Far East Asian Terrorists

'"Bro, you don't know the half of it. When I left Japan, it was 'cause I gambled everything I had on activism and the concept of permanent worldwide revolution. You have a will and a mission, you concede battles but never the fight. You don't know what that's like, do ya?"

— Masahiro Takenaka, Black Lagoon

Terrorists who have their base of operations in the Far Eastern part of the Asian continent (North, Southeast and East Asia), where they conduct operations against domestic/foreign governments and interests. They can also be based in other places, but are primarily made up (the majority at least) of individuals who are of Far-East origin. Like African Terrorists, they are sometimes used by a well-funded criminal/terrorist organization as Mooks, usually by a Western man (or woman). Otherwise, they may be led by a Middle Eastern Terrorist.

In other instances, Far-East Asian terrorists are either Terrorists Without a Cause, La Résistance or are placed under Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters. Depending on circumstances, they may be tied in some way with with Ruthless Foreign Gangsters, particularly The Triads and the Tongs or Yakuza. While in other circumstances, they may be an individual or a few persons of Far-East origin who operate as a lone wolf-type terrorist. There is a possibility that they can be placed in Unfortunate Implications with a case of Yellow Peril for terrorists who are of East Asian origin, especially Chinese ones.

Creators can draw inspiration from Real Life sources and cases where terrorism has occurred in the Far East, such as communist or nationalist groups. In other cases, they also include religious terrorist groups in the region. Some may even be Eco Terrorists.

