Geoffrey Forden has more about the Chiba station and another station in Shimonoseki. As for the Chiba station, Yomiuri reports that its location poses some difficulty due to the Japan Alps lying between Chiba and North Korea. Due to geography, the radar is detecting with a 4-6 degree angle of elevation, which apparently prevented the station from tracking North Korea’s 2006 missile launches, which were about 100 kilometres too low. But as Yomiuri notes, the mistake had less to do with the radar than with human error: neither the ASDF officer who received the report nor the defence ministry’s central command post confirmed that the information had come from US spy satellites. They ought to have been suspicious, because reportedly an alarm would sound when data was received from the US — and beyond that, they could have checked on a US-Japan computer system for sharing information.
The result was confusion and alarm in localities throughout Japan. Apparently the public is paying more attention to the government’s extensive and visible preparations than to its messages telling the public to remain calm and minimizing the danger of falling debris. To some degree, the confusion was the result of over-preparedness. In their desire to deliver information to the public has swiftly as possible, local governments have neglected safeguards that would check for accuracy before issuing announcements. The speed with which corrections were issued caused further confusion.
The government was quick to apologize for the mistakes, and continued to stress its readiness — and urged the Japanese people to carry on with their daily lives. But yesterday’s follies will likely dog the government for weeks and months to come.
On Saturday afternoon, Hatoyama Yukio, DPJ secretary-general, criticized the government for needlessly alarming the public, sentiments echoed by the JCP, SDPJ, and PNP. The government also faced criticism from within the governing coalition. I have already mentioned Komeito’s rapid-fire criticism, which was echoed by LDP members. As an unnamed LDP defence zoku with cabinet experience said: ‘As this has made Japan’s troubles with its crisis management capabilities public, it’s extremely unpleasant’.
Yomiuri’s anonymous zoku giin alludes to an important point, namely that both the Japanese government and the Japanese people are not prepared for this sort of thing, despite their experience with disaster preparedness. How often have the JSDF personnel responsible for handling and conveying information received from Japanese radar sites and US satellites drilled for a missile launch? And this is a situation in which North Korea has provided a launch window. Would the JSDF be ready in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula which resulted in missiles being launched at Japan unannounced? It is fortunate that the errors were on the side of overcaution, but, of course, there’s always the danger that these mistakes will result in the ‘boy who cried wolf’ syndrome.
In that sense, Japan should be thankful that North Korea is stress testing Japan’s national emergency response system. Of course, the Aso government won’t see it that way, as I suspect that in the aftermath of Saturday’s fiasco the DPJ will use its control of the upper house to launch an inquiry into what precisely went wrong and perhaps the Aso government’s handling of the launch more generally. The last thing the government had hoped for when going all out in its preparations for the launch would be comments from the public wondering how these mistakes happened “despite Japan’s high technology.” But I hope — and the Japanese people should hope — that a public inquiry into Saturday’s events reveals precisely what went wrong in the JSDF and the defence ministry, and offers recommendations for improving Japan’s ability to respond to national security emergencies. Hopefully Saturday’s mistakes also reinvigorate the process of defence ministry reform, as the ministry has shown once again that its information handling skills are gravely deficient.
Undoubtedly the Aso government must have been hoping that North Korea launched its rocket today, that information about the launch was received, processed, and disseminated seamlessly, and that no debris fell in Japan’s direction. Saturday’s mishaps may have been enough to halt the rally the Aso government has enjoyed lately; further mishaps could send Aso’s approval ratings back into the single digits.
And in the midst of all the focus on North Korea, Ozawa Ichiro must be breathing a sigh of relief now that the media’s gaze has shifted elsewhere. Suddenly there are more important concerns than whether Ozawa and his secretary knew that they were receiving dirty money from a construction company.
The Aso government got its wish today: North Korea finally launched its rocket, with the first stage said to have landed off the coast of Akita prefecture and the second said to have landed in the Pacific Ocean.
After weeks of posturing, there was no attempt to intercept the debris.
It is unclear whether North Korea successfully delivered a satellite into orbit, as it said it would.
The US, Japan, and South Korea will now go to the UN Security Council as planned, citing the launch as a violation of UNSC resolution 1718. There will be some question of whether China will join the others in condemning the launch. China and Russia expressed reluctance to declare North Korea in violation of res. 1718 because it had followed procedures — notifying the International Maritime Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization of its impending launch — and gave indications that it was ‘just’ a satellite launch, even though the implications of a successful launch have obvious implications for North Korea’s missile arsenal. As an aside, I suspect that Japanese conservatives are happy with a successful launch, thinking that it will render the US as vulnerable to North Korea missile strikes as Japan, narrowing the distance between the US and Japan on North Korea.
China always walks a fine line in its relationship with North Korea, and this case will be no different. China will likely stop short of supporting a new resolution condemning North Korea or supporting new sanctions — both Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were cool to the urgings of Prime Minister Aso and Foreign Minister Nakasone on the sidelines of the G20 in London — but I wouldn’t be surprised if Beijing used one of its own back channels with Pyongyang to express its displeasure.
Originally posted as two seperate pieces at Observing Japan
It seems that in the ‘wake’ of NK’s missile/rocket launch, the main deficiencies have shown up in Japan’s crisis management system (as Tobias says in his posting), not in its MD system, which was not deployed. The idea of launching an MD system to defend against bits of debris always struck one as massive overkill. Although the Aso government could not be seen to be taking the nation’s security lightly, particularly given public concerns about the NKorean threat (ramped up in recent days by NK’s hostile rhetoric), a lot of the preparations, particularly of the weapons systems, had overtones of political posturing for domestic consumption, as Tobias points out.
In this particular encounter, I think it’s North Korea 1, Japan nil. In terms of the NKorean and Japanese governments’ achieving their particular international political objectives, it also seems that NK has scored points against Japan. NK has made Japan and its allies look impotent (‘action’ has amounted to UNSC discussions only), while NK’s allies have ‘passively’ defended its action, by failing to condemn it. Moreover, the Chinese government is calling for restraint on all sides, which applies just as much to Japan and the US, as it does to NK.