Chapter 76 – The North Korean Abductee Issue
BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.
BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGE
1. Finding the Abductees, 1970s-80s
2. NK-Japan Relations Changed
3. More Abductees?
4. The Megumi Affair
5. Megumi and the The Rightwing-Sponsored Family Groups
6. The Pyongyang Declaration Dies
7. Megumi Myth Exposed
8. Imposed Silence
9. The Myth Continues
10. No Honest Negotiators
11. The Hardliners Take Over
1. Finding the Abductees, 1970s-80s
In 2001 a senior Foreign Ministry (Gaimusho) official, Tanaka Hitoshi, an acquaintance, spent the best part of that year negotiating with a North Korean official said to be close to NK leader, Kim Jong-il. His aim was to get Pyongyang to confirm rumours it was still holding people abducted from Japan during the mad seventies and eighties.
He would then try to negotiate their return to Japan.
NK admitted to having abducted 13 persons. Five had survived. They, together with their families, would be returned.
The others had died in various accidents, it was claimed.
2. NK-Japan Relations Changed
The return of the five abductees marked a change in the formerly hostile relations between the two countries.
To mark the change, both sides agreed to issue the Pyongyang Declaration of 2002.
Under the Declaration, Japan promised inter alia substantial economic aid and a normalisation of relations. NK was to agree to cease rocket testing.
The excitement in Japan over the discovery of the hidden abductees was large.
Even the anti-North Korean, rightwing, prime minister of Japan, Koizumi Junichiro, was able to suppress his dislike of North Korea for the one day needed to go to Pyongyang and sign the Pyongyang Declaration, in September 2002.
He should have stayed longer, since reports by Tanaka and others involved with North Korea agree that Kim Jong-il was an intelligent, moderate and flexible leader.
3. More Abductees?
Worse, the even more rightwing and anti-NK, Abe Shinzo, then deputy chief cabinet secretary, had travelled to Pyongyang with Koizumi.
He returned to Japan claiming he had reason to believe North Korea may have abducted more than 800 Japanese.
Tokyo also began to revoke its promises for the conditions under which the abductees could bring their families to Japan. It was a slap in the face for North Korea’s belief in Japan’s goodwill.
The non-Japanese speaking children were forced abruptly to end their studies in North Korea and come to Japan without preparation and without promised meetings in North Korea with their parents in advance.
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Worse was to come. Tokyo also began to claim that 17 (including the five who had been returned) and not 13 had been abducted, and possibly more.
They all had to be searched for and accounted for before there could be any improvement in relations.
Months were wasted as both sides haggled over the numbers and whereabouts of the people said to be missing.
4. The Megumi Affair
Tokyo’s next move was make an issue about the fate of one listed abductee – a woman, Yokota Megumi, abducted in 1977 at age of 13 (presumably because she had witnessed another abduction).
Tokyo insisted she had to be returned to her grieving parents in Japan.
But North Korea insisted that she had married, produced a daughter, Kim Eun Gyong, and had committed suicide in 1994. To prove this they had produced bones said to be from her cremation.
Abe then produced a semi-qualified DNA bone tester to say Megumi’s DNA was not on the bones.
Abe insisted this proved that North Korea was lying (despite a large article in the scientific magazine Nature insisting DNA testing of cremated bones was not possible because of contamination risk).
(I was also able to confirm the same point with the then head of Japan’s official DNA research facility.)
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The remainder of the story would make for a bad farce, if it were not for the fact that the deliberate moves by Abe to kill the promises of the Pyongyang Declaration has left the 26 million people of an already impoverished North Korea to sink further into poverty, famine and the grip of a dictatorial regime.
The promised normalisation of diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, the cessation of rocket testing – everything aimed at improving relations, was killed.
5. Megumi and the The Rightwing-Sponsored Family Groups
Tokyo’s next move was to set up and finance groups both inside and outside the bureaucracy to represent the families of the allegedly still missing abductees.
Great play was made of the alleged failure of the Abe faked, DNA bone-testing operation..
Insisting Megumi was still alive, the family groups set out to transform her into star quality. Songs, pictures, manga, ceremonies and monuments were created to keep memory of her fresh.
Her grieving parents, together with photos of the schoolgirl Megumi and other memorabilia, were taken around the world and paraded before leaders of Western nations (including Bush Jnr. in the US) as proof that she was indeed alive, wishing only to be freed from her North Korean captors.
This charade continued for years.
Western nations have cooperated by allowing their leaders to have their time wasted by meeting and consoling with the travelling Megumi parade.
This cooperation in turn was then reported by Tokyo as proof the world agreed with Japan’s anger over Megumi’s abduction.
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Pyongyang tried to put an end to the charade by inviting the Megumi parents to come to North Korea and talk to Megumi’s daughter.
That way they believed they could confirm to the parents what had happened to their daughter, Megumi.
