Why Japan’s surprise push for contact with North Korea?

Posted on : 2013-05-16 17:12 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
S. Korea and the US troubled by Japan’s decision to hold a visit without any notification
 vice director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department
vice director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department

By Jeong Nam-ku, Tokyo correspondent

The Japanese government’s decision to send Cabinet Secretariat adviser Isao Iijima to North Korea, without notifying either the South Korean or US government in advance, appears to have been based on a strategic determination. With North Korea suffering under sanctions by the international community, Tokyo could gain an advantage in its negotiations about Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe avoided discussing Iijima’s visit during a May 15 meeting of the House of Councilors budget committee, saying the government had “no comment.”

However, he did respond to a question about the possibility of talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“If a summit is an important part of solving the abductee problem, then we naturally have to consider that approach in our negotiations,” he said.

While he stressed, “having a meeting is not the goal,” he also noted that former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi succeeded in bringing home five abductees with his own visit to North Korea, and later their Japanese spouse and children.

There are rumors that Abe wishes to visit North Korea in June, and these recent statements could reflect what he hopes to accomplish on that visit.

But it remains in question whether Pyongyang will follow Abe’s calculation. The Sankei Shimbun newspaper offered its own analysis of Iijima’s decision to stay in Pyongyang until May 18 after arriving there on May 14: “His stay was extended because no schedule was set for a meeting with a North Korean official more senior than Song Il-ho, its [bureau chief-level] ambassador for negotiations on the normalization of diplomatic relations,” the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, the Rodong Sinmun, which is the newspaper of the Workers’ Party of (North) Korea, commented in a May 15 piece that it would be a “wise choice for [Japan] to start now in adopting a rational approach to addressing past issues.” This suggests that Pyongyang views it as necessary to tie any negotiations with Tokyo on the abductee issue to discussion of normalizing diplomatic relations.

That would be a lot to ask from Japan, which would be hard pressed to go beyond the abductee issue and into negotiations on normalizing diplomatic relations without the agreement of South Korea or the US at a time when the international community is ratcheting up its sanctions in response to North Korea’s long-range rocket launch and nuclear tests.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted a diplomatic source as saying that Seoul and Washington “distrust Japan” after it went ahead with Iijima‘s visit without notifying them ahead of time.

Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman for the US Department of State, said Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies was traveling to Japan and hear more about the visit from Tokyo.

“We’ve been clear that diplomatic progress will come when North Korea begins to live up to its commitments and international obligations and take steps to demonstrate that it’s serious about denuclearization,” Ventrell said in a May 14 press briefing.

Isao Iijima met with senior North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il, the North's official KCNA news agency reported May 15.

 

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