Koizumi: Risky mission half
accomplished By Kosuke
Takahashi
TOKYO - Japan's Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Pyongyang, his second in 18
months, was a high-stake gamble, and so far he appears
to have been damaged politically at home, though the
story is far from over. Koizumi bet a lot on his
Pyongyang trip and lost a lot of political capital,
although in advance he had sounded convinced of the
inevitable success of his visit - to bring home
relatives of former hostages, which he did - until that
decisive one-day summit. He was snubbed, diplomatically
buffeted, or even trounced, some say, by North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il last Saturday in their second-ever
meeting in Pyongyang, at least in the arena of domestic
politics.
Koizumi sought a comprehensive
resolution of the abduction issue, a passionate issue in
Japan. Tokyo says North Korean agents kidnapped as many
as 15 Japanese in the 1970s and 80s; five have returned;
10 are unaccounted for, although Pyongyang says eight
are dead and the other two never entered the country.
Five children returned to their four parents in Tokyo
Saturday night - those parents returned after Koizumi's
first Pyongyang summit in September 2002.
Two
other children remain in Pyongyang. Their father,
Charles Robert Jenkins, a Korean War deserter, refused
to return to Tokyo, lest he be extradited to the United
States and prosecuted. His Japanese wife, a former
hostage, is already in Tokyo and she is expected to meet
him and their two daughters as early as the beginning of
June, possibly in Beijing, or in Switzerland.
The Japanese prime minister also sought to make
progress in getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear
weapons program, but he could not extract much, if
anything, in the way of political concessions from Kim.
He did get some positive words on the importance of a
stable and non-nuclear Korean peninsula, and Pyongyang's
willingness to sign peace treaties with the US and South
Korea. The next round of six-party talks aimed at
defusing the crisis is expected to be held in June but
the date has not been set.
Koizumi appeared
ready to extend a helping hand to Kim, only to be
battered by angry relatives of Japanese abductees (those
still missing and unaccounted for) and his political
opponents both inside and outside of his ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP). Koizumi's mission was only half
accomplished. He is obliged to continue the dangerous
cat-and-mouse game of diplomacy with North Korea, amid
political backfires against him at home for the time
being - if his administration can survive and prevail in
crucial elections to the Upper House of the Diet, or
parliament, on July 12.
"Koizumi should have
made the return of the abductees' family members a
precondition for his trip rather than the objective of
his trip, and then used the visit to press Kim on the
nuclear issue and on the fate of other abducted
Japanese," Gerald Curtis, professor of Japanese politics
at Columbia University, told Asia Times Online in an
email interview.
Koizumi put the highest
priority on seeking the reunion of the eight family
members of the former five abductees in Japan. To show
his strong determination to make the mission succeed,
throughout Saturday in both Tokyo and Pyongyang, Koizumi
put a finger-shaped, blue lapel pin on his dress suit,
the symbol of the abductees' families' campaign to bring
their relatives back to Japan. It symbolizes the blue
sky and blue sea along the Sea of Japan where most
abductees were kidnapped. The pin was presented by
abductees' relatives. But the talisman and his
determination did not make for success - and the
resulting sadness, anger and even satisfaction among his
opponents was evident.
Achievements fell far
below public expectations To Koizumi's credit,
it's not that he got nothing from his visit to
Pyongyang. But his achievements fell far below
expectations of the Japanese public.
Kim Jong-il
released five children of four repatriated Japanese
abductees - the two offspring of freed abductees Mr
Kaoru Hasuike and Mrs Yukiko Hasuike and the three
children of Mr Yasushi Chimura and Mrs Fukie Chimura.
The children range in age from 16 to 22. Two young women
are recent graduates of a Pyongyang university; three
young men are university students. Throughout his trip,
Koizumi had been expected to bring home three more
people - an adult and two children - to reunite the
other separated family - US Army deserter Charles Robert
Jenkins, 64, and his two daughters, 20 and 18, both
university students. Their mother, Hitomi Soga, 44, was
one of five Japanese abducted in 1978 and is now living
in Japan.
