|
| FILE - In this Sunday, April 15, 2012 file photo, a North Korean vehicle carries a missile during a mass military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. Though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officials have long feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan's main island. And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is taking North Korea's nuclear rhetoric seriously. |
TOKYO (AP) --
It's easy to write off North Korea's threats to strike the United
States with a nuclear-tipped missile as bluster: it has never
demonstrated the capability to deploy a missile that could reach the
Pacific island of Guam, let alone the mainland U.S.
But what about Japan?
Though
it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officials have long
feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has
not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack
on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan's main island.
And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is
taking North Korea's nuclear rhetoric seriously.
On
Monday, amid reports North Korea is preparing a missile launch or
another nuclear test, Japanese officials said they have stepped up
measures to ensure the nation's safety. Japanese media reported over the
weekend that the defense minister has put destroyers with missile
interception systems on alert to shoot down any missile or missile
debris that appears to be headed for Japanese territory.
"We
are doing all we can to protect the safety of our nation," said chief
Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga, though he and Ministry of Defense
officials refused to confirm the reports about the naval alert, saying
they do not want to "show their cards" to North Korea.
North Korea, meanwhile, issued a new threat against Japan.
"We
once again warn Japan against blindly toeing the U.S. policy," said an
editorial Monday in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of its
ruling party. "It will have to pay a dear price for its imprudent
behavior."
Following North Korea's third
nuclear test in February, Japanese experts have increasingly voiced
concerns that North Korea may already be able to hit - or at least
target - U.S. bases and major population centers with nuclear warheads
loaded onto its medium-range Rodong missiles.
"The
threat level has jumped" following the nuclear test, said Narushige
Michishita, a former Ministry of Defense official and director of the
Security and International Studies Program at Tokyo's National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies.
Unlike North
Korea's still-under-construction intercontinental ballistic missile, or
ICBM, program, its arsenal of about 300 deployed Rodong missiles has
been flight tested and is thought to have a range of about 1,300
kilometers (800 miles).
That is good enough to
reach Tokyo and key U.S. military bases - including Yokota Air Base,
which is the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Air Force; Yokosuka Naval
Base, where the USS George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle
group are home-based; and Misawa Air Base, a key launching point for
U.S. F-16 fighters.
Michishita, in an analysis
published late last year, said a Rodong missile launched from North
Korea would reach Japan within five to 10 minutes and, if aimed at the
center of Tokyo, would have a 50-percent probability of falling
somewhere within the perimeter of Tokyo's main subway system.
He
said Japan would be a particularly tempting target because it is close
enough to feasibly reach with a conventionally or nuclear-armed missile,
and the persistent animosity and distrust dating back to Japan's
colonization of the Korean Peninsula in 1910 provides an ideological
motive.
Also, a threat against Japan could be
used to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Washington. North Korea could,
for example, fire one or more Rodong missiles toward Tokyo but have them
fall short to frighten Japan's leaders into making concessions, stay
out of a conflict on the peninsula or oppose moves by the U.S. forces in
Japan to assist the South Koreans, lest Tokyo suffer a real attack.
"Given North Korea's past adventurism, this scenario is within the range of its rational choices," Michishita wrote.
Officials
stress that simply having the ability to launch an attack does not mean
it would be a success. They also say North Korea is not known to have
actually deployed any nuclear-tipped missiles.
Tokyo
and Washington have invested billions of dollars in what is probably
the world's most sophisticated ballistic missile defense shield since
North Korea sent a long-range Taepodong missile over Japan's main island
in 1998. Japan now has its own land- and sea-based interceptors and
began launching spy satellites after the "Taepodong shock" to keep its
own tabs on military activities inside North Korea.
For
the time being, most experts believe, North Korea cannot attack the
United States with a nuclear warhead because it can't yet fashion one
light enough to mount atop a long-range ICBM. But Japanese analysts are
not alone in believing North Korea has cleared the "miniaturization"
problem for its medium-range weapons.
In April
2005, Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told
the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea had the capability
to arm a missile with a nuclear device. In 2011, the same intelligence
agency said North Korea "may now have" plutonium-based nuclear warheads
that it can deliver by ballistic missiles, aircraft or "unconventional
means."
The Pentagon has since backtracked, saying it isn't clear how small a nuclear warhead the North can produce.
But
David Albright, a physicist at the Institute for Science and
International Security think tank, said in an email he believes the
North can arm Rodong missiles with nuclear warheads weighing as much as
several hundred kilograms (pounds) and packing a yield in the low
kilotons.
That is far smaller than the bombs
dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki but big enough to cause significant
casualties in an urban area.
Japan also is a
better target than traditional enemy South Korea because striking so
close to home with a nuclear weapon would blanket a good part of its own
population with the fallout.
Regardless of
whom North Korea strikes - with a nuclear or conventional weapon - it
can be assured of one thing: a counterattack by the United States.
