Japan imposes fresh sanctions on N Korea

TOKYO: Outspoken Japanese hawk Shinzo Abe on Tuesday announced fresh sanctions against North Korea for its missile tests, a day before he is expected to win a vote to become prime minister.           

 

The cabinet ordered Japanese financial institutions to block transactions involving 15 companies and one individual over alleged links to North Korea's military development.        

 

"It is difficult to guess how they will respond," Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, told a news conference, referring to North Korea. "We hope they will respond sincerely to the hopes of the international community."           

 

The decision comes one day before the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is expected to elect Abe, a staunch critic of North Korea, as the successor to retiring Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.       

 

Koizumi has tried to engage North Korea, flying twice to Pyongyang for high-stakes summits, and opposed calls for sanctions until the communist state's missile tests in July. 

 

Under the latest sanctions, financial institutions will be required to check identification for transactions involving North Korea and to report any suspicious behaviour.   

 

But Abe, contradicting earlier news reports, said it would not affect the thousands of ordinary North Koreans who work in Asia's largest economy.   

 

"The bodies and individuals listed are related to weapons of mass destruction and missile programs," Abe said. "People who are not related to those programs are not included."         

 

Some 700,000 Koreans -- some of them still holders of North Korean nationality -- live in Japan, mostly descendants of people who immigrated or were enslaved during Tokyo's 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.           

 

A ruling party study in 2005 estimated that North Koreans in Japan send back 1.2 billion dollars a year, providing crucial economic support for the cash-strapped country.             

 

"We will target financial transactions by the 15 organizations and one individual for now, but we don't know how much effect the sanctions will have on the entire money flow to the country," a foreign ministry official said.      

 

The new sanctions are in line with the UN Security Council's unanimous condemnation of North Korea's test-firing of seven missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea).             

 

In response to the missiles, Japan has already banned a ferry which was the key link for North Koreans living in Japan, along with visits by North Korean diplomats and charter flights.            

 

Abe, 51, is an outspoken hawk and rose to public prominence criticizing North Korea for its abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.             

 

Pyongyang has returned five of the victims and their families, but Japan insists that more are alive and being kept under wraps.    

 

Abe angered neighboring countries in July by suggesting a theoretical pre-emptive attack on North Korea in the face of an immediate threat -- comments until recently unthinkable for a top leader of officially pacifist Japan.            

 

North Korea, which stunned Japan in 1998 by firing a Taepodong-1 missile over its main island, on July 5 fired for the first time an upgraded Taepodong-2 and six medium- or short-range missiles.             

 

The Taepodong-2 broke up in midair several kilometers above the ground, while the six other missiles flew about 400 kilometers (250 miles) each, according to Japan's Defence Agency.