Koizumi also failed to obtain any
information on the whereabouts of the 10 other missing
Japanese. Their relatives have been saying the
supporting documents provided by North Korean
authorities in October 2002 are inaccurate and not
convincing. That was one month after the Koizumi's first
trip to Pyongyang when Kim officially admitted to North
Korea's kidnappings in the 1970s and 1980s. That's when
the hostage issue exploded politically at home in Japan.
They are believed to have been kidnapped by
North Korean spies in order to help North Korean agents
learn Japanese language, idioms and customs.
"Worse comes to worst as far as I have expected
of the premier's revisit," a head of the group of
relatives of the 10 other missing Japanese and their
supporters, Shigeru Yokota told a press conference at a
Tokyo hotel Saturday evening. His daughter Megumi, was
abducted in 1977 at age 13 - North Korea says she is
dead. Yokota is nationally known as a spokesman for the
families of the victims.
"I am very disappointed
and feel betrayed." Yokota said.
In addition,
little progress was made on resolving North Korea's
nuclear arms ambitions, with both leaders just agreeing
to make efforts to solve nuclear issues in a peaceful
way and to facilitate the six-party talks that involve
North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the
United States. It's true Koizumi received a pledge by
Kim that North Korea will continue its moratorium on
missile tests, and he urged Kim to abandon the country's
nuclear weapons programs, accept international
inspections and return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty from which it withdrew January 2003. But Kim was
evasive, as usual. He did not make any specific
commitments.
There was little unqualified praise
for Koizumi in Japan. The kindest words came from the
English-language Japan Times. In its editorial Monday,
it called the mission "a qualified success for Mr
Koizumi ... Although Mr Koizumi may pay a political
price for failing to get information about other
purported hostages, on the more important issue of
contributing to the resolution of the North Korean
nuclear crisis, Mr Koizumi has served his country well."
It said, however, that his Pyongyang trip "cannot be
called a breakthrough" and said "normalization itself is
still a long way off".
The newspaper added:
"North Korea's overtures to Japan, as well as talk of a
possible readiness to sign a peace treaty with the US
and South Korea, suggest that the united front is
working; Pyongyang is feeling the squeeze. It is more
important than ever that our government, and the others
involved in the negotiations, remain focused on the big
picture. To that end, Mr Koizumi's trip should be
applauded."
It also said North Korea treated
Koizumi "shabbily". He was met at the airport by a
mid-level functionary, he was not served a meal, he had
only one meeting with leader Kim Jong-il, the afternoon
session was canceled. North Korea promised to
reinvestigate the cases of 10 other missing persons, but
set no deadline. "Clearly, the North Korean leadership
does not understand the need to court public opinion in
a democracy," the newspaper said.
Koizumi's
risky ad-lib diplomacy What's going wrong on the
Japanese side? Koizumi and the Japanese government
appeared to hastily arrange the visit and played
willy-nilly diplomacy that was not well coordinated and
appeared half-cooked, though considerable planning must
have been involved. This all happened because Koizumi
inevitably took his own domestic political deadlock,
especially fueled by a nasty scandal involving pension
nonpayment by officials (including Koizumi himself many
years ago), into the arena of international diplomacy in
a bid to break a domestic political impasse and put the
turmoil behind him.
For example, the length of
the "summit" meeting was only one and a half hours,
believed to be just around 30-40 minutes in effect,
without considering the time for interpreting by each
side. It could have been much longer and then Koizumi
could have spent much of his time accelerating his
direct negotiations with Kim about the 10 other missing
Japanese and on the nuclear issue - had Japanese
officials pressed on hard with their own plan. Moreover,
instead of talking to Kim, Koizumi spent one hour trying
without success to persuade Jenkins, the US Army
deserter, and his two daughters to come to Japan.
Curtis, the professor of Japanese politics at
Columbia University, even said that Koizumi did not have
to go to Pyongyang to get the release of the five family
members. "The North Koreans said they wanted a senior
government official to come for them," he pointed out.
"It did not have to be the prime minister."
