Abductees cast a shadow over Japan’s future

By David Pilling

Published: December 12 2007 18:48 | Last updated: December 13 2007 03:38

When Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, was in Washington earlier this year, he made a point of being chilly to Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state sometimes referred to as Kim Jong Hill by disapproving Japanese. The snub resulted from Mr Hill’s negotiation of what Mr Abe and fellow nationalists considered a soft deal on North Korean nuclear disarmament and his sidelining of Tokyo’s concerns about Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang three decades ago.

Yasuo Fukuda, Mr Abe’s replacement, has taken a more pragmatic stance since taking office in September. On a trip to Washington last month, he was all smiles in a meeting with Mr Hill, if anything treating him with more warmth than he did President George W. Bush. Mr Fukuda places progress on ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons above the emotional, but less strategically vital, issue of a dozen or so “disappeared” citizens.

The new prime minister has softened Japan’s line that no deal can be struck until the abductees are returned or an honest account is given of their deaths. Notably, his administration has backed away from Mr Abe’s insistence that Pyongyang must not be taken off Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism before the terrorist act of snatching Japanese citizens is properly resolved.

Kaoru Yosano, chief cabinet secretary in the dying days of Mr Abe’s ill-fated administration, told the FT recently: “Taking North Korea off the list of terrorist countries is something that will happen in the course of US-North Korean negotiations. If it is necessary to the US for the purpose of successful negotiations, why should we deny it?” A few months ago, that remark might have cost him his job.

Many commentators, including this one, welcome the change in tone. However terrible the tragedy of Japanese abductees, many of whom were bundled out of Japan as teenagers and never heard from again, their families’ anguish cannot be treated on a par with the possibility that a hostile neighbour has nuclear warheads pointing at Japan’s 125m still-accounted-for citizens. Mr Abe’s intransigence had taken Japan down a diplomatic cul-de-sac, threatening to leave it isolated from its four supposed allies in six-party talks with North Korea – the US, China, South Korea and Russia.

Yet there is another side to the story. Those Japanese who will not let go of the hostage issue are not being irrational. First a few facts. In the 1970s and 1980s at least 16, and possibly many more, Japanese citizens were snatched from Japan and taken to North Korea for the bizarre reason of teaching Pyongyang’s spies to speak Japanese. Haven’t the North Koreans ever heard of Berlitz?

Megumi Yokota, who has become symbolic of Japan’s suffering and humiliation, was snatched in 1977, when she was just 13, on her way from badminton practice in the seaside town of Niigata. Her ageing parents have become national celebrities for their dogged refusal to accept their daughter is dead and their demands that Japan should take a tougher line on the country that stole her away. Mr Abe duly cancelled food aid and imposed strict sanctions.

Pyongyang did return five abductees in 2002. But it insists the others, including Megumi, are dead. It even gave bizarre explanations for their supposed demise, including drowning, car accidents, gas poisoning and suicide. Conveniently, most of the graves were said to have been washed away by floods. Pyongyang did send what it claimed were Megumi’s remains, but Japanese scientists concluded they were fake.

This all makes for a charged emotional issue that cuts Japan to the quick for two main reasons. First, it has become a symbol of national impotence. Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalist governor of Tokyo, once told me that a nation that did not stand up for its own citizens was not a nation at all. Under its pacifist constitution, drafted by Americans, Japan is forbidden from taking any military action save in self-defence. This, in Ishihara’s view, emasculates it as a nation, leaving its citizens vulnerable to the sadism of any tinpot dictatorship.

Japan’s shame at its impotence is made worse by decades of investigative incompetence and official denial that the abductees ever existed. In the interests of smooth relations with Pyongyang, the foreign ministry for years suppressed evidence of kidnappings, occasionally pointing out that many Americans thought they had been abducted by aliens.

Second, Washington’s “betrayal” of Tokyo by reaching a less-than watertight deal on nuclear disarmament and pushing the abductee issue to one side strikes some Japanese as an intimation of the future. The US has its hands full in the Middle East and North Korea is a long way away. Besides, it is in the backyard of Asia’s soon-to-be dominant power, China. If Beijing can live with a semi-nuclear North Korea, then so can Washington.

That is not how it is supposed to work. Japan was stripped of its armed forces 60 years ago. But in return, it received the support of the mighty US with whose interests its own were meant to be entirely aligned. To those fuming over the hostage issue, that no longer appears to hold true. The US is not absolutely engaged. One version of the future is this: a vulnerable Japan alone in a region where it is not exactly popular. Betrayal over the hostages could plausibly foreshadow bigger betrayals to come.

david.pilling@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT.com / Columnists / David Pilling - Abductees cast a shadow over Japan’s future

北テロ国家指定解除…政府に警告 米議会調査局

　【ワシントン＝古森義久】米国議会調査局は１２日、「北朝鮮＝テロリズム・リストからの解除？」と題する報告書を発表し、米国政府が国際テロ組織と認定するレバノンの「ヒズボラ」とスリランカの「タミル・イーラム解放のトラ」（ＬＴＴＥ）に北朝鮮が最近、ミサイルなどの武器を供与したという情報を強調し、米政府が北朝鮮のテロ支援国家指定を解除することは同指定の信頼性や対日関係を傷つけるとの見解を明らかにした。
　米国議会上下両院の議員の法案審議資料として作成された同報告書は、テロ支援国家指定の解除には北朝鮮による日本人拉致事件の解決あるいは進展が前提条件の一つとなってきた経緯を詳述する一方、今年になって米国務省が北朝鮮の「核無能力化」と引き換えに、日本人拉致事件をも切り離して指定を解除する姿勢をとり始めたことを指摘し、もし解除となる場合、「日本政府がすでに反発しており、日米関係を傷つける」との見解を示した。
　同報告書はさらに最近の重要な情報として、（１）北朝鮮はイランを仲介としてヒズボラに武器を供与して要員を訓練し、特に２０００年以降、レバノンに専門家を送って、ヒズボラ要員を地下軍事施設の開発で指導してきた結果、昨年のイスラエルとヒズボラの軍事衝突でヒズボラの戦闘能力を高めた（２）北朝鮮のミサイル類がイランで組み立てられシリア経由でレバノンのヒズボラに供され、昨年のイスラエルとの戦闘で使用された（３）北朝鮮は昨年から今年にかけＬＴＴＥに機関銃、対戦車ロケット砲などを数回にわたり密輸出した－と述べ、こうした情報を無視する形での北朝鮮のテロ支援国家指定解除は、そもそもの指定措置の信頼性を奪うと警告した。

北テロ国家指定解除…政府に警告　米議会調査局（産経新聞） - Yahoo!ニュース

救う会埼玉 日本独自で「テロ国家指定」を求める要望書提出

　北朝鮮に拉致された日本人を救出する埼玉の会（鈴木松蔵代表）は１３日、上田清司知事などに対し、日本が独自に北朝鮮を「テロ国家指定」できる法整備をするよう、国などへの働きかけを求める要望書を提出した。同会によると、同様の要望は全国の救う会でも例がないという。

救う会埼玉　日本独自で「テロ国家指定」を求める要望書提出（産経新聞） - Yahoo!ニュース