SPEAKING
FREELY The perilous Tokyo-Pyongyang
rift By Yoshinori Takeda
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Last
month North Koreans at the Japan-North Korea
working-level consultations handed over to Japan human
remains said to be those of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese
abductee. According to Pyongyang, Megumi Yokota had
committed suicide; a man claiming to be her husband had
dug up her grave two and a half years ago, had cremated
her remains and had kept them in his house. This
assertion was proved to be totally false; as a result of
DNA testing, the human remains brought from Pyongyang to
Japan were shown not to be those of Megumi Yokota, but
of two other people. The shocking announcement by Chief
Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda on December 8 put the
two edgy neighbors, which have no diplomatic relations,
at loggerheads once again.
Japanese distrust of
North Korea is deep-rooted, and this recent incident
caused a furious reaction in Japan. Words such as
"atrocity" and phrases such as "turned Japanese to
ridicule" and "cannot understand North Korea with common
sense" hit the headlines of Japanese newspapers. A
public-opinion poll showed that more than 70% of the
Japanese people supported the imposition of economic
sanctions against North Korea. Japan is North Korea's
third-largest trading partner after China and South
Korea. Additionally, remittances from pro-Pyongyang
Koreans and Japanese in Japan, reported to amount to
tens of billions of yen annually, are a major source of
income for Pyongyang. Japanese sanctions could have a
serious economic impact on North Korea, should Tokyo
decide to invoke them.
Since September 2002,
when Kim Jong-il, the chairman of the National Defense
Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(DPRK), acknowledged that the abduction of Japanese
nationals had been the work of North Korean government
agents in the past and offered his apologies, North
Korea's attitude toward Japan has been ambiguous. Of the
15 Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in
the 1970s and '80s, only five have returned to Japan; 10
abductees remain unaccounted for. North Korea claims
that eight have died and that the other two never
entered the country. In May this year, when Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his second one-day
trip to Pyongyang, Kim promised he would reopen the
investigation of the abduction issue. After that summit,
the Japan-North Korea working-level consultations began.
Most likely, the North Korean government knows
the whereabouts of the 10 missing Japanese citizens.
Were Kim Jong-il serious about providing more
information, he probably could do so. The North Korean
leader, however, has not wanted to throw away such an
important card, containing information with which he
could deal with the Japanese government.
By
providing false information and bogus evidence, North
Korea lost this precious card. The furious Japanese no
longer have any intention of going along with North
Korea's dilatory tactics. The Japanese Diet, or
parliament, is working on a resolution that would
require the government to stop humanitarian food aid and
impose economic sanctions against North Korea. At the
Japan-DPRK summit last May, Koizumi attached the
condition that as long as Pyongyang faithfully
discharged its obligations under the Pyongyang
Declaration signed by the two leaders in September 2002,
Japan would not implement economic sanctions against
North Korea. Now, the Japanese government, which had not
considered the North Korean nuclear program a violation
of the 2002 declaration, has opened the door to economic
sanctions. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura
has lodged a formal protest against North Korea,
declaring that this phony investigation was contrary to
the spirit of the Pyongyang Declaration.
At the
present time, the following two developments should be
watched closely.
First,
the current incident has had a negative
impact on the bilateral relations between Japan and
North Korea. Even if Pyongyang admits that the North
Korean side provided falsified information about Megumi
Yokota and the other missing Japanese abductees and
apologized for its faults, Japanese public opinion would
almost certainly require the government to deal with
North Korea firmly. Stiff measures, including economic
sanctions, could be demanded. Pyongyang has repeatedly
criticized Japan for threatening North Korea with the
economic-sanction card, stating that it would consider
such unilateral action by Japan a declaration of war.
If Pyongyang wants to get out of this deadlocked
situation and advance normalization talks with Japan,
there remain only a few effective measures for North
Korea, which has very limited diplomatic resources. One
way would be to invite Machimura to Pyongyang or arrange
talks with Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of
the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, in, for
example, Beijing. If this kind of ministerial meeting
were arranged, North Korea could prepare more accurate
data and evidence on the abductees by this "deadline".
The only other way would be for Kim Jong-il to
visit Tokyo with accurate information about the missing
abductees. This action could cause serious damage to
Kim's regime, however, because one of its main
principles has been antagonism toward Japan, and it
could mean the loss of all of Pyongyang's political
cards for dealing with the Japanese. Yet normalization
with Japan and the consequent substantial economic and
financial aid by Tokyo would be important keys for North
Korea, which has barely managed to survive over the past
several years.
Second,
a further straining of relations between
Japan and North Korea could not avoid having a negative
influence on the six-party talks aimed at ending North
Korea's nuclear program and involving both Koreas,
China, Japan, Russia and the United States. These have
been postponed principally because of North Korea's
reluctance to participate. Pyongyang would require
removing Japan from the multilateral negotiation table
if Tokyo imposed sanctions, and this attitude would
further delay the next round of the still-unscheduled
talks. If the United States sticks to a multilateral
forum for resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, a
stalemate in the six-party talks means a suspension of
the settlement of the nuclear issue, which poses a grave
security concern for Northeast Asian countries.
A lack of normal diplomatic relations between
Japan and North Korea (and the United States and North
Korea), as well as mutual distrust, makes the
development of multilateralism in Northeast Asia
extremely difficult. The next step by Japan and North
Korea is important, not only for their future but also
for the six-party talks, the first multilateral forum
with the participation of all regional states in
Northeast Asia.
Yoshinori Takeda is an
associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy,
Georgetown University. He can be contacted atyt75@georgetown.edu.
(Copyright 2004 Yoshinori Takeda.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
