Secret Contacts with North Korea

Asahi Shimbun on Friday reported that a few persons related to the government of Japan had two unofficial meetings with some persons related to the Workers’ Party of Korea in a city in Southeast Asia in March and May this year. Although the meetings were held to seek an opportunity for top leaders’ meeting between Japan and North Korea, the negotiation is now in a slow progress due to the difference of both views. On Japanese side, the progress depends on how Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is serious about resuming the negotiation.

According to the report, former administrations of Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga have been kept the connection with North Korea through the channel between Cabinet Office and WPK, after another channel between Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Division of North Korea broke off. The meetings this year were held with a small number of the people.

 

The Japanese side required to return all the abductees to Japan as soon as possible in the meetings, and the North Korean side insisted on that the abductee issue had been solved. Although both sides kept their standpoints, the North Korean side showed a positive attitude toward the negotiation for normalizing the bilateral relationship. Japanese side conveyed Kishida’s willingness to have a summit meeting with the North Korean leader.

 

Along with the meetings, Kishida revealed his intention to accelerate the effort for the summit meeting “with high level consultations under the direct control of prime minister” in a meeting with the abductees’ families on May 25th. Supposedly answering to Kishida’s message, North Korea delivered a statement of Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs two days later, which said “There is no reason for both countries not to meet each other, if Japan makes a new decision.”

 

The difference is clear. North Korea wants economic cooperation from Japan. Japan hopes to solve the abductee issue completely. Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration in 2002 determines about economic co-operation from Japan to North Korea after the normalization, which include grant aids, long-term loans with low interest rates, humanitarian assistances and providing loans and credits by Japan Bank to support private economic activities. Description of this section is very specific.

 

Making a contrast, there is no word of “abduction” in the declaration. “With respect to the outstanding issues of concern related to the lives and security of Japanese nationals, the DPRK side confirmed that it would take appropriate measures so that these regrettable incidents, that took place under the abnormal bilateral relationship, would never happen in the future,” it says. The government of Japan has anyway been explaining that the declaration includes the solution of abductee issue.

 

Although the both governments agreed at Stockholm in 2014 on reinvestigation on Japanese abductees in North Korea, there has been no actual progress since Pyongyang Declaration. On the background, there was a hardline attitude of Japanese administrations represented by Abe’s. Abduction is fundamentally a violation against international law and cannot be tolerated. Having said that, such measures as determining the current situation of the abductees, reconfirming their willingness to go back to Japan or hearing from the families waiting for them should be necessary for make a progress in the bilateral relationship. Kishida at least needs to raise the priority of this issue.

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