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Click here for Original Copy & Japanese Translation
Don't underestimate the depth of genuine public anger in Japan over the abduction
issue with North Korea. At the same time don't underestimate the degree to which
Japan's powerful rightwing is exploiting the issue to shift Japan even further to
hardline foreign policies, a shift typified by the extraordinary pomp and jingoism
in the recent send-off for troops going to Iraq.
Nor is there much to suggest that Tokyo is in the right over the abduction issue.
During Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's historic September 2002 talks in Pyongyang,
North Korea about-faced dramatically to admit, and even apologize for, past abductions
of Japanese citizens. Its willingness to release five of the abductees to go to Japan
was a clear bid to improve relations. But now we see it being used as a blunt weapon
for creating worse relations.
North Korea released the five abductees in exchange for a promise that they would
return within two weeks. Tokyo has reneged on that promise. What's more, it now insists
that North Korea send to Japan the family members of these former abductees, regardless
of whether they want to go or not. And it will not allow the parents to return to
North Korea, even briefly, to confirm or persuade the children to go.
This, despite the fact that the children of the abductees are now mature North Korean
citizens undergoing training or higher education in Pyongyang. They do not speak
Japanese. They probably share the North Korean dislike and distrust of Japan. Some
did not even know that their parents were Japanese.
That the Japanese are entitled to be upset at the thought of North Korean agents
sneaking into their territory and abducting innocent civilians during the '70s and
early '80s is unarguable. But that was some time ago. To some extent it was a retaliation
for the far greater, and still largely unapologized for, abductions and other wrongs
done to the Korean people by Japan up to 1945.
Japan is much more entitled to be upset over the fate of other abductees -- at least
10 by Tokyo's count. Pyongyang says vaguely they died in drownings, traffic accidents,
etc. But we also know that during former bouts of anti-Japan spy paranoia North Korea's
sadistic security authorities were happily imprisoning even the Japanese spouses
of Koreans who had returned from Japan to help rebuild the nation.
It is likely that many of the abductees were caught up in the same purges, and suffered
miserable deaths in North Korean gulags. Or else they were killed deliberately to
hide former abduction evidence when they ceased to be of use.
Indeed, it is very likely that the five remaining abductees only managed to survive
by showing intense, and possibly genuine, loyalty to the North Korean regime. That
could explain why some parents even try to pretend to their children that they were
North Korean. This could also explain why the abductees insisted on wearing North
Korean badges for well over a week after they returned to Japan -- a rather important
detail ignored in Japan's current anti-Pyongyang fury.
It is quite possible even that Pyongyang believed that the abductees had been so
indoctrinated with pro-North Korean fervor that they would indeed want to return
to the communist "paradise" after brief exposure to Japan's capitalist
"hell." Hence the insistence on having them return within two weeks. That
could also explain why Pyongyang sent two officials to look after them while they
were in Japan and shepherd them back to North Korea.
In this situation Tokyo was right to ignore the two North Korean minders, and insist
the abductees stay much longer. They needed time to be de-indoctrinated and return
to normal Japanese life. But should it be taking its current hardline on family members,
to the point of threatening severe economic sanctions?
Pyongyang now seems reconciled to the fact it has lost the abductees and should release
the family members. One report says it is even providing Japanese language lessons
for some of the children. But if family members do not want to go to Japan, should
it force them?
All this is ignored by the many strange figures on the fringes of the dispute and
claiming to be spokespeople for the abductees. Their and other rightwing efforts
to whip up anti-North Korea feeling on the issue are unrelenting. In some more extreme
rightwing media we now find open calls for a military attack.
An emotional mood has been whipped up and precludes all rational discussion. Hitoshi
Tanaka, the senior Foreign Ministry official who almost singlehandedly negotiated
the return of the abductees and who seems responsible for the two-weeks return promise,
is the target of rightwing hatred and gangster intimidation.
Former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka was reviled simply for noting that the abductee
children could not speak Japanese. Those who go to Pyongyang to meet and report on
the feelings of the children suffer the same fate. The media constantly talk about
the former abductees as "abduction victims" whose family members must "return"
to Japan.
And why are the abductees themselves kept under wraps, denied the chance to give
their own opinions? At least one of them has shown that she wants to go back to talk
to her family in Pyongyang. Counter-abduction is Pyongyang's word for it.
On balance Tokyo could be more compromising. Pyongyang clearly wants to turn its
back on past sins. Solving the abductee question could do much to promote the all-important
liberalization and opening up of the North Korean regime.
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