Compare Western Terrorists, for terrorists who are born/raised in Western countries from the Americas to Europe, including Australia and New Zealand; African Terrorists, for terrorists who are born/raised in the African continent; South Asian Terrorists, for terrorists who are born/raised in the region of South Asia; and Middle Eastern Terrorists, for terrorists who are born/raised in the Middle Eastern region.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Angel Cop has the Red May, a pro-communist terrorist group from Japan.
• Black Lagoon has the Protectors of the Islamic Front, based in the Philippines, as a major antagonist in the "Goat, Jihad, Rock'N Roll" arc.^note It's called the Islamic Front of National Salvation in the manga. The group is led by Ibraha, who comes from the Middle East (or West Asia). The manga mentions the Abu Sayyaf Group as one of its allies. Rock encounters Masahiro Takenaka, ex-member of the Japanese Red Army who based himself in the Philippines' Mindanao region from Adachi due to the National Police Agency and other police force's successful arrest of JRA members in Japan and overseas. The New People's Army also gets a brief mention in Roanapur by Dutch since the series implies that Lagoon Company delivers weapons and ammo to their hideouts in the country.
• A Certain Magical Index has a few antagonists as terrorists with names such as Hatsuya Kaitabi and Haruki Aritomi alongside everyone in STUDY. One of the most notable, however, was Mitori Kouzaku, who would have happily destroyed Academy City and killed just about every there if that's what it would take to kill Aleister Crowley for signing off on the cloning experiments that caused her Only Friend Dolly so much pain.
• Played with in Code Geass with the Japanese Liberation Front, especially with Kusakabe's faction when he takes Britannian civilians hostages with one being executed by being kicked off the roof to show the media that he's serious.
  • In Code Geass: Akito the Exiled, Ryo, Ayano and Yukiya conduct terror activities within French territory against the EU military. Yukiya has it bad since he's accused by Dutch law enforcement of bombing a school building that has Japanese refugees in Amsterdam.
• Full Metal Panic!
  • Recurring antagonist Gauron has Southeast Asian origins, but gets mistaken by the protagonists and antagonists alike for being of Chinese or of Japanese origin due to his name or his physical features. The light novels suggest greatly that he's of Cambodian heritage, having combat experience from fighting under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces.
  • A21 used to be a Japanese support group to help juveniles reform themselves, but started to morph into a terrorist group after being slandered in the media for some accidents involving teenagers in their care.
  • Mithril gets involved in a kidnapping caused by a Chinese terrorist group when North and South Chinese officials are involved in peace talks in Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid. However, the existence of the said group was not real since Amalgam created the group's name and existence in order to draw Mithril forces into an ambush.
• Future Diary has Japanese terrorist Minene Uryu, who had barely survived in the Middle East after her parents were killed.
• Meruka Kuramitsu in The Garden of Sinners was briefly a Mad Bomber-type terrorist who uses Precognition to help him make his bombing attacks accurate. Since Shiki disabled his eyes to kill off the Precognition, he was forced to retire for good and be a book writer.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
  • In the first season, Public Security Section 9 takes on the New World Brigade as a minor antagonist, which is a Japanese leftist terrorist group that adhere to anti-cyberization stances taken from the Human Liberation Front. One of their most notorious terror attacks was the kidnapping of the daughter of a known businessman responsible for creating cyberbrains. The unit eventually rescue her and takes custody of her and her young daughter, who was initially mistaken for the kidnap victim, conceived while being in NWB custody as it took a toll on the young woman's health as she became very old due to her captivity. They also briefly investigated the activities of Nanao Ei, a pro-communist terrorist who became a Serrano Geronomic computer programmer after the police points clues to him as the Laughing Man. He's not and in on the LM conspiracy, although Yakushima plans to have him disposed off eventually.
  • In the 2nd season Section 9 and other Japanese law enforcement agencies take on the Individual Eleven, which was said to be an anti-refugee terrorist group, as well as militant refugees who wish to remain in Japan in order to be naturalized Japanese or seek asylum for themselves or for their loved ones. Turns out that Goda and his CIS agency was responsible for allowing them to conduct their activities and seek a change in government to return back to the days of the Second Pacific War by making ex-JGSDF soldier Hideo Kuze join up with them so that he can be branded as a terrorist.
  • Solid State Society has a subplot when Section 9 covertly tries to arrest ex-government agents working for the ex-dictator Ka Rum from the Siak Republic for attempting to use micromachine viruses.
• Leftist terrorists are antagonists in the Kerberos Saga, including Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. The most prominent group is "The Sect". Interestingly enough, however, they're extremely sympathetic, often bordering on Hero Antagonist, whereas the protagonists are portrayed as at best terrifying and repressive.
• In the manga adaptation of Najica Blitz Tactics, Najica and Lila are tasked to protect the daughter of a weapons research scientist from being kidnapped by a Japanese terrorist group called San. The manga series does not mention what ideology it follows.
• Majority of the antagonists in Psycho-Pass are anti-Sibyl system terrorists in Japan with one of them being of Korean extraction.
• RideBack has the Borderless Military Alliance as an anti-GGP/GGF guerrilla force, though the latter considers them to be terrorists.
• Kuyou in Rosario + Vampire acts like a terrorist as the leader of the Student Police and happens to be a member of a very racist terrorist organization.
• A rare case in Terror in Resonance where the main protagonists are Japanese terrorists.
• The ESP Liberation Front in Tokyo ESP, being an urban guerrilla army that goes after law enforcement and anti-ESP politicians and companies and fellow ESPers who they feel have defected or willingly work with the government through assassination.
• Wizard Barristers has the Gumegoma, which is a wud terrorist group.

Asian Animation

• The Red Empire in Robot Taekwon V. It was created by Dr. Kaff who was disgraced by his peers in the scientist community that he decided to use his intellect for evil after he disappeared from South Korea.

Comic Books

• Daredevil has the Hand, an Japanese-based terrorist organization of evil mystical ninjas that started out as an ultranationalist movement before being co-opted by an cult that worships a demon known only as "the Beast".
• The Indonesian graphic novel Kutemukan Makna Jihad (I found the meaning of Jihad in English) tells the story of Nasir Abas, a Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist who reformed to being an anti-terrorist advocate after being arrested by Indonesian National Police officers in the aftermath of the 2002 bombing attacks in Bali.
• Averted in Pugad Baboy since Ka Noli is a heroic New People's Army guerrilla who helps his neighbors, especially his Air Force friend Tomas, when they're in trouble by using his NPA connections. It doesn't stop some of his comrades from acting like Dirty Communists.
• Stormwatch and The Authority have the country of Gamorra ruled by Kaizen Gamorra. This island country is located "somewhere in the Western Pacific". Main exports include terrorism and... more terrorism?
• The Foot Clan from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a ninja cult from Japan, and are known for drug smuggling, counterfeiting, gunrunning, murder, assassinations, computer hacking, theft, and terrorism.
• Tintin
  • The Blue Lotus has one for Mitsuhirato, a Japanese man based in Shanghai as he sabotaged railways in China on behalf of ultranationalist officials in the Japanese military and government, which sparked the Mukden Incident. Although he also works alongside Rastapopoulos and the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood to conduct opium smuggling operations in the country.
  • Averted with the Sons of the Dragons as they are a legitimate resistance movement against Japanese occupation and the drug trade, though the Japanese (and their collaborators) will address the SOD as "insurgents".
  • Tintin: Flight 714 has Sondensian nationalist guerrillas under the command of Rastapopoulos and Allan. They do promise to help them in their cause, with explosives planted on their ships after their usefulness has ended.

