Clinton confronts Japan's abduction issue
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Well begun, the saying goes, is half done. United States Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, on the airplane en route to her next stop in Jakarta,
Indonesia, may think her first overseas mission to re-engage Japan went well.
Clinton's choice of Japan as her first stop on a regional tour came as a balm
to many Japanese officials and policymakers. They recall the painful period of
the 1990s when the last Democrat-led US government of Bill Clinton led to a
national neurosis known as "Japan passing", that is, US interest in the country
waning.
But now, by stressing relations with Japan as a "cornerstone" of US foreign
policy, Clinton is seeking re-engagement with Tokyo. This comes at an important
time as the George W Bush administration last October removed its terrorism
label from North Korea - much to the dismay of family members of Japanese
abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s. This contributed
to a growing public disenchantment with the US. (Bush, incidentally, took
office in 2001 by also pledging to restore Japan to the core of US
relationships.)
An invitation by US President Barack Obama to welcome Prime Minister Taro Aso
to the White House as the first foreign leader, on February 24, would in normal
circumstances have make big front-page news in every Japanese newspaper on
Wednesday. But it was overshadowed by Japan's tipsy Finance Minister Shoichi
Nakagawa's unexpected resignation following his slurring and yawning news
conference at the weekend at a Group of Seven meeting in Rome.
Clinton, meanwhile, was working with other leaders of Japan to find solutions
to regional and global problems, such as the world financial crisis, climate
change, North Korea's nuclear and missile development ambitions and
human-rights concerns.
"She is off to a good start, but Democrats tend to slide away from Japan and
the political situation in Japan now may make that tempting," Michael Green, a
former senior director for Asian affairs at the White House National Security
Council, said in an e-mail interview with Asia Times Online.
"But I frankly give her higher marks than I would the last year of the Bush
administration, though not as high as the first seven years," said Green
who is a senior adviser and Japan chairman at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington and served as Republican nominee Senator
John McCain's presidential campaign adviser.
Clinton takes on the abduction issue
Beyond receiving the honor of a meeting with Empress Michiko, Clinton made a
direct public appeal on the highly emotional North Korean abduction issue.
Clinton on Tuesday said that Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese nationals
should be a priority for the US, Shigeo Iizuka, chairman of the Association of
the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, told reporters in a televised
news conference broadcast nationally.
Clinton said it may be difficult to solve the issue through isolated
bilateral-level talks between the US and North Korea, or between Japan and
North Korea, said Iizuka, whose younger sister Yaeko Taguchi, then a
22-year-old single mother of two babies, was abducted in June 1978.
Clinton earlier had expressed sympathy for the abduction victims and their
families and said she would meet with them as a wife, mother, daughter and
sibling. The US State Department earlier said the meeting shows that Washington
remains concerned about the issue under the administration of Obama.
According to Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone, with regard to the
North Korean issue, the US and Japan agreed on the importance of resolving, in
a comprehensive manner, the abduction issue, as well as nuclear and other
pending issues.
"While showing sympathy toward human-rights issues, she never forgot to
galvanize public opinion from bottom up," said Masao Okonogi, a professor of
political science at Keio University in Tokyo and an expert on the affairs of
the Korean Peninsula. "She showed a hard-nosed sense of diplomacy by swaying
public opinion in her favor."
The nature of the abductions
Tokyo says North Korean agents kidnapped 17 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s;
five have returned, 12 are unaccounted for. In September 2002, when then-prime
minister Junichiro Koizumi first visited Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il for the first time admitted that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13
Japanese nationals. Pyongyang has claimed that eight are dead and that the
other four never entered the country. The abducted Japanese are mostly believed
to have been forced to teach Japanese language and culture for agents' covert
operations against South Korea.
The US delisting last October made little sense to Japan and dealt the nation a
"Bush shock" because Tokyo still does not believe the nature of the North
Korean regime has changed. This is because Washington put North Korea on its
list of state sponsors of terrorism in January 1988 after the bombing of a
South Korean airliner the preceding year.
The bombing of the Korean Air flight 858 en route from Baghdad to Seoul killed
115 persons. Many observers believe North Korea aimed to prevent South Korea
from holding the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympic Games. Pyongyang still denies any
involvement in the terrorist attacks on the airliner, saying it's a malicious
fabrication by South Korea and others.
Yaeko Taguchi, one of the abductees mentioned above, taught Japanese to Kim
Hyun-hee, one of the two North Korean agents who blew up the plane, according
to Kim's book published after she escaped to the South. Kim claimed that Dear
leader Kim Jong-il masterminded the 1987 bombing by giving her the order.
Pyongyang claims Taguchi died in 1986, but Kim Hyun-hee has said that claim was
probably a lie. Japan's law-enforcement authorities also confirmed in 1991 that
Taguchi, under the name "Li Un-hye", taught Japanese to Kim Hyun-hee.
The Japanese and South Korean governments are now making efforts to hold a
meeting between Kim Hyun-hee and Taguchi's son, Koichiro Iizuka, now 32.
Some Western media have written that the confrontation with North Korea over
the abductions has left the Japanese government marginalized at the six-nation
talks to end the communist country's nuclear development program. Some see that
the obsession with the abduction issue is detrimental to the national interests
of Japan.
From a Japanese perspective, those media have not understood the nature of this
issue. Most of the abducted were the socially vulnerable; some were single
mothers like Taguchi. Some were nightclub hostesses such as Taguchi. A young
noodle shop clerk was also among them. Megumi Yokota was taken to North Korea
from Niigata in 1977 when she was 13. They were targeted because they were
relatively alienated people and socially weak persons in Japanese society,
which is why the Japanese government itself continued to ignore the issue for
decades.
"Japan still needs to try to comprehensively resolve the North Korean nuclear
and missile problems as well as the human-rights agenda, which includes the
abductees," Hajime Izumi, a professor of international relations at the
University of Shizuoka and an expert on Korean issues, told Asia Times Online.
"With the Obama administration advocating policies of multilateral cooperation,
the trilateral alliance of the US, Japan and South Korea is becoming all the
more important."
Many experts, such as Okonogi and Izumi, say the comprehensive approach,
including Japan's abduction issue, would raise the hurdle of the
denuclearization of North Korea. But Clinton was not shying away from that
challenge, at least in front of the Japanese.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. He can be contacted at
letters@kosuke.net.
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