News-Info-Alerts

Re: Japan and North Korea and the Missing

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 01, 2003

"Japan hopes dashed over abductees

Officials say they will keep pressing N Korea for answers

Friday, August 29, 2003 Posted: 12:19 AM EDT (0419 GMT)

TOKYO, Japan -- Hopes that the six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear program would also shed light on the fate of kidnapped Japanese citizens have come to nothing, officials in Tokyo have said.

During bilateral meetings in Beijing Thursday on the sidelines of the nuclear talks, envoys from the two countries clashed over the fate of several Japanese citizens still unaccounted for and over relatives of five returnees still held in North Korea.

Instead, Japanese officials say, the North Korean side accused Tokyo of breaking promises to send back five Japanese after what was supposed to be a temporary homecoming last October.

"The North Korean side reiterated their stance that the five should have been returned to the North," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo told reporters in the Japanese capital.

"We want a more positive response and will continue to strongly demand that," he added.

Although the meetings included Japanese calls for the North to abandon its nuclear program, for many in Japan the kidnappings are at least as sensitive and pressing an issue.

Many suspect the North is using the issue to extract economic aid from Japan or an official apology for wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese army during their occupation of Korea in the 1930s and 40s.

North Korea admitted last September that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and early 1980s as part of a bizarre Cold War intelligence gathering exercise to train North Korean spies.

Some were kidnapped while walking home from school, others snatched while running errands or driving around on dates.

Emotional issue

The fate of the missing Japanese has long been a thorny issue between Japan and North Korea.


The issue has become one of the most emotional obstacles to any normalization of ties between Japan and North Korea and officials had been keen to use the Beijing talks to press their case with the North Korean delegation.

According to Pyongyang eight of the abductees died during their years in North Korea, but in October 2002 the remaining five survivors were allowed to return home for the first time.

They have all since opted to remain in Japan, but their families remain in North Korea -- including the American husband of one, a man listed as a U.S. military deserter who defected to North Korea in the 1960s.

During 40 minutes of talks Thursday Japanese envoy Mitoji Yabunaka urged his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Il, to allow the surviving abductees' families to join their relatives in Japan.

He also said Japan wanted clear answers on the fate of at least 10 more of its citizens believed to have been victims of North Korean kidnaps.

Some reports cite evidence that as many as 100 Japanese listed as officially missing may in fact have been taken by North Korean agents.

Of the eight abductees North Korea says are dead, Yabunaka said Japan wanted more evidence including the repatriation of remains.

North Korea has said it is unable to provide such evidence, saying in one case, for example, that the grave of an abductee had been washed away by flooding.

Commenting on the latest talks the brother one of the dead kidnap victims said he felt exasperated by North Korea's refusal to cooperate with Japanese demands.

"I was left speechless by North Korea's insincere attitude," said Kenichi Ichikawa whose brother Shuichi was abducted in 1978 but died a year later according to Pyongyang.

Japanese officials attending the Beijing talks say they will keep on pressing North Korea for results.

As one unnamed diplomat told the Associated Press: "We will keep on talking until we get a good answer."

© 2003 CNN"

AND

"Japan demands North Korea account for lost citizens

By Associated Press
August 29, 2003

BEIJING — When Japan conferred with North Korea during nuclear weapons talks Thursday in the Chinese capital, the top issue wasn't bombs. The demand was more personal: Tell the truth about all the Japanese suspected of being held captive in the reclusive communist state.

In horror tales left over from the Cold War, Japanese walking home from school, running errands or driving around on dates were snatched by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s so the spies could learn their language and assume their identities.

"We just focused on the kidnappings," one of the chief members of Japan's delegation said on condition of anonymity. "We will keep on talking until we get a good answer."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il acknowledged in September 2002 that his nation's agents systematically kidnapped Japanese decades ago. North Korea then allowed five kidnap victims to return home temporarily.

But the five abductees — two couples and a woman married to an American listed as a deserter by the U.S. military and living in Pyongyang — chose to stay.

Now Japan is demanding that North Korea allow the five returnees' seven children to come to Japan.

North Korea, however, maintains Tokyo broke its promise by not returning the five.

During talks at China's guest house, Tokyo's delegates also demanded a full accounting of other missing Japanese.

The Japanese government has 10 people on an "official" abduction list, but experts and grass-roots groups say the number could be more than 100. North Korea has said eight of the victims died.

Quick progress on the abductions seems unlikely.

"The abduction issue can't be solved without solving the nuclear problem. They run parallel to each other," said Masao Okonogi, a North Korea expert and a professor of international politics at Keio University in Japan.

North Korea, which is suspected of harboring nuclear ambitions, wants Washington to sign a pact that it will not attack. The United States first wants North Korea to fully dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

Impoverished North Korea is hungry for help from Japan, but it feels duped because it counted on receiving aid once it admitted to the kidnappings, Okonogi said.

Japan recently halted food aid to North Korea and Japanese public opinion has so soured over the kidnappings that even demands for economic sanctions are growing.

When a North Korean ferry arrived this week at a northern Japanese port, it was met by protesters, even though the boat had for years been a lifeline for North Koreans with relatives in Japan.

For decades, the Japanese government waffled on taking a decisive stand on the abductions, worried about provoking its volatile neighbor.

But this week, Japan raised its voice despite earlier warnings from Pyongyang that such a move could derail nuclear weapons talks among the United States, North and South Korea, Russia, Japan and China.

"I strongly put forward Japan's position — that is, resolution of the abduction issue and return of the families of the abductees and an investigation of the abduction cases," said Japan's chief negotiator, Mitoji Yabunaka.

"I was hoping for a more positive reaction and that is what I am going to seek from them from now onward as well."

©2003, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps Company"