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Author: Atsushi Kondo, Meijo University Japan is the only developed industrial democracy to have become rich without heavily relying on foreign workers during its period of advanced economic growth. The government has followed two basic immigration principles: it welcomed specialised and technical labour while examining carefully the admission of unskilled labour. In practice, this meant [...]

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Author: Hitoshi Tanaka, JCIE Strains in Japan–ROK relations, which seriously deteriorated after former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s Takeshima visit stirred tensions and reopened historical wounds, present a challenge not just for the bilateral relationship but also to regional stability. Both countries’ new leaders — South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo [...]

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Authors: Djisman S. Simandjuntak, Indonesia, and Lee Sun-Jin, South Korea Recently, sales of Korean-made cars have surged in China while Japanese-made cars have sharply reduced. Korea and Japan agreed in October not to extend their currency swap agreements when they expire at the end of the month. These new developments may be attributed to the [...]

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Author: Ippei Fujiwara, ANU Japan’s average GDP growth rate was around 9.5 per cent between 1955 and 1970, and 3.8 per cent between 1971 and 1990. But in the past two decades it has dropped to just 0.8 per cent a year. This big drop in the growth rate is synonymous with ‘Japan’s two lost [...]

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NEW YORK: Recent reports from North Korea about the new leader, Kim Jong Un, and his “openness” are tantalizing. Coming months will show if the optimism is warranted. However, any possible transition in North Korea is not likely to follow the patterns of Arab Spring. Granted, refugees report that the citizenry in North Korea is under attack by state security and police agencies. But two key differences between North Korea and the Arab world stand out: First, attacks against citizens in North Korea do not take place in front of CNN or BCC cameras. North Koreans are not armed with mobile phones and internet connections. In the DPRK, only the political and economic elites have cell phones, and these cannot make international calls. North Korea has a nationwide intranet, but the few citizens with computers cannot access the internet. Civil society organizations and social media are prohibited, and interrogations and attacks take place in remote, extra-judicial political penal labor camps, prisons and police stations.

The government prohibits access for tourists, reporters and North Koreans, except those who work as prison guards. Second, the state-directed political violence in North Korea cannot be documented in “real time.” The world often learns about brutalities of forced-labor camps and prisons two or even four years later.

The victims of regime violence must wait long after their release or the occasional escape to tell their stories. The former inmates spend months in North Korea planning escape to China, where once again they spend months or years earning the money and making connections for a long “underground” trek from Northeast China through Southeast Asia before claiming asylum at the South Korean, ROK, embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Once in South Korea, the former North Koreans go through several months of intelligence debriefings with the South Korean government. Only then do journalists, scholars and human-rights investigators interview the victims of North Korean atrocities. North Korea lacks the internet.

The world often learns about brutalities two or more years later. Notwithstanding the delays, knowledge of conditions in North Korea is growing exponentially. In 2002, some 3,000 North Koreans had fled to China and made their way to South Korea, including a score who had been imprisoned and subjected to forced labor under harsh conditions for political offenses. By 2010 and 2011, the number of North Koreans escaping to South Korea had exceeded 23,000, including hundreds who had been imprisoned, tortured and enslaved in violation of international norms and standards.

Testimony from hundreds of former victims and witnesses about persecution, extra-judicial executions, slave labor, torture and other inhumane acts of comparative gravity reveal the severe repression that’s the heart of the DPRK citizen-control mechanism. Former North Korean state security agency officials and former prison camp guards who defected to South Korea report that some 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans are sentenced to lifetime forced labor in the kwan-li-so political penal labor colonies – victims of a broad but brutal, preemptive cleansing campaign, based on politics and ideology. Deemed unfit for the “Kim Il Sung nation,” the prisoners are persecuted for wrong-actions, wrong-thinking, wrong-knowledge or wrong- associations. Persons suspected of real or imagined wrongdoing include those on the losing side of a dispute within the Korean Workers Party. Others failed to take proper care of mandatory Kim Il Sung photographs or went to China without authorization in search of food or employment.  Persons suspected of wrong-thinking can be Christians who oppose messianic deification of Kim Il Sung or orthodox Marxist-Leninists who oppose introduction of Juche ideology or dynastic succession as contrary to the tenants of Marxism.  Defectors report that up to 200,000 are sentenced to lifetime forced labor, victims of brutal, preemptive cleansing.