Film — Live-Action

• The Korean nationalist terrorist group Hureisenjin (or Fureisenjin, depending on subtitles), is an anti-Japanese Empire terrorist group in 2009: Lost Memories.
• In Act of Valor has Filipinos serving as mooks to the main villain and are implied to be Islamist terrorists due to their leader being a Chechen named Abu Shamal.
• The Benny Chan-directed action film Big Bullet have an East Asian terrorist cell infiltrating their way into Hong Kong to rob an Interpol Vault, their team led by an ex-Colonel turned insurgent who calls himself "The Professor". Who kills dozens and dozens of policemen and bystanders throughout the film.
• The terrorist group Red Bamboo is treated as a minor antagonist in a few Godzilla movies.
• James Bond:
  • Goldfinger: Auric Goldfinger is backed by China, and therefore has a private army of Chinese henchmen to use in his plans to detonate a (China-provided) atomic bomb to destroy/irradiate the gold reserve of Fort Knox.
  • You Only Live Twice has the familiar, "Western" SPECTRE working with Japanese terrorists and representatives of another, unnamed East Asian power to sabotage the US space program and start World War III.
  • A fugitive Aum Shinrinkyo cultist named Satoshi Isagura, wanted for the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995, shows up at an arms deal in Tomorrow Never Dies.
  • In Die Another Day, Colonel Tan-Sun Moon and his faction in the Korean People's Army turn into pro-North Korean unification terrorists after the former used the revenue from smuggling to arm his faction and create the superweapon called Icarus. Eventually, they depose the current government in a coup and reignite the war against the south.
• In Olympus Has Fallen, Kang Yeonsak is the leader of a North Korean-backed terrorist group called the KUF (Koreans for United Freedom). The movie doesn't elaborate on if they are made up of North Koreans, pro-North Koreans or Korean-speaking mercenaries.
• The entire 8th Special Forces Unit in Shiri become North Korean terrorists near the end of the movie as they start a plot to bomb a soccer stadium full of spectators and officials from the two Koreas.

Literature

• The dystopic novel Caliphate has Moro insurgents in the Philippines fighting against Imperial American forces.
• The Choose Your Own Adventure book Master of Aikido involves the East Timor Liberation Army, a possibly Expy of the then anti-Indonesian occupation guerrilla group FALINTIL or Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste.^note Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor Its members consist of native East Timorese and mestizos who are descendants of original Portuguese colonialists.

