North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s reported annointing of his youngest son, offspring of a Japan-born dancer, as heir highlights a dark chapter in Japan’s history and a possible refugee headache if the regime collapses.

Apparent heir Kim Jong-un is said by South Korean media to be a son of Ko Young-hee, one of about 100,000 Koreans who returned to the North from Japan in the 1960s hoping to find a workers’ paradise. Many were brought to Japan as forced labour before World War Two and faced discrimination after the war. 

No matter who succeeds the 67-year-old Kim, no one knows if the succession will go smoothly or whether the reclusive communist state will fall into chaos, sending streams of refugees to China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.

So here is the question:  Is Japan ready in case North Korea collapses for reasons such as a power struggle as it choses Kim Jong-il’s successor or any rise of military confrontation in the future?

Analaysts said most refugees are likely to go to China and the South, but add that repatriated Koreans and their families may wish to come to Japan, a country less than welcoming to refugees in general and uncomfortable with North Koreans in particular.

“If they say they want to come back, we cannot reject them just because of their nationality from a humanitarian viewpoint,” Masao Okonogi, a Korean expert at Tokyo’s Keio University told me.  “It has the potential to become a big social issue.”

Tokyo’s ties with Pyongyang have long been rocky for reasons ranging from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonisation of Korea to North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.  Japan also sees itself as a potential victim of any attack by nearby North Korea.

Under a 1959 repatriation accord, over 90,000 Korean residents and 1,800 Japanese wives went to live in the North, expecting to find a better life. Such returnees and their families may now number as many as 300,000, Okonogi says.

A senior Japanese foreign ministry official says Tokyo is considering what to do if a crisis prompted a flood of North Korean refugees, but he declined to give me details.

The National Institute for Defense Studies, a  government-affiliated think tank, said in a recent report that Japan should come up with plans to cope with up to 150,000 North Korean refugees.

North Korea hasn’t yet rejoined the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, but weekend comments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the nation was mulling the possibility were replayed by Japanese media with the same gusto they gave reports on Japan qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

Pyongyang, an initial member of President George Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, was removed from the U.S. blacklist last October, after agreeing to a series of nuclear site verification measures.

“Obviously, they were taken off the list for a purpose, and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions,” Clinton said.

Those actions include a nuclear test on May 25 and a raft of missile launches, all of which is expected to produce a new U.N. Security Council resolution as early as this week.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone met with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi over the weekend in Tokyo and called for strong U.N. action to broaden measures imposed after the first nuclear test in 2006.

But just how strong is an issue for Beijing, Pyongyang’s traditional ally and biggest trading partner, which is worried that instability — financial or otherwise – in the North may spill over if measures are too stringent.

Greater distance both diplomatically and geographically is prompting a harder line from some Japanese groups like the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, which urged the U.S. last year not to take North Korea off its list and is calling for more Japanese action now, while politicians from both major parties and media are also joining the verbal fray.

Editorials since the nuclear test have ranged from the Yomiuri Shimbun saying North Korea should suffer consequences to the more liberal Asahi Shimbun  this week calling a push for first strike capability on North Korean missile sites or a decoupling from the U.S. security umbrella “overheated rhetoric” and “narrow-sighted, frivolous” defense arguments.

Stil, if the U.N. passes sanctions and Pyongyang retaliates with “extreme” measures as threatened Monday, words and lists may take a backseat to actions with red cards certain to fly.

Roos who?

That was pretty much the reaction in Japan when U.S. President Barack Obama tapped California lawyer and campaign donor John Roos as ambassador to Tokyo.

News of the choice sent Japanese diplomats and U.S.-Japan watchers scrambling for information about Roos, whom one U.S. expert described to me in a hurried email as a “Silicon valley mover and shaker, not with any link to Japan, though clearly to Obama”.

The pick risked sending a sign that a wary Tokyo would interpret as more evidence of “Japan passing”, a phenomenon much feared in Japan, in which Washington is seen cosying up to Beijing at the expense of its closest Asian ally.

Many Japanese media had expected Obama to select Harvard professor Joseph Nye, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense well known in Japan for his work on the alliance, though reports that his nomination was a done deal had been dodgy for a while.

“His ability is unknown,” the Mainichi newspaper quoted a foreign ministry official as saying of Roos, while expressing worries about the nomination at a time when North Asia tensions are rising in the wake of a North Korean nuclear test.

The paper also took note of a possible slight in that  Obama introduced his nominee for envoy to China to White House media but unveiled Roos’ nomination in a statement.

Japanese officials have publicly put a good face on the matter, with top government spokesman Takeo Kawamura calling it “proof that the Obama adminsitration considers the Japan-U.S. alliance important”.

Those keen to stress the positive have noted that Roos will be an envoy in the mould of predecessor Thomas Schieffer, a close friend of Bush who was widely seen as a successful ambassador.

The Nikkei newspaper, meanwhile, managed to spare a few words of sympathy for Roos, whose nomination coincides with a time of political stalemate and policy deadlock in the world’s No. 2 economy that could make always delicate diplomacy even tougher.

“His work in Tokyo may not be so pleasant,” the paper warned.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Michael Caronna at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo

Japan, perhaps the most nervous neighbor of unpredictable North Korea, is also the least able to overtly make its fears felt, after this week’s nuclear test.

Analysts point out the combination of Tokyo’s history of antagonism with the North and the fact that Pyongyang boasts missiles that could hit almost anywhere in Japan pose particular risks for the world’s second largest economy.

Sanctions have already wiped out much of Tokyo’s bilateral trade with Pyongyang, leaving little space for further punitive economic measures.

Developing a pre-emptive strike capability to enable destruction of enemy missiles on the launch pad is an option that some ruling party lawmakers advocate. Prime ministers, including incumbent Taro Aso, have said a first strike would be in line with Japan’s pacifist constitution, if there were no other options.

But even that idea divides lawmakers in the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with a party panel pushing for it to be included in a national defence plan, while Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada has expressed doubts and called for calm.

A general election many expect in August could see the main opposition Democratic Party take power, possibly in coalition with smaller parties opposed to any Japanese military action overseas, further reducing the chances of a drastic change in security policy.

Even if Japan were to decide it needed to acquire the ability to carry out an overseas strike, it would be a slow process full of risks, not least of which is that it might alienate neighbours South Korea and China, whose experience with Japan’s 20th Century colonial exploitation left a legacy of aversion to any hint of a return to Japanese militarism.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Issei Kato in Okinawa