Those guilty of wrong- knowledge include many of the Korean-Japanese who migrated to the DPRK from Japan in the 1960s or North Korean diplomats or students who observed the collapse of socialist allies in Eastern Europe. Awareness of capitalist democratic prosperity in Japan or the collapse of state socialism was deemed dangerous to the regime. People with wrong associations account for the largest number of inmates in the labor camps: These include family members of wrongdoers and wrong-thinkers – wives, children and even grandchildren – because the DRPK revived the feudal “three generation, collective responsibility, guilt-by-association system.” Family members are sent to the prison camps with the explicit intent to terminate family lineage. Children and grandchildren of real or imagined dissidents can anticipate short lifespans, a result of malnutrition, disease, accidents and forced labor in mines, forests, collective farms or factories for their family’s presumed disloyalty to the Kim dynasty.  The former prisoners from the kwan-li-so labor camps are not charged, tried, convicted or sentenced according to the DPRK criminal codes and criminal procedures codes. Instead, they’re “forcibly disappeared” by police agencies and deported to the camps with no legal or judicial process. Only a small number of inmates are eligible for eventual release. Those who escaped to South Korea report public executions of prisoners for attempting escape or violating camp regulations, mostly unauthorized food gathering.  In addition, thousands of North Koreans are imprisoned, subjected to forced labor for both criminal and, by international standards, political offences. Since 2003, the UN Human Rights Council and, since 2005, the UN General Assembly, at the initiative of member states of the European Union, have passed resolutions that recognize gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Each year, the number of UN member states voting for the DPRK human rights resolutions increases. Each year, the number of UN member states voting for the DPRK human rights resolutions increases. In response, North Korea insists that the political prison camps do not exist and that “there can be no human rights problem in their people centered socialism.” North Korea refuses to meet or cooperate with officials appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Even during the height of the North Korean famine, when UN agencies were providing food aid to close to one third of North Koreans, the DPRK refused six requests to meet with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

The UN Security Council has repeatedly sanctioned DPRK, but only for its nuclear weapons and missile programs. UN Security Council members have refused entreaties to take a more comprehensive approach on North Korea’s human-rights debacles, including famine of the 1990s, made worse by the government’s policies, and subsequent chronic, policy-driven food shortages. Former political prisoners have now reached the sufficient critical mass in South Korea to form their own NGOs. More than 100 former prisoners and torture victims jointly articulated their grievances in December 2009, writing to the International Criminal Court, asking for an investigation into the crimes against humanity.

The ICC prosecutor’s office responded that, absent a referral from the UN Security Council, the crimes referred to by these petitioners were outside the ICC’s jurisdiction.

The prosecutor recommended that North Koreans approach other organs of the international community. Subsequently, a coalition of some 40 international NGOs, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and other NGOs from South Korea and Japan, have joined forces with former North Korean prisoners to seek international recognition that the extreme violations of constitute crimes against humanity, thus encouraging North Korean authorities to realize that it’s in their interest to close the labor camps and political prisons. For now, despite its thumbs-up to Mickey and Minnie Mouse, new DPRK leadership avows determination to seek out and punish traitors, including family members.   The only recourse for those outside North Korea is to insist that the international community make dismantlement of forced-labor prison camps a priority on par with the dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons program.  

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Protests over tiny islands in the East China Sea are disrupting trade relations between China and Japan, respectively the world’s second and third largest economies. In response to violent protests, including alleged arson of some Japanese retailers, major firms, including Panasonic, Honda, Canon, Mazda and others are temporarily suspending operations, reports BBC News.

Toyota is continuing operations. “Calls for boycotts of Japanese businesses and products have been spreading in the streets and on the internet,” the BBC News article reports. “The disputed islands, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, are uninhabited but resource-rich.” The article suggests that anger surged after the Japanese government moved to purchase three of the islands from a Japanese businessman. Protests and plant closures could disrupt global markets; US officials are calling for calm and restraint. Multinational firms are not keen to invest in nations where violent protests are quick to erupt. – YaleGlobal Some of Japan’s biggest firms have suspended operations at Chinese factories; safety concerns grow amid violent anti-Japan protestsBBC News, 21 September 2012Rights:BBC © 2012

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Japan abandon lifetime employment for its workers overseas – globalized price wars lead to reliance on cheap, non-permanent labor and wages that are time bombsContract labour – or “non-permanent workers” as they are called in Japan—is today a way of life for most Japanese companies, especially those in manufacturing.

