Approach to the Peninsula

For some reasons, the diplomatic section of the Japanese government is recently positive in dealing with issues related to the Korean Peninsula. Dialogues with the Koreans in official level are getting into next steps. North Korea has reportedly expressed its willingness to review its investigation on abductees inside. To South Korea, Japanese officials are showing seriousness on resuming top meeting. There still waits a long way to go.

In a bilateral talk in Beijing last month, the North raised its intention to accept Japan’s request to reinvestigate Japanese abductees, with a condition of demanding partial lifting of economic sanction by Japan. After execution of an official, Jang Sung-taek, uncle-in-law of the First Secretary Kim Jong-un, the North has been suffered from ill relationship with its biggest economic supporter, China.

Realizing that abduction issue was one of the most appealing policies for Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, the Kim administration focused on drawing compromise from Japan. Japan has been using status of a building in Tokyo, in which North Korea has settled its de facto representative office in Japan. After being auctioned off, the building was bought by a Japanese real estate company. This sober attitude of Japanese government might have urged the North compromise.

Toward South Korea, The Chief of Asia-Pacific Bureau in Ministry of Foreign Affairs left Tokyo to Seoul for exploring an opportunity of summit talk between Abe and President Park Geun-hye. Though the trilateral summit talk adding U.S. President Barack Obama in Hague ended in sober mood, it was a significant step for both leaders to breathe the same air at one table. The officials of both nations are working to normalize the bilateral relationship to the extent for both leaders to go and back both countries, as shown few years before.

The prospect is nothing optimistic. The North is showing no sign to deal with nuclear and missile issue with Japan. The North has traditionally been watching U.S. behind Japan, whenever it is positive to negotiate with Japan. It is possible that Kim administration is camouflaging its hidden development of nuclear weapons and missiles, as it did in 2002, when Kim Jong-il accepted Premier Jun-ichiro Koizumi to Pyongyang. Appeasement of Japan to the North may invite criticisms abroad.

The South is raising comfort women issue in the bureau chief level meeting with Japan. While the issue is political Achilles tendon of Abe, it is difficult for Tokyo to compromise to Seoul. Zero tolerance on this issue will not be changed in the administration of Park as the female president of the nation. There is no breakthrough found for now.