Korea Dispatch

Korean media today is filled with reports about the latest defense white paper coming out of Tokyo, which renews Japan’s claim to the rocky Dokdo iselts, called Takeshima in Japanese. Seoul says it is considering suspending high-level military ties with Tokyo over the incident.

What’s not being mentioned in the Korean press, however, are the other issues raised in the draft, including growing concern’s over China’s military buildup and Russian activities around Japan’s northern territories.

An article in Japan’s Asahi Shinbun only mentions the islest in passing.

As for ongoing territorial disputes, the report stuck to the same wording as in its 2007 report, stating that “the issue surrounding the Northern Territories and the Takeshima islets, both of which are Japanese territory, remains unsolved.”

The Asahi peice focuses much more on Japan’s concerns over the modernization of China’s military,

aimed at “gaining capability to prevent attempts by Taiwan to seek independence, or foreign militaries from supporting that drive.”

It should be noted, however, that Japan has in fact been quietly playing a leading role in China’s economic growth for some years now. In many ways Japan has been much more adroit at cozying up to a rising China that South Korea has (Wonder if anti-Korean sentiment in China is a reflection of this), though this may change with the resignation of Japanese PM Fukuda, who was praised by Beijing for improving the two countries’ bilateral relations.

The military paper also makes mention of Russia and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.

The report notes that a Russian bomber intruded into Japanese airspace near the southern part of Izu island chain, and that patrols by Russian nuclear subs in waters around Japan have resumed.

The report downplayed North Korea’s nuclear capability, saying Pyongyang still faces obstacles in acquiring the necessary technology to create a small nuclear warhead to fit its ballistic missiles.

An earlier article that appeared in the Asia Times noted that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s tougher policy towards Pyongyang may be driving the latter closer to Moscow. Dynamics in the region are indeed shifting with the Korean peninsula smack dab in the center of the whirlwind.