The age-old, contentious issue that played a key role in the violence at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant has also caused serious problems for Japanese companies within their own country and elsewhere. For instance, Japanese firms have been facing labour protests at regular intervals in China, where there are over 10,000 Japanese enterprises, and also, as recently as a few weeks back, in Indonesia. A Japanese diplomat who visited Jakarta recently said a large number of workers had demonstrated before the Japanese embassy there early this month demanding pay hikes.

The rising income disparity, due to the separated categories of permanent and non-permanent workers, is acknowledged by the Japanese government and its industrialists. For several years now, sections of Japanese society have been debating the issue. A report by Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) highlighted it in September 2010.

There has been a “rapid increase in the proportion of non-permanent workers in the workforce since the ’90s,” it points out, and observes that “Japanese manufacturers, up against fierce price competition in the international market, are becoming more dependent upon these workers in order to achieve a reduction in labour cost.” But it argues that “it is crucial for an institutional mechanism to be put in place to ensure that the risk the non-permanent workers have to bear is efficiently distributed.” The report warned, “Otherwise, the labour market could become extremely polarised, resulting in further social division.” Much of the problem stems from Japan’s industries’ attempt to strike a balance between their unique work culture and to keep that relevant inthe teeth of stiff competition in a globalised economy.

Till a few decades back, Japanese firms were known for their work ethics, where workers were well looked after.

There were no separate canteens for workers and executives, and “discipline, punctuality and harmony” were key words defining the work culture. Economic disparity between permanent and    non-permanent workers is acute in Japan itself. Most of those who joined these companiessaw it as a life-time employment and grew within the organisation, effectivelytying their personal ambitions with that of the corporate body with a profitmotive. But things started changing since the 1990s, with increasinglycut-throat international competition, and with the opening up of the Japaneseeconomy to foreign investors and companies.

The new entrants, especially theAmerican firms, brought in “performance-related” pay hikes andbenefits—something that was absent from Japanese work culture earlier. Somecritics say that in order to protect a small section of their permanentemployees and to face fresh challenges brought on by new competitors, Japanesecompanies started bringing more and more non-permanent workers into their fold.

Though there are different categories of non-permanent workers with varyingcontracts, the economic disparity between them and permanent workers hascreated serious social and economic problems for Japan. “Though large numbers ofpeople in Japan would stillconsider themselves middle income group, these policies have led Japan to have one of the largest sections ofpoor people among the OECD countries,” Tamaki Tsukada, minister (economic) ofthe Japanese embassy in New Delhi,told Outlook.

This, coupled with an ageing workforce, led many Japanese firms to lookelsewhere and set up shop in neighbouring Asian countries where the cheap costof labour—since most recruits are non-permanent workers—would continue to keepthe companies competitive and bring in profits. While India’s South Blockmandarins are predictably upset about the potential impact of Manesar, theJapanese have shown great restraint in their criticism about the industrialclimate in India.This is a significant departure from the sharpness with which Japan reactedduring the violence at Hero Honda’s Manesar plant in 2005. In the past fewyears, Japan’s footprint in India hasincreased rapidly, and it is in the midst of negotiations with the Indiangovernment on quite a few mega projects.

There’s a lot at stake.  

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Trans-Pacific Partnership would open up new Asian markets for US products, but supporters must overcome protectionist instincts on both sides of the Pacific Bernard K. GordonAs the Doha Round of global trade talks nears its 12th year with no end in sight, the negotiations have all but failed. Frustrated with Doha’s stagnation and eager to expand trade and secure alliances, the United States has signed a series of bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs), culminating in last year’s pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

These deals have been generally favorable to the United States; the agreement with South Korea is expected to increase trade between the two countries by billions of dollars and create tens of thousands of jobs for each. Despite these results, the bilateral approach doesn’t offer much promise.

The passage of last year’s deals ended a five-year standoff between, on the one side, most Republicans in the House of Representatives and pro-trade advocates in the business community and, on the other, House Democrats, most unions, and U.S. car producers, which fought particularly hard against the deal with South Korea due to long-standing restrictions against U.S. car sales there. After a difficult process of lobbying, wrangling, and compromise, the Obama administration has little stomach left to attempt another bilateral deal.

To move its trade agenda forward, the White House has instead embraced a measure between the global Doha Round and the bilateral FTAs: a plurilateral process centered on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Currently being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam, the TPP will represent one of the world’s most expansive trade agreements. And if Canada, Mexico, and especially Japan, all of which expressed interest in joining the negotiations last November, also sign the agreement, the TPP will add billions to the U.S. economy and solidify Washington’s political, financial, and military commitment to the Pacific for decades to come. Given the potential windfall, the Obama administration believes that the TPP has a better chance of overcoming domestic opposition than would a Doha agreement or new bilateral deals. But the TPP faces obstacles. Critics in several nations involved in the negotiations fear that the United States, to protect its businesses and innovators, is trying to use the agreement to impose its own expansive copyright and patent regulations on its trade partners.