But Tokyo refused to let the parents leave Japan: A Pyongyang plot to deceive, they claimed.
6. The Pyongyang Declaration Dies
Meanwhile all memory of the Pyongyang Declaration was gradually erased, as Abe Shinzo had no doubt planned from the start.
On this highly manufactured basis Abe and his hawk followers have been able to justify their continued demonisation of North Korea, with Tokyo repeatedly demanding Pyongyang must continue to search for the abductees it knows do not exist, while prohibiting the parents of one abductee from visiting her daughter who Tokyo knows does exist.
Eventually the lie became too difficult to maintain.
7. Megumi Myth Exposed
In 2014 the parents were finally allowed to visit Megumi’s daughter, but only in a third country, Mongolia. Strangely, the parents’ report of the visit made no mention of Megumi.
By chance in 2016 I got to talk to Sakie, Megumi’s mother, at yet another Tokyo jamboree demanding the return of missing abductees. I asked her why there was no mention of Megumi in her report of the visit.
She replied calmly that she now saw her mission as working to support the families of other abductees.
It was her indirect way of saying she knew Megumi no longer existed.
8. Imposed Silence
Throughout this circus, Tanaka Hitoshi, the man who did the hard work of discovering the abductees has remained silent.
Rightwing types began to accuse him of failing to rescue more abductees. Rightwing thugs threatened to burn down his house, which has since remained under 24/7 guard.
(Burning down houses is a favoured thug activity. The LDP politician, the Chinese-fluent Kato Koichi who sought better relations with China got that treatment, and died soon after.)
9. The Myth Continues
Even after the assassination of Abe, Tokyo has continued to promote the abductee myth.
The Yokota’s loud and outspoken son has taken over the directorate for the so-called family groups created by Abe. It was he who decided to kill off Ishiba’s sensible liaison offices proposal.
Abe’s successor, prime minister Kishida Fumio, has persisted with the abductee myth.
He called for direct talks with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The reply, delivered by Kim’s daughter, was that there could be no meeting if Kishida’s main aim was to raise more of the abductee issue.
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Would any normal nation tolerate this absurd state of affairs?
Why would North Korea want to hang on to abductees who had no known usefulness, especially if their release meant getting the benefits of the Pyongyang Declaration?
Why would North Korea want to hang on to these people as they grew older? One is approaching 100 in age.
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A possible parallel was the US devious use of the MIA issue to demonise Vietnam and delay normalisation of relations with Hanoi.
That lasted about 18 years. Japan’s use of the concocted abductee issue has lasted 22 years and still shows no sign of abating.
True, not all Japanese citizens are willing to go along with the nonsense, including some Foreign Ministry officials who have been willing anonymously to leak some of the truth.
But in Japan, to say you have been told by someone in Tokyo’s foreign ministry that Megumi or other abductees have already died is dangerous. It means you will be summonsed, required to admit your guilt, punished, and forced to apologise.
This is ridiculous. (see following chapter for details.)
10. No Honest Negotiators
What we have seen in this abductee affair is what we see in the many other disputes with which postwar Japan has been involved.
Japan does have intelligent, moderate negotiators. I met some of them in negotiations with Australia, or in the many talk events in Japan I used to be invited to participate back through to the 2000s, and later.
But when, like Tanaka Hitoshi, they fall victim to Rightwing fakery they do not protest. To protest will just give the Rightwing more eagerness to attack. They also risk having their houses burned down.
The progressives have been replaced by the irrationally biassed, well-financed Rightwing commentators and pundits we now see on the TV screens and in the conferences on foreign relations.
They were able to mesmerise naive Western observers into thinking Abe Shinzo was just the strong leader Japan needed as he went about creating the enemies Tokyo needed to justify its militarism.
It has all been part of the change from Japan’s attractive postwar pacifism to a dangerous militarism, if not fascism.
This has been encouraged not just by the US but also by an Australia unaware of Japan’s Rightwing scheming and forgetful of Japan’s past (apart from the RSL – Returned Servicemen’s League. They still remember the cruelties of Japan’s POW camps.)
11. The Hardliners Take Over
Worse, is the way the hardliners take over to embed these disputes in ways to make future compromises in negotiations almost impossible.
The abductee issue is embedded now in a large poster of Megumi with family at a major Tokyo railway station.
The territorial dispute is embedded by designating February 7 as Northern Territories day, with a large monument in central Tokyo which every year has to be the site of sad stories from the now very elderly inhabitants who were expelled by the Soviets in 1945.
(Someone should note that thanks to the irrationality of Tokyo policies these elderly people remain expelled, even from the islands – Shikotan and the Habomais – which Moscow which has agreed to return.)
Nowhere else in the world would we see educated and presumably sensible officials going along with this kind of nonsense. It is dangerous, and childish.
The same is true for the punishments handed out to those who use official sources to bring out the truth of the Megumi affair.
What’s wrong with Japan?