North Korea evacuates its citizens from Japan
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

TOKYO (Japan): In the wake of Japan’s sanctions on North Korea, North Korea completed Saturday the evacuation of its citizens from Japan.

North Korean ships packed up their final loads of rusty old bicycles and used household appliances and prepared to go home Friday after Japan approved tough new sanctions over the communist country's declared nuclear test.

Docks in Sakaiminato, a port city on the Japan sea coast just a short journey from the North, were abuzz with activity as the North Korean ships — 11 of the 24 across Japan are here — loaded up for the final time.

Most were packed to overflowing with old bicycles, which can be bought for about 1,000 yen (US$10; €8) and sold in the isolated communist nation for about three times that amount.

Japan on Friday adopted the toughest sanctions to date in response to North Korea's proclamation that it had detonated a nuclear device on Monday, including a six-month ban on travel by most North Koreans to Japan, a trade ban, and the closure of Japanese ports to North Korean vessels.

Japan and North Korea have no formal diplomatic relations, and what ties do exist had already been scaled back over Japanese anger at the North's confession that it had abducted at least a dozen Japanese citizens in the late 1970s and '80s and over its test launching of a series of missiles into the Japan Sea in July.

Even so, trade in ports like this one — which in 1992 signed a sister port agreement with North Korea's Wonson — had remained constant.

The ships arrive loaded with crabs, clams or "matsutake" mushrooms, considered a delicacy by Japanese gourmets. The mushroom season is just now hitting its peak.

After dropping off their goods, the ships go back filled with used bicycles, used cars, motorcycles or old household appliances which the Japanese might normally throw away, but can fetch a good price on the black-market in the impoverished North. That will now stop.

The Sanctions

The sanctions, approved by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet early Friday, mean that the ships will have to leave by midnight Friday.

Dock officials with Adachi Trading, the Japanese agent responsible for the ships in this port, said they have all been instructed to leave and were expected to do so by late evening. No new arrivals will be permitted.

The move was the toughest response so far by any country to North Korea's nuclear test, which has yet to be confirmed.

Imports from the North "are believed to be a funding source for North Korean military, and (the additional sanctions) would have a significant impact," Japan's Trade Minister Akira Amari said Friday.

North Korea has condemned the move and said it will ready "strong countermeasures" against Japan.

But Japan's action also underscores the difficulty of punishing the already isolated regime of Kim Jong Il. Although Japan is the world's second-largest economy and a regional trade dynamo, it represents less than 5 percent of the total trade with North Korea, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

The North's most crucial trading partner by far is China, which accounts for 38.9 percent of its imports and exports, followed by South Korea at 26 percent.

In fact, even Thailand outstrips Japan — accounting for 8.1 percent in 2005. South Korea, aware that its capital, Seoul, is well within reach of North Korea's artillery and missile arsenal, has also been very cautious in its response, though criticism is rising that its strategy of engagement — its "sunshine policy" — has been a failure.

China and South Korea have been reluctant to push North Korea for fear that a collapse of Kim's regime could send a flood of refugees across its borders or even spark chaos and a last-ditch war of desperation by its military leadership.

Under the earlier sanctions, Tokyo had already banned the Mangyongbong-92 — a North Korean ferry that served as a major conduit of trade between the two countries — from entering Japanese waters.

Trade with this port alone was estimated at about 600 million yen (US$6 million; €4.8 million) last year, according to Japanese customs figures. Even so, support for the sanctions here was strong.

Mayor Katsuji Nakamura announced Friday that the city was scrapping its 14-year-old sister-city relations with Wonsan in North Korea to protest the North's claimed nuclear weapons test.

"I think it is the feeling of most Japanese people that strong action is needed," said Eiji Abe, a Sakaiminato trade official. "We had already begun shifting away from North Korea trade, so I don't think the impact will be that great."●