The relative secrecy surrounding the TPP talks has only deepened those anxieties. Negotiators have allowed interested stakeholders, from industry to the general public, to present information at open TPP sessions, but they have refused to release the texts of the negotiations. If the Obama administration fails to accommodate reservations about intellectual property rights and make the talks more transparent, there is a growing possibility that the TPP could collapse.

The resulting failure would represent a major defeat for the Obama administrationand undermine its goal of ensuring a long-term presence for the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. PACIFIC PROMISE As currently proposed, the TPP would go well beyond categories traditionally included in trade agreements.

To begin with, over the next decade, it would gradually remove all tariffs on trade between member states. Following the model of the FTA between the United States and South Korea, it would affectal most all forms of economic interaction among its members, covering policies on investment and government procurement, labor and environmental standards, agriculture, intellectual property, and such new sectors as state-owned and small and medium-sized enterprises, businesses with anywhere between 50 and 500employees.

The United States and its partners hope that the TPP becomes the linchpin of free trade in the Asia-Pacific region. But the TPP cannot achieve that potential without Japan.

The country’s GDP is more than double that of all the other TPP nations combined, save for the United States. Including Japan would mean that the agreement covered 40 percent of global GDP and add $60 billion to the U.S. export market.

That is why the Obama administration and the U.S. export sector declared its support for Japan’s addition to the TPP when Tokyo indicated its interest in joining.

This past December, more than 60 American food and agricultural organizations sent a joint statement to Ron Kirk, the U.S.

Trade representative, and Tom Vilsack, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, encouraging them“to smooth the way for Japan’sfull participation.” A week later, the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs, and the U.S. Business Coalition for TPP, a collection of companies in favor of the free-trade agreement, sent similar letters to the U.S.

Trade representative. In March, Wendy Cutler, an assistant U.S.trade representative, told an audience in Tokyo that “the prospect of Japan joining the TPP . . . is important; it’s historic. And frankly it’s exciting.” Enticed by that possibility, the Obama administration has made the TPP the keystone of its trade policy, and it is doing all that it can to shape the agreement in the United States’ favor. For example, it has emphasized encouraging and protecting the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises. Such businesses generally have little experience in dealing with imports or exports, but Washington hopes to enhance their role in the TPP because they compose the bulk of U.S. employment and so by aiding them, it may be able to build domestic support for trade. Americans have long been indifferent to trade, believing that it benefits mainly foreigners, costs them jobs, and contributes to the U.S.

Trade deficit, which is seen as inherently negative despite the fact that it has long coincided with American trading and political power. PROPERTY WRONGS Even as Washington hopes that its efforts to shape the TPP will sooth the concerns of U.S. industries and unions, it has already rankled public interest groups and the governments of the other countries negotiating the agreement — particularly when it comes to intellectual property. In February 2011, a draft text regarding intellectual property from the TPP negotiations was leaked online. A number of U.S. and foreign groups, such as Intellectual Property Watch, Public Knowledge, TPP Watch, and Anonymous harshly criticized several measures outlined in the document. In particular, they condemned proposals for criminal enforcement of copyright and patent law that go beyond existing treaties between the various negotiating countries.

They also asserted that the TPP would require Internet service providers to identify users and that the United States is unreasonably seeking to impose its own extensive copyright protections on the agreement. U.S. law stipulates that the vast majority of copyrights should end after 70 years, but critics claim, incorrectly, that the Obama administration has called for the TPP to include a 95-year minimum copyright term on some works.

The legal scholars Sean Flynn and Jimmy Koo captured critics’ fears when they wrote in2011 that the TPP would create “the most extreme, anti-consumer and anti-development international instrument on intellectual property to date.” The administration has supported these proposals not to harm consumers but to protect American innovators. Intellectual property is already a major source of value for the United States; in 2010, for example, 40 percent of worldwide payments made to intellectual property holders — nearly $100 billion­ — went to Americans. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, those sums matched the profits earned from the export of aircraft, grain, and business services, three sectors that lead the U.S.

Trade surplus. And U.S. intellectual property will only become more important in the coming years, as several U.S.-based technological innovations, such as next-generation manufacturing techniques and cutting-edge wireless communications, drive the country’s trade.

