Japan, North Korea all talk, no
action By Axel Berkofsky
Japan and North Korea are talking to each
other, not about one another, after more than three
years of bad-mouthing and name-calling, but so far
the two have little to show for their efforts.
The current Japan-North Korea talks taking place
in Beijing mark the first negotiations over establishing
diplomatic relations since October 2002
when representatives from the countries met in
Kuala Lumpur and in essence agreed to disagree
on all issues on the table. The talks, which began
Saturday, are scheduled to run up to five days.
Negotiators are employing a new three-track
format with separate panels
discussing diplomatic normalization, North Korea's
past abductions of Japanese nationals and
Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
However, little was accomplished after
three days of days of bilateral talks. By Monday
evening Beijing time, two of of the three panels
had ended in failure, with no progress on the
abduction issue or normalization of diplomatic
ties.
The only good news was that both
still planned to discuss nuclear and missile
issues.
Realistically, the abductions
ceased to be an issue for Pyongyang since in 2002
after admitting officially to having kidnapped
Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to
"employ" them as "Japanese language instructors"
for North Korean spies.
Shortly after the
Japanese-North Korean summit in 2002, some of the
abductees, with a return ticket in hand, were
allowed to visit Japan, only to find out Tokyo
decided to make the holiday in Japan permanent.
The Japanese government "re-abducted" the
abductees, who after a brief period of resistance
voluntarily decided to stay in Japan. These
"repatriation policies", bizarre even by Japanese
standards, were followed by government claims
there might be as many as 50 additional Japanese
citizens waiting to be returned to Japan.
Furthermore, Japan claims scientific
evidence in charging that North Korea does not
take the issue seriously. After years of
repeatedly requesting the human remains of Megumi
Yokota, kidnapped from Japan in 1977 at the age of
13, Pyongyang sent Tokyo some remains in November
2004. DNA tests on the human remains, however,
showed they were not those of Yokota.
Consequently, the abduction issue remains
very much at the top of Japan's agenda and Tokyo's
negotiators want their citizens back.
"If
they do not respond sincerely this time, we must
think about various things," a government
spokesman warned late last week. "Various things",
it is understood, include economic sanctions,
which North Korea has tried to discourage through
regular threats to "test" missiles over Japanese
territory.
Japan's outspoken Foreign
Minister Taro Aso had threatened to cut short the
current talks even before they started. "If North
Korea does not behave sincerely, Tokyo will not be
forthcoming in the normalization negotiations,"
Aso said during a recent news conference. "Voices"
will rise if there is no progress on the abduction
question, he added, leaving little doubt one those
voices would be his.
Given its track
record of responding to such pressure with threats
to start World War III or turn East Asia into a
"sea of fire", Pyongyang will of course remain
unimpressed.
Undeterred. however, Japan
demanded in Beijing an explanation of the
whereabouts of 11 Japanese abducted by North
Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. So far,
Pyongyang insists eight died natural deaths in
North Korea - according to Pyongyang either in car
accidents on Pyongyang's "busy" streets or of
mysterious diseases that killed a few abductees on
the same day - after having decided voluntarily to
remain in the communist state. The other three
abductees, Pyongyang maintains, never entered the
country.
Japan's biggest daily
newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun - known for its North Korea
and China-bashing editorials, reported on Sunday that
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, then secretary
general of the Workers' Party of Korea, got
involved in the kidnappings in the early 1980s.
Sin Gwang Su, a North Korean spy wanted
internationally for the abduction of Japanese
national Tadaki Hara in 1980, claimed that Kim
personally ordered him to kidnap a Japanese
national and "steal his identity", the paper
reported. Sin was arrested by South Korean
authorities in 1985 travelling with Hara's
passport and was allowed to return to North Korea
in 1999 under an amnesty agreement.
In
Beijing, Tokyo not only pressed for a full
accounting of the abduction cases but also for the
extradition of Sin to Japan, who was also
reportedly involved in the abduction of Yokota.
However, extradition is unlikely as Pyongyang made
him a national hero after his return to North
Korea.
Also on Monday, Tokyo announced it
would not come up with additional cash North Korea
requested as part of Japanese reparations for
Japan's colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula
during World War II.
Japan has repeatedly
refused Pyongyang's demands for war reparations,
instead offering Pyongyang the same economic
cooperation and assistance it offered Seoul after
establishing diplomatic relations in 1965. Tokyo
cannot "cannot treat differently two nations that
were both under Japanese colonial rule",
negotiators said.
North Korea rejected
that argument, resulting in the sides failing to
agree on an economic cooperation formula presented
by Tokyo to the diplomatic normalization panel.
"We cannot accept that method," said Song Il-ho,
Pyongyang's ambassador in charge of Japan-North
Korea diplomatic normalization. "There are all
kinds of issues so we did not reach an agreement."
On the nuclear and missile panel, Tokyo
was hoping to convince Pyongyang to agree to
return to the six-party talks and reconfirm the
North Korean moratorium on launching missiles,
signed in 2002 by Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi and Kim.
While Pyongyang was
expected to reconfirm its commitment to abstain
from firing missiles over Japan, Pyongyang insists
it won't return to the six-party talks with
Japan, South Korea, the United States, China and Russia
unless the US lifts its economic sanctions.
Masao Okonogi, a North Korea expert and
professor at Keio University in Tokyo, thinks
Pyongyang agreed to talk to Tokyo only because the
US and China are "talking tough over North Korea's
involvement in money-laundering and
counterfeiting".
"The bilateral talks are
largely an interim measure until multilateral
talks are resumed," he said in an interview with
the Japan Times, suggesting Pyongyang might only
be warming up for the next round of six-party
talks.
Even if Japan and North Korea eventually
leave Beijing empty-handed, at least the
talks will have produced a few positive headlines
over Japan's efforts to improve relations
with Pyongyang. Japan's diplomacy is in need
of those after months of news focusing on Koizumi's
visits to the Tokyo-based Yasukuni shrine,
where 14 Class A war criminals are buried.
Meanwhile, the Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) - the North Korean government's official
mouthpiece, which ironically is running its
website out of Japan through the Korea News
Service in Tokyo - has not given Tokyo much credit
for its diplomatic efforts to patch things up with
the North.
KCNA urged its readers to focus
their attention on "the fact that the
conservatives within the Japanese government are
making remarks [that are] getting on the nerves of
the DPRK [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea -
North Korea] ... persistently raising the
abduction issue. "Nationalist right-wing forces,"
led by chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe and Aso,
according to the KCNA, "will ruin the positive
environment created for improving the relations
between the two countries."
However,
expectations on what could be achieved during the
bilateral talks were always low. And since the
North Korean delegation didn't storm out of the
conference room while announcing resumption of
missile tests over East Asia, the summit can
probably be called a success.
Dr
Axel Berkofsky is senior policy analyst at the
European Policy Center (EPC) in Brussels. The
views expressed here are his own.
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