating at 11 percent.

The North Korean issue also became more urgent today when the communist nation announced it is preparing to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite, but which experts say may be a test of a long-range missile that could reach Alaska. In 1998, the North Koreans fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan.

Ayako Doi, an associate fellow at the Asia Society and former editor of “Japan Digest,” joins Martin Savidge to discuss how the U.S. and Japan can tackle the economy, the level of threat posed by the anticipated North Korean missile launch and the rest of the meeting’s agenda.

Read what a Worldfocus contributing blogger had to say about the meeting and the future of U.S.-Japan relations: U.S. expects Japan to elevate efforts in war and economy.