Losing Momentum on Abduction

Enthusiasm turned to disappointment. The government of Japan announced that official report on abductees in North Korea would be delayed for certain period of time. Its promise to get it done by late summer or early fall proved to have been empty. While the officials attributed it to strategy of the North, it is obvious that Japanese government, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, did not understand diplomacy. Pyongyang always sees United States over the shoulder of Japan.

Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, explained that Pyongyang had brought Japan a message of the delay of investigation of Japanese in North Korea through diplomatic channel in Beijing. “The North said they were still in the beginning of investigation, which would take a year as a whole. They could not report anything beyond the situation of that,” told Suga in his press conference on Friday. Japanese government will keep on reconfirming the schedule.

Suga unintentionally revealed how innocent Abe administration had been in understanding strategic behavior of the North. Japanese government expected that the North would bring detailed information about Japanese abductees, especially about twelve people officially registered as abducted. However, Pyongyang prepared information other Japanese in North Korea than those twelve abductees. Those included spouse married with Korean, Japanese children left behind at the end of World War II or some missing people disappeared in Japan for some reasons.

For Prime Minister Abe, those people had less importance in terms of taking advantage in domestic politics. The truth was that Japan rejected an interim report of the North, considering disadvantage on Abe’s image as the top leader of abduction issue. A hidden scenario of Abe’s visit to Pyongyang, bringing back a dozen of Japanese abductees by government official aircraft, enthusiasm of Japanese people raising his supporting rate and making his administration stable for a long time was dropped from the table.

It is still unclear why diplomacy of Japan on North Korea has been so naïve. One possible reason is that diplomacy of Japan is not overwhelmingly controlled by professional diplomats in Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but by Prime Minister’s Official Residence. Staffs in the residence put more importance on political agenda of Prime Minister than diplomatic assessment of international politics. They only input preferable information for their premier, causing wrong decision of the national leader. If Abe wants to make a deal with the North, he needs to have more contact with United States and China. One cannot play mahjong by oneself.