No one should doubt that North Korea would exploit every possible opportunity to string out the Chinese-hosted negotiations on the ending of its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang’s motive is clear. As long as the paranoid regime of Kim Jong-il can hang on to this arsenal, it believes it will be protected from attack and also have considerable leverage with the international community, to give it the economic and financial support it needs to keep its police state running. The day it inks a final agreement and then honors it disarmament commitment, it will become vulnerable.
Therefore the latest row with Japan, part of the six-nation talks process that began in Beijing in 2003, is hardly surprising. The issue revolves around Japanese citizens abducted by the North Koreans in the 1970s and 80s. Tokyo has refused to deliver agreed aid, until it is given a full disclosure of this bizarre incident which involved perhaps a dozen Japanese kidnapped around the world by Pyongyang’s security services, apparently for training as spies. As a result, the North Koreans say they will “shun” the Japanese delegation when the talks are due to resume tomorrow in Beijing, attended also by the Russians, Chinese, US and South Koreans. What the shunning will actually involve and whether the negotiations will get under way again is not yet clear.
The problem for the Japanese is that Pyongyang is technically in the right in this dispute. Japan signed the deal promising to deliver energy aid to North Korea and there was nothing in it about kidnapped Japanese. Negotiations about these unfortunates have always been separate and a key moment came in 2002 when Kim Jong-il admitted 13 kidnappings had taken place and apologized. Five Japanese were allowed to return home and after much argument, their Korean families were also permitted to join them in Japan. Pyongyang insists the other eight are dead but Tokyo is demanding proof and also suspects other Japanese may have been grabbed by North Korean agents.
By withholding the energy supplies, to which they are committed by the six-nation talks, the Japanese have made the linkage with the kidnapping issue. They have, therefore, not only assumed a tactically weak position but they have endangered the whole negotiating process, already notable for its tortuousness. Japan’s move also comes a month after a placatory Washington agreed to remove North Korea from its list of terror states. Pyongyang is arguing adroitly that the Japanese are seeking to sabotage the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament as an excuse to boost its own military power. While this may at first glance seem absurd, it is only 63 years since Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea was ended with its defeat in Word War II.
Japan’s fellow negotiators in Beijing may well ask themselves why Tokyo has chosen to make an issue out of the fate of some eight of its citizens at a time when the future safety of millions is being negotiated. Japan should surely honor its aid commitment to Pyongyang immediately.
