Finding spies everywhere, and thinking the unthinkable

While news reports have been focused on lethal North Korean operatives who brought about the murder of Kim Jong-nam in plain view at Kuala Lumpur airport, Shukan Taishu (April 17) informs its Japanese readers that their own country provides an even better haven for foreign operatives than does Malaysia.

Its lack of an anti-espionage law has made it a feeding ground for foreign agents. If the article is to believed, Japan is crawling with Chinese spies -- perhaps as many as 50,000 of them.

"China has six major groups of 'kakyo' (overseas Chinese), with a combined membership of 600,000. They are overseen by a section in China that conducts intelligence, the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army and the Security Bureau.

According to journalist Kensaku Tokito, China's spy network operates from the Chinese embassy in Tokyo and consulates in Sapporo, Niigata, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagasaki. "They are backed by caretakers in the Chinatowns found all across Japan, and include a huge network that includes exchange students, laborers, scholars, and even the workers at entertainment zones such as restaurant workers, club hostesses and masseuses." Tokito estimates their number between 30,000 to 50,000.

There are also said to be Japanese nationals who provide support to the Chinese spy network.

In addition, hundreds of members of Japan's land, sea and air self-defense forces have foreign spouses, some 70% of who are said to be Chinese. Some, the article implies, are likely to pose a security risk.

In addition to military intelligence, industrial espionage is also claimed to be rampant. Ten years ago, a Chinese worker at Denso, an auto parts manufacturer, supplied Chinese companies with some 130,000 items of data related to component design. The man destroyed the evidence, slipped away and is believed to still be working in Japan under a new name. Unlike the U.S. and China, Japan has few restrictions on taking data out of the country.

Compared with other countries, Japan's degree of awareness and countermeasures are at rock-bottom, warns Tokito.

Ironically, Thomson Reuters reported earlier on Monday that China has launched a campaign against foreign espionage, offering generous cash rewards to citizens who turn in suspected spies.

Meanwhile Aera (April 10) takes a "worst case" scenario regarding what might happen on the Korean peninsula.

What if Japanese cities were nuked? The article cites a 2003 book titled "War Simulation: The Day North Korea Explodes." According to the work, a study by the Heritage Foundation in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense, ran computer simulations on nuclear attacks on Tokyo and Osaka. The timing was 8 a.m. on May 31, 2004, and a "small" 12-kiloton nuclear device is detonated over the National Diet building, roughly at the center of Tokyo. (As a point of reference, the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was approximately 15 kilotons, and the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki was 21 kilotons.)

Depending on weather conditions and wind direction, the explosion would kill 423,627 people, with another 811,244 suffering various degrees of injury. If detonated over Umeda in central Osaka, projected figures for dead and injured would be slightly more than Tokyo.

Many fatalities in Hiroshima resulted from people being crushed under collapsed buildings. While some have argued that today's ferroconcrete buildings are considerably more robust than those in 1945, it's pointed out that the extensive use of class windows and other objects would be turned into deadly missiles. People fleeing down emergency steps from skyscrapers would topple over like dominos, and even if they reach the street level, they would be forced to run an obstacle course of fallen buildings and flaming vehicles.

At least some moves are beginning to prepare Japan for civil defense. Over 100 people in a fishing village in Akita Prefecture took part in an drill simulating a North Korean missile attack. But the time between a missile's launch in North Korea to its arrival in Japan is estimated at 7 to 10 minutes. But needless to say, the heavy concentration in major populated areas makes Japan extremely vulnerable.

The government is also said to have budgeted 2 trillion yen for development of a missile defense system -- code-named "Tate" (Shield) -- through 2018.

Since the beginning of this century, Japanese prime ministers have visited Pyongyang on two occasions. But the dialogue was allowed to lapse years ago. Can Japan, asks Aera, come up with a workable means of avoiding a crisis?

© Japan Today