Live-Action TV

• Prior to the events of 24: Live Another Day, Cheng Zhi has become a terrorist after being broken out of prison for attempting a revolt.
• A subplot in Arrow, this was what Fyers was doing to Yao Fei in order to publicly make him a Chinese terrorist as a scapegoat. This plan never materialized since Oliver and Slade ruined his plans.
• The Boys has the Philippine-based Shining Light Liberation Army. Kimiko (a.k.a "The Female") was a former member (against her will) who has been injected with Compound V due to a conspiracy by Vought International to create super-villains.
• In Dave Chappelle's sketch "Why Terrorists Don't Take Black Hostages", he enacts a typical hostage taking where the terrorist yells in broken English and stereotypically Middle-Eastern accent—then off-handedly remarks that the terrorist is Chinese.
• FBI has a Bruneian Islamist terrorist named Sulaiman Mansour, leader of the Negara Islamiyah Asia (Asian Islamic State) in Malay. He's investigated in "Legacy" in an attempted terrorist attack in New York City after he was reportedly killed in an air strike.
• In Hawaii Five-0, Steve and Danno get involved in a case where the kidnapping of a State Department official's child was planned by terrorists from the National Liberation Front, which is an Expy of the New People's Army, the armed military wing of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines.
• Takes a parody twist in the first season of Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger when Blatantly Evil Marketing Firm B's Dr. Z changes the group's name to the Delusion Empire, which is a shout out to Shocker of the Showa-era Kamen Rider series.
• The Black Cross Army in Himitsu Sentai Gorenger. They're technically a global terrorist organization, and on several occasions they're shown waging wars on several fronts outside Japan, but their home base is in Japan and most of the operations we see them carry out are done in Japan.
• Inazuman: The Neo-Human Empire is an underground terrorist organization of Neo-Humans (Cyborg Mutants) based in Japan who carry out attacks on humans, in the name of wiping out humanity and paving way for a Neo-Human world order.
• For the Iris and Athena: Goddess of War series, South Korean law enforcement and intelligence agencies taken on the Korean branches of Iris and Athena, the former for conducting terror attacks to prevent the North and South Korean government from conducting attempts on peace talks for Iris to profit from another future Korean War and the latter for the South Korean government's stance on creating indigenous nuclear technology and selling it abroad via technology transfer, ruining chances of Athena to gain revenue from buying and selling energy resources aside from contractor services and resource management.
• Kamen Rider:
  • The Showa era mostly had terrorist groups as the enemies of the Kamen Riders. While Shocker was technically a global terrorist organization, the Japanese branch was the section of it that the Double Riders did battle against most often. It's eventual successors (Gel-Shocker, Destron, Black Satan and Neo-Shocker) followed suit in this regard by setting up their main bases in Japan.
  • Gorgom of Kamen Rider BLACK are unique in that, instead of opting for outright terrorist attacks like the terrorist organizations before them, they relied on subterfuge and their connections to high levels of society to accomplish their goals. If needed though, they're happy to send out a Gorgom Mutant to kill people for their cause.
  • These became scarcer in the Heisei era, which opted for things like evil corporations, races of evil monsters, or humans given superhuman/monster powers as the villains. The Movie for Kamen Rider Double however had NEVER, a group of Terrorists Without a Cause targeting Futo City.
  • The Reiwa era appears to have had a resurgence in these types of enemies with groups like MetsubouJinrai.net, a Japanese-based cyberterrorist group, and the Deadmans, an underground cult of the socially disenfranchised.
• In both NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles:
  • NCIS agents deal with Abu Sayyaf Group terrorists as a minor antagonist group as they were involved in anti-American terror attacks, one of them being successful.
  • OSP deals with Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists operating in California.
• In Now and Again, a recurring arc dealt with "the Egg Man", an older Asian man who specialized in deadly gassing via infected eggs which he'd leave in subway cars. When the egg falls off the seat, a poison gas is released. But the series ended before any kind of payoff could ensue.
• One of the minor antagonists in Rush (2008) is a Japanese-Australian terrorist with the Church of the Shining Cloud who can speak Korean.
• SEAL Team Season 2 has Bravo Team come into conflict with two Asian communist terrorist groups: the New Resistance Force in the Philippines (based off the still-active New People's Army) and the Asian Liberation Army in Thailand (based off the long-destroyed People's Liberation Army of Thailand).
• The final episode of SeaQuest DSV introduces the Chao-Dai (or Chaodai), a group of highly skilled subfighters with highly advanced technology. They seem to be regarded as terrorists by the UEO and Macronesians, but very little is known about them.
• The Strike Back Legacy season has Office 39 operating as terrorists in Bangkok, Thailand under orders from their head office in Pyongyang to start another future Korean War.
• The Hand in The Defenders (2017) doesn't appear like this trope at first due to being multi-ethnic with members from Africa and Europe, but its revealed that their founders originated from the Far East more specifically from K'un-L'un and were expelled from there for trying to use fossilized bones to gain immortality and they were responsible for several incidents like Pompeii and Chernobyl in pursuit of their goal.