The creators of those technologies will need as much shelter under the TPP as those who currently hold copyrights and patents under U.S. law.

The United States is hardly the only nation affiliated with the TPP that has an interest in securing copyright and patent protections for its citizens. In 2008, for example, Japan led the world in patent applications. And Singapore, with its multibillion-dollar biotechnology investments, also needs to protect its homegrown efforts. In rightly defending the intellectual property rights of American innovators, the United States has also led the way for these other nations. But it is clear that some of those countries do not believe that the United States has their best interests in mind. FREE TALKS Despite the broad interest in strong intellectual property protections among some countries negotiating the TPP, some nations continue to charge that the United States is making unreasonable demands. At the 11th TPP negotiating session, in Australia this past March, for example, the Australian press reported that every TPP negotiating member had rebuffed U.S. proposals regarding intellectual property rights. And in mid-April, several negotiators from Chileput the future of the agreement in doubt when they questioned “whether joining the TPP would be worth its costs if it included additional demands on intellectual property.” Meanwhile, during the same meeting in Australia in March, several organizations condemned the TPP for its potential impact on the availability of cheap drugs. Doctors Without Borders, for example, accused the U.S. government of inserting provisions into the TPP that would interfere with the low-cost delivery of malaria and HIV/AIDS medicines to developing nations. During a previous round of TPP negotiations, the group claimed that the agreement would “extend monopoly protection for old drugs by simply making minor modifications to existing formulas,” thereby preventing the introduction of cheaper generic drugs.

The U.S. government has not addressed every accusation leveled against it in the TPP process, but in late February, Demetrios Marantis, the deputy U.S.

Trade representative, said that his office “strongly disagrees” with Doctors Without Borders. He pointed out that the Office of the U.S.

Trade Representative had six months earlier established a nine-point TPP program, “Trade Enhancing Access to Medicines,” to ensure, in his words, that “generic drugs can get into the market as quickly as possible.” The United States has thus at least begun to address the anxieties of TPP skeptics. But a bigger problem remains. In the age of the Internet, rumors about provisions within the agreement can quickly spark worldwide resistance. More transparency and better information about the negotiating process could help counter such rumors. And although the United States and its partners have been receptive to presentations from interested individuals and groups, they have not fully opened the process to the public, fueling legitimate concerns about the ultimate shape of the agreement. In January, for example, Gary Horlick, a prominent trade lawyer and former U.S.

Trade official, described the TPP process as “the least transparent trade negotiation I have ever seen.” Although Kirk, the U.S.

Trade representative, has called the negotiations “the most open, transparent process ever,” his team has presented very little of the U.S. position to the public or even to interested parties not officially involved in TPP discussions.

The issue came to a head this past February, when 23 U.S. organizations representing the libraries of virtually every American research institution and university urged the Obama administration to “mandate public access” to the negotiation draft texts.

They argued that the provisions of the TPP “will touch every American family” and that “the enforceability and permanence of such binding rules . . . necessitate maximal transparency.” Days later, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) raised the request in a tense exchange in a hearing with Kirk.

Responding to the statement, Kirk said that the Obama administration has “moved to disclose more information sooner than any previous administration.” Unsatisfied with Kirk’s response, Wyden introduced legislation that would require the disclosure of any TPP negotiating text “not later than 24 hours after the document is shared with other parties.” Wyden’s proposal failed to gain traction, but the clamor for more openness in the TPP talks remains, both in the United States and abroad. A NEW KIND OF DEAL If the TPP negotiations bear fruit, the United States will become far stronger, economically and politically, over the next generation. A deal that included Japan would essentially result in a free-trade agreement between Washington and Tokyo, representing the long-sought “third opening” of Japan and the affirmation of U.S. power in the Pacific region. More broadly, the United States hopes that the TPP will cement a system of open, interconnected trade based on mutually-agreed-on rules.

That is why the U.S. government hopes to complete the broad outlines of a final deal by the end of the year. But first it must win over domestic opposition to the TPP, especially among the country’s automotive, insurance, and agricultural sectors. It also needs to accommodate, wherever possible, the concerns of critics at home and abroad about its intellectual property demands. And it must shed more light on the negotiating process. If the Obama administration fails to take these steps, then it may miss an opportunity to pave the way for a new kind of trade agreement and to reaffirm its economic and political stake in the Pacific.  Rights:Copyright © 2002-2012 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved.

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