And,
Koizumi had at least four major trump cards he could
have played in order to gain concessions from Kim at the
summit:
Humanitarian aid such as food, medicine and medical
supplies and equipment;
Economic sanctions; Japanese lawmakers approved the
use of sanctions if necessary;
Substantial financial aid, which will be given to
North Korea only after normalization of diplomatic
relations - and resolving the hostage issue is the key;
Solid US-Japan relations to exert pressure on North
Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, including
the highly-enriched uranium program, which North Korea
once admitted to producing, grilled by the US
intelligence community. It later denied that it has such
a program. Most experts believe Korea has at least two
or three weapons already.
Opponents criticized
Koizumi for using up his first and second cards too
easily and early to get the release of the five family
members. He promised to give North Korea 200,000 tons of
food - exactly the same amount Beijing reportedly agreed
to give during Kim's visit to China last month, enough
to feed the nation's 22 million people for more than one
month. Koizumi also promised drugs and medical supplies
worth US$10 million, both food and medicine to be
delivered within two months through international
humanitarian assistance organizations. Koizumi said
there was no quid pro quo, no food and medicine for
hostages.
The Japanese prime minister also
agreed to stop implementing two sanctions against North
Korea if Pyongyang faithfully implements the Pyongyang
Declaration, signed by Koizumi and Kim in September
2002. One is the revised Foreign Exchange and Foreign
Trade Law enacted earlier this year that gives the
Japanese government authority to impose economic
sanctions unilaterally against North Korea. The other is
a bill which has been submitted to the legislature to
ban port calls by certain ships, targeting North Korean
vessels. For countries like Japan, which bans the
general use of force and has a war-renouncing
constitution, abandoning these two non-military cards
was crucial, a serious misstep and loss of leverage,
both opponents and other observers say.
Kim
brings brinkmanship alive Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il
also had four major cards to play:
The release of five children of four repatriated
Japanese abductees;
Better information on the 10 missing Japanese,
though it says eight died and two never crossed the
border;
Information on another 400 missing persons. The
Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably
Kidnapped to North Korea (COMJAN), a Japanese citizen
group trying to establish links between missing Japanese
and North Korea, has claimed North Korea kidnapped them.
North Korea denies this;
Concessions on dismantling its nuclear program in
exchange for security guarantees, energy aid and
economic assistance.
If there were no abduction
issues between Japan and Korea, the nuclear card would
be the only one Kim could play.
The summit was,
in fact, a victory for Kim; a demonstration that one of
the world's most durable leaders knows well about
strategy, diplomacy, and brinkmanship.
He cut
short the summit with Koizumi, and only used the first
card - release of relatives. He said he would order the
reinvestigation of the case of the 10 missing Japanese.
Then Kim received lots of rewards - Koizumi insists they
were not rewards - such as humanitarian aid and
non-imposition of what could be crushing economic
sanctions. Kim will now be able to use the other three
cards again to make sure that Japan helps feed its
hunger-stricken people and helps turn around its
devastating economic decline.
Moreover, as
expected, Kim exploited a visit by Koizumi to strengthen
his domestic legitimacy. So far North Korean media have
only reported the facts of Koizumi's revisit and Japan's
food and medical assistance and non-imposition of
sanctions, remaining silent on the abduction and nuclear
issues.
Koizumi's tasks lie
ahead Koizumi now will have to ace four major
challenges, especially before the crucial elections in
July to the Upper House of the Diet.
The future of Jenkins, a US Army soldier and Korean
War deserter, and his two daughters who remain in North
Korea. Fearing US extradition under treaty from Japan,
Jenkins agreed with Koizumi to meet his wife, Soga, in a
third country, possibly in China at the begging of next
month. Last Monday, Koizumi had telephoned US President
George W Bush and asked him to pardon Jenkins so that he
could be reunited with his family in Japan. Bush
apparently was reluctant, but details of the
conversation were not known.
For Jenkins and his
family, the timing was very bad for a pardon request.