Video Games

• Counter-Strike:
  • In the single-player pack "Deleted Scenes" for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, there are several missions that revolve around the Kitodai (elite anti-riot police forces) fighting a take-off on the Japanese Red Army and a cult based on the Aum Shinrikyo (responsible for a nerve gas attack in Japan).
  • In the Counter-Strike Online series, the Asia Red Army shows up as a unique selectable Terrorist faction as an obvious take on the Japanese Red Army. A few unique characters show up as individual terrorists, including Erika, Ritsuka and Yuri (Japanese) with Lingling and Mao (Chinese).
• The Mega Man Battle Network series has the WWW, a cyberterrorist organization led by Dr. Wily, who are based in Electopia, the series equivalent of Japan (and, in the original Japanese version, is actually Japan). The fourth and fifth games have another cyberterrorist organization in Electopia, Nebula, led by Dr. Regal, Wily's son.
• Saya as well as Ouma in Namco × Capcom and Project × Zone.
• Seemingly played/averted with Persona 4: Arena when the terrorists who hijack a Japan Airline Network flight appear to be lone wolves, until it's revealed that they were just ordinary civilians brainwashed to do the hijacking with air guns by "The Malevolent Entity".
• Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum has Team Galactic, based in Sinnoh, the Pokemon equivalent of Hokkaido. Their leader's plan is to destroy the current universe and create one without any emotions, and the grunts and admins steal Pokemon and even blow up Lake Valor with a bomb to drain it of water and capture the legendary Pokemon there.
• Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has a pair of opposing ecoterrorist organizations based in Hoenn, the Pokemon equivalent of Kyushu, Japan. Which is the more extremist depends on which version you play, but Team Magma's goal is to expand humanity's reach on the Earth, and Team Aqua's goal is to restore to Pokémon those areas which had been taken over by humans.
• A few of them are minor antagonists in Rainbow Six, as RAINBOW deals with them in anti-terror operations. Examples include Kang Revolutionaries in China and the Red Sun Brigade in America, which is an Expy of the Japanese Red Army with more money to launch bold terror attacks worldwide. Even the leader is an expy of Fusaku Shigenobu. Others include Kawakiri from Japan, a radical anti-nuclear protest group turned terrorists.
• The first mission in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 is about interrupting an arms deal between a Russian mercenary group and a Filipino terrorist with ties to Al-Qaeda and Abu Sayyaf.
• In SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs, the Red Sun is an Indonesian-based terrorist group in the first SOCOM game as an antagonist group the SEALs take on. In SOCOM 4, the Naga fighters are the main antagonist at the start of the game where their terror attacks had seized major cities in an Expy of Malaysia. That is, before the Clawhammer mercenaries are revealed to be the group responsible for providing weapons and supplies to them.
• In Soul Hackers, the Spookies are publicly accused as cyberterrorists after they discover that the Phantom Society is responsible for the events in the game. This is because the group were able to pull the strings in the government in order to do this.
• The Inner Demons from Spider-Man (PS4) are Mr. Negative's henchmen who are mostly Chinese immigrants, and many of them are former Triad mobsters. They carry out numerous terrorist attacks in New York City, including a horrific mass shooting/Psychic-Assisted Suicide Bombing on City Hall), as part of their boss' objective to take down Mayor Norman Osborn, whom Mr. Negative holds a very personal grudge against.
• Splinter Cell:
  • Darah Dan Doa, the main villains of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, are a gang of radical Indonesian ultranationalists who were clandestinely trained by the CIA in the '90s to suppress Marxist Timorese independence groups, before they were cut loose and branded as terrorists when America's foreign policy shifted toward supporting the Timorese instead and the CIA had no further use for them. Embittered by the betrayal, a charismatic, Che Guevara-esque firebrand named Suhadi Sadono eventually took control and rebuilt the gang into a proper guerilla army with the intent of reclaiming East Timor for Indonesia, while plotting to detonate smallpox bombs in American cities to intimidate the US from opposing them.
  • Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: It's suspected that the 'Red Nishin', a Yakuza group with ties to Japan's uyoku dantai, are the ones working with Douglas Shetland and Displace International to perpetrate the Cyber Attacks and inflame tensions across East Asia, but they're just a (literal) Red Herring. The actual culprits are the I-SDF, the controversial, newly-established intelligence branch of the JSDF led by Admiral Toshiro Otomo, who plans to use the algorithms obtained from Shetland to force Japan to remilitarize and restore Imperial rule by threatening to remote-launch North Korean missiles at a major Japanese city unless the Diet concedes to his demands.
• In all of the Street Fighter games (and their countless adaptations), Shadaloo (or Shadowlaw) is a Thai-based terrorist organization led by the mysterious M. Bison. They engage in various criminal activities such as arms and drug smuggling in order to gain revenue for the organization to sustain itself financially.

---