No Progress in Abduction Issue

Fifteen years have passed on Sunday, since North Korea admitted its commitment to abduction of Japanese citizens in the meeting between General Secretary of Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim Jong-il, and Japanese Prime Minister, Jun-ichiro Koizumi. As Japan raised the issue on the agenda of negotiation for resumption of diplomatic relations, momentum for returning the abductees has been declined with the North’s consecutive intimidation with development of nuclear and missile technology. No one can see the future of abduction issue.

In the historical visit of Koizumi to Pyongyang on September 17^th, 2002, Kim Jong-il announced that 8 abductees had been dead and 5 alive, which shocked the Japanese with the truth of abduction. Surprisingly enough, Kim apologized the abduction by North Korea in 1970s and 80s, which the Japanese had been believing as unusual missing of people. Five abductees have returned to Japan a month after the meeting.

Koizumi and Kim agreed on a diplomatic document called Pyongyang Declaration. In the declaration, Japan apologized colonial ruling of Korea and promised economic cooperation after normalization of bilateral diplomatic relations. The declaration demanded North Korea implementing international agreements for solving nuclear issue in the peninsula and continuing freeze of missile launch.

Koizumi visited Pyongyang again in 2004 to negotiate returning the children of five survivors to Japan, which was achieved. Months later, North Korea submitted to Japan human bones, pretending it to be one of the missing abductees, Megumi Yokota. Scientifically verifying them as some strangers’, Japanese government realized that Kim regime was not serious about returning other abductees to Japan and made its attitude toward North Korea rigid.

The hardliner in Japanese administration then was Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, and current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. While he had been raising the abduction issue as the top agenda of him, Abe defied to compromise to North Korea, as seen in his refusal of returning five abductees to North Korea when they were allowed by the North’s government to make temporary visit to Japan.

Having fifteen years passed, the declaration actually became invalid. Isolated from international community, North Korea accumulated violation of international agreements with missile or nuclear tests. Abe is not only the hardliner in Japan but in the world, requiring harder sanction against North Korea including oil embargo. One of five abductees returned to Japan, Kaoru Hasuike, urged Japanese government to take action immediately in an article of Asahi Shimbun. “The solution can be meaningless, if Japanese government failed in returning the abductees while their families were alive,” said Hasuike.