Request of Political Decision from the North

The Deputy Department Director of Worker’s Party of Korea, Kim Yo Jong, a younger sister of the General Secretary of WPK, Kim Jong Un, issued a statement that Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, had sent North Korea a message for a direct meeting with Jong Un as early as possible. Yo Jong insisted that it would depend on Japan’s decision to put the abduction issue aside whether the summit meeting is taken place. While Japan immediately denied to accept North Korea’s argument, Kishida did not deny what Yo Jong had said.

Yo Jong issued another statement last month, which indicated possibility of Kishida’s visit to Pyongyang. Revealing that Kishida had sent a message to meet with Jong Un in a different channel, Yo Jong demanded Kishida a political decision in the second statement, if he would want to improve the bilateral relationship with North Korea. “He cannot escape from a reputation that it must be nothing but a populism, if he insists on the abduction issue,” said Yo Jong.

 

Asked about whether he had sent North Korea a request to meet with Kim Jong Un, Kishida did not deny the fact. “I have been saying that it is important to have a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un to solve the issues between Japan and North Korea,” said Kishida. He reiterated that he had been working on having contact with North Korea, dismissing any actual progress so far.

 

The condition to turning down the argument on abduction issue is highly unacceptable for Japanese government. Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, did not accept Yo Jong’s argument on the issue. “Their argument that the abduction issue has already been solved is not acceptable at all. The government of Japan maintains the policy that we are going to comprehensively solve the issues of abduction and development of nuclear weapons and missiles,” said Hayashi in his press conference.

 

Responding to Hayashi’s remarks, Kim Yo Jong issued a a new statement which expressed disappointment of North Korea, accusing Japan as not brave enough to take a new step. “The Korea-Japan relationship must not be taken advantage of by political interest of a prime minister who cares his approval rate marking historical low,” said Yo Jong.

 

The Japanese government takes Yo Jong’s first statement as a bate to separate Japan from the trilateral cooperative framework with United States and Republic of Korea. The bilateral relationship between Japan and ROK is improving under the leadership of Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol. It is supposed that North Korea tries to generate an opposition on the abduction issue in which Japan and ROK take different stances.

 

The abductees’ families in Japan expect some diplomatic progress with North Korea. The families upheld a new policy in late February, after Yo Jong’s first statement, that they would not protest lifting Japan’s unilateral sanction against North Korea, if it leads to return of all the abductees to Japan to meet their families alive. It must be a certain political gain for Kishida to make a progress in the abduction issue, as Yo Jong referred to.