The US is strengthening troop discipline in Iraq at a
time of rising anti-US violence and US abuse of
prisoners. Also, a US soldier who said he left his unit
in Iraq to protest an "oil-driven" war was convicted of
desertion Friday and sentenced to a year in jail, also
receiving a bad conduct discharge. Moreover, the
Pentagon decided last Tuesday to move some 3,600 US
soldiers from South Korea to Iraq to support Iraq-based
US troops there. To deploy troops from South Korea and
to bolster the morale of US troops in South Korea, it
would not be easy for the US to pardon Jenkins in the
near future. Furthermore, late Saturday evening, the
Pentagon issued a statement that the Jenkins case should
be handled in the accordance with the martial law.
Japanese media reported Saturday there would be no
suspension of the statute of limitations because he has
been in political refugee status in North Korea, with
which the US lacks diplomatic relations - beyond the
law's reach, even given the statute of limitations.
Koizumi will meet Bush at the 2004 Group of
Eight (G8) Summit scheduled in Sea Island, Georgia, in
the US from June 8-10. They are expected to discuss the
North Korea nuclear problems, as well as Jenkins.
Whether and when North Korea provides any
information on the 10 other missing Japanese remains to
be seen. For journalists who interview North Korean
defectors, it is known that Pyongyang has a very strict
permit and notification system limiting movement when
ordinary people want to go in and out of their home
towns. Observers say the government surely knows the
whereabouts of the eight or 10. If Kim were serious
about providing more information, he could and would do
so now. Kim, however, is believed to be closely
monitoring the developments in Japanese public opinion
on the missing persons, and exploiting the issue for his
own political ends.
The issue of the nuclear standoff. The official
North Korean news agency, the Korean Central News
Agency, said Saturday, "Kim Jong-il stressed that
progress in improving the bilateral relations would
largely depend on what an attitude and stand the ally of
Japan will take," referring to the US. This is typical
of Pyongyang's divide-and-rule strategy in dealing with
other nations that maintain good relations with each
other. Experts believe North Koreans will not give up
their nuclear deterrent because they believe once they
give it up their regime will be weakened - without the
big nuclear card. The US and Japan have to draw up a
coherent strategy for negotiations with North Korea,
including the status of Jenkins.
The future of the Koizumi administration. Koizumi
has fallen into a grave predicament, criticized both by
relatives of Japanese abductees and opponents from both
inside and outside his ruling LDP. He has to get a
chance to redeem himself. Fortunately for him, the other
five nations in the six-party talks all issued positive
statements that his trip will contribute to and
strengthen the peace and stability of Northeast Asia.
Koizumi can rely on their help, especially from North
Korea's closest ally China, to press on the abduction
issue.
"Koizumi is going to be in deep political
trouble unless the North Koreans move very quickly to
providing credible information on the abductees' fate
and unless Soga meets her family and a way is found to
reunite them," said Curtis, the Columbia University
professor.
Reviewing its history with the
Koreas, Japan has always been anxious to normalize ties
with Pyongyang and has expressed its impatience with
South Korea's - and sometimes the US's - talks with
North Korea. This hasty, dramatic dash to Pyongyang too
demonstrates his impatience.
Japan doesn't have
to rush to normalization with North Korea more than
North Korea does, because historically speaking, the
current situation of North Korea is very similar to that
at the end of Chosen Dynasty, which lasted about 500
years and faced world pressure or external forces in the
late 19th century. The only differences are that it now
has very strong Juche ideology, or self-reliance
ideology, nuclear capability and long-range missiles.
But its economy is devastated.
Sooner or later,
North Korea will no longer be able to hold out without
Japan's capital and technology. Until then, Tokyo can
put more pressure on North Korea on both the nuclear and
kidnapping issues - while praying for the safety of the
kidnapped people such as Yokota Megumi, one of the 10
missing Japanese, abducted in 1977 at the age of 13.
It's international common sense never to trust
kidnappers.
Kosuke
Takahashi is a former staff writer at the Asahi
Shimbun and is currently a freelance correspondent based
in Tokyo. He can be contacted at kosuke_everonward@ybb.ne.jp.
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