The Role of Korea in Japanese Defense Policy

Abstract

S PEAKING TO the first Imperial Diet in 1890, Prime Minister Yamagata called for large sums of money to be spent for military purposes to insure the independence and preservation of Japan. Achievement of these goals, he said, depended on the defense of Japan's cordons of sovereignty, that is, the defense of the home islands, and equally on the defense of its cordons of interest.1 There is little doubt that Korea was the primary area included in Yamagata's cordons of interest. Highly successful in maintaining its cultural distinctiveness, Korea's political status has depended on the relative strength of its neighbors. Control of Korea was an objective of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), and the Korean War (1950-53). Independent when its neighbors were weak, subjugated when one neighbor was regionally dominant, Korea is now divided when its neighbors are militarily powerful. At present, Korea is a major focus of interest among four outside powers, each of which was a principal in one or another of the wars fought over Korea in this century. In recent years, Japan's interests in Korea have become an increasingly prominent political fact, following upon the US foreign policy reorientation implied in the Nixon Doctrine, the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia, and President Carter's declared policy to withdraw US forces from Korea. It is instructive to consider two statements about the current situation. Former Defense Secretary Schlesinger wrote in his 1975 annual report: Northeast Asia is an area where the interests of the United States, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and