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and disturbance.
All these attempts had
failed, however, because of the effective
measures taken by the South Korean
Government and because the people in the
But there was
South were anti-Communist.
no sign of any change in the tough policy
of North Korea. This was primarily
due to internal problems. The
intention of the North Koreans in shooting
down the United States plane on 15 April
was partly to show that it possessed
sufficient military strength to repel
U.S. reconnaissance activities and
partly to damage the prestige of "United
States imperialism". At the same time
there was a need, arising out of the
domestic situation, to maintain a state
of tension designed to strengthen the
regime of Kim Il Sung. In the Japanese
view, this incident and the earlier
ما
Pueblo incident, had strengthened Tim's
confidence.
38. Japanese relations with the Republic
of Korea had been greatly strengthened
since the normalisation of relations in
1965, particularly in trade and economic
cooperation. There were differences of
view,e.g,, over the repatriation of North
Koreans from Japan to North Korea and the
granting of permission to residents of
Japan to return there after visiting North
/korea
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