Page 2 of 2 Close encounters with North Korea
By John Feffer
their human captives? Also, too, there were a range of different explanations
for the phenomenon, from the literal to the psychological to the mythic. In a
way, UFOlogy resembled Kremlinology: labored interpretations and heated
disagreements based on scant evidence acquired at considerable remove.
By contrast, after Koizumi's visits and the publication of the narrative of
Charles Robert Jenkins, the truth of North Korean abductions would appear to
have been firmly established. But as many mysteries remain as have been
resolved. North Korea is still a black box, at least in terms of the actions
and motivations of the leadership. Was the abduction campaign simply part of an
effort to train North Korean operatives to better impersonate Japanese
citizens? Why did Kim Jong-il make his revelation in
2002? How much will Pyongyang compromise on this issue in order to win the
ultimate prize of diplomatic recognition and a financial package in
compensation for Japanese colonial rule that could be worth as much as $10
billion to the impoverished nation.
Some basic facts also remain unclear, for instance the number of abductees.
North Korea is rumored to have informed the United States of several Japanese
abductees it has hitherto denied, and expressed willingness to send them home.
But there remains a gap between the 15 or so that North Korea might admit to,
the 36 on the "strongly suspect" list of the Japanese government, and the much
larger list of the abductee organizations.
Controversies continue to rage over the documentation that North Korea provided
- death certificates, traffic accident reports - as well as over the purported
remains of Megumi Yokota. The Japanese authorities have asserted that the bones
delivered by the North Koreans are not those of the young woman, but other
independent assessments, notably a report in the journal Nature, suggest that
the Japanese scientific assessment methods are flawed. Meanwhile, Jenkins
provides tantalizing glimpses of abductees from other countries - a Thai woman,
a Romanian woman, people from Hong Kong that he is sure were "snatched".
The greatest divergence in the abduction story is not so much in the
particulars but in their reception. The abductions have become as great a
public obsession in Japan as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was in the United
States, but with much greater impact on the conduct of Japanese foreign policy.
The abduction issue became so prominent that it eclipsed Japan's traditional
realist Orientation, which focused on North Korea's military threat and the
economic benefits of trade and aid to the country.
And yet, outside of Japan, the abductions have not achieved anywhere as much
attention. South Korea, which lists a far greater number of its citizens
abducted by the North, has tiptoed around the issue, though associations of
victim families are trying to emulate their Japanese counterparts in forcing a
shift in the new Lee Myung-bak government.
Meanwhile, in the United States, conservatives are aghast that the George W
Bush administration - and presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama - failed
to link the removal of North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list to
the case of Kim Dong-sik. The North Korean government allegedly abducted Kim in
2000. The case remains so far below the media and political radar in the United
States to be almost non-existent (the same can be said of the alleged abduction
of another American citizen, actress Susan Richardson, which the media really
does treat like an UFO abduction story).
Having been rescued by the Japanese, Jenkins is appalled by this discrepancy:
"Why is Japan the only country that is - rightfully - making the return of
abducted citizens or citizens who are being held against their will in North
Korea a large part of their diplomatic dealings with that country? It is a
tragedy, in my opinion, that more countries don't investigate further or take
the stand that Japan has, because this should not just be Japan's issue to
fight alone."
Most painful of all for the Japanese government has been the US's indifference
to the abduction issue in the late June decision to remove North Korea from the
State Sponsors of Terrorism list as part of the six-party talks. US negotiators
in these talks pledged their support for Japan's position even as they refused
to allow the issue to block resolution of the nuclear issue. South Korea has
focused on economic cooperation with North Korea. The United States and Russia
are focused on denuclearization. Only Tokyo has made its relationship with
Pyongyang contingent on a resolution of the abduction issue.
Representatives of the abductee families blasted the Yasuo Fukuda government
for its failure to persuade the US to link the abduction issue to the removal
of North Korea from the terrorism list; opposition leader Ozawa Ichiro echoed
their sentiments but laid the blame directly on Washington.
Transformation of Japanese foreign policy
The biggest mystery, however, is how the abduction issue will figure in the
transformation of Japanese foreign policy. Like their US neo-conservative
counterparts, Japanese neo-nationalists have long been angling to shift the
country's international orientation. The abduction issue is their September 11.
It has been an opportunity to assert victimhood, to dust off plans to drive up
defense spending, and embark on a new brand of militarism that (at least for
the time being) functions within the US-Japanese alliance. Koizumi, for all his
post-modern flourishes, was committed to this project, his successor Abe even
more so.
The abduction has not only frozen Japanese-North Korean relations. It has
frozen the very image of North Korea for Japan. The country that abducted
Japanese citizens and those of other countries was a great deal more powerful
than it is today, its marginal nuclear capacity notwithstanding. North Korea in
the 1970s was still competing head-to-head against South Korea. It took a shot
at the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement. It sent military trainers,
development money, and propaganda to various Third World countries. Its
abductions were not so much acts of desperation as part of an asymmetrical
campaign to best South Korea and establish a leading role in international
affairs. That North Korea was indeed a mysterious and powerful force that sent
emissaries to Japan to extract its citizens for its own purposes.
But that North Korea no longer exists. Jenkins, in his occasional asides, tells
the story of this decline. "The troops are starving along with the rest of the
people," he writes of the difficult period of the 1990s. "The enlisted men are
little more than kids in rags, and the officers are totally corrupt. And no one
knows the first thing about military subjects anymore." In short, North Korea
in recent decades has become but a shadow of its former threat.
For the purposes of pushing the re-militarization of Japanese foreign policy,
the actual truth of North Korea's military capacity or the intentions of its
leadership are largely irrelevant. North Korea is a ladder that can be kicked
away once the objective of a "normal" Japanese military is reached. The
abduction narrative played a critical role in this process. It made it easier
for the Japanese to forget the stigma of Japan's much larger campaign of
abducting Koreans during World War II - the thousands and thousands of "comfort
women" and those forced to serve in the military and those forced to labor in
factories. It asserted a powerful threat at a time when a full-scale
demonization of Beijing was problematic in the context of growing
Japanese-Chinese economic cooperation.
Even the gaps in the abduction narrative were helpful for, like a good mystery
novel, the audience in Japan hung on to each new installment to learn the
answers to the remaining riddles.
The trajectory of Japan's foreign policy seems clear, even though there has not
yet been a change in constitution, a dramatic increase in military spending, or
a ratcheting up of rhetoric. Quietly, Japan has acquired new offensive
capabilities, participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars with the dispatch
of ground and maritime self-defense forces, and prepared the foundation for a
rejection of the pacifist past.
Perhaps that is why current premier Fukuda feels more comfortable showing
flexibility on the abduction issue than his predecessors, Koizumi and Abe.
Fukuda has resumed bilateral negotiations with North Korea, and extracted a
surprise promise from Pyongyang to reinvestigate what it had previously
declared was a closed issue. In return, Japan has promised to partially lift
sanctions if this new inquiry makes progress. This might also open the way for
Japan to provide food aid during what is shaping up to be a second major
agricultural crisis for North Korea.
If the two countries do finally establish diplomatic relations, and the
abduction saga is laid to rest, North Korea will no longer be an alien force
for the Japanese. But Pyongyang will have helped to create, with its
abductions, exactly the opposite of what it wanted: a Japan unshackled from its
recent pacifist past and armed to the teeth.
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign
Policy In Focusat the Institute for Policy Studies, author of numerous
works on food policy and on the two Koreas, and a Japan Focus associate. He
wrote this article forJapan Focus.
Used by permission.
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