Twenty Years of Stalled Progress on the North Korean Abductee Issue

Intermittent Dialogue, Few Concrete Results

The 2002 Pyongyang Declaration following the summit between the leaders of Japan and North Korea was groundbreaking. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō and Korean Workers’ Party General Secretary Kim Jong-il agreed to pursue diplomatic normalization between Tokyo and Pyongyang, as well as to take steps to resolve the nuclear and missile testing issues. At the second summit in 2004, North Korea also agreed to resume investigations into the whereabouts of Japanese abductees, while Japan reaffirmed its commitment to normalizing relations following satisfactory resolution of these collective issues.

However, negotiations would soon stall. While Pyongyang assented to the return of some abductees, it claimed others, including Yokota Megumi, had died while in North Korea. From Pyongyang’s point of view, the issue was now resolved. Tokyo, however, refused to accept North Korea’s claim that Yokota and other abductees had died. This is because the DNA detected in the remains of Yokota Megumi passed on to Japan by the North Korean authorities did not match her genetic material available in Japan.

Following the 2014 Stockholm agreement, the two sides reopened the issue as North Korea agreed to conduct a full investigation into the whereabouts of Japanese nationals, including abductees and their spouses. Japan in return agreed to lift some of its own unilateral sanctions. In 2016, however, Tokyo would reimpose sanctions and strengthen them in response to North Korea’s ballistic missile launches and nuclear testing. North Korea, in turn, unilaterally suspended its investigation into the whereabouts of suspected abductees.

Some 20 years after the second summit and 10 years after the Stockholm agreement, Pyongyang is once again showing signs of openness towards dialogue with Tokyo. For example, earlier this year North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent a surprising message to Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio expressing his sympathy for the damage done by the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year’s Day. In February, Kim Yo Jong, Deputy Director of the Publicity and Information Department and Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, released a statement through North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency that raised the possibility of “the day of the prime minister’s Pyongyang visit might come” if Japan did not make the abductee issue a “stumbling block.”

This statement was released in response to Prime Minister Kishida repeated public announcements dating back to May 2023 that he was open to holding a leaders’ summit with Kim Jong-un. However, in March 2024 the younger Kim and others in North Korea issued a series of statements in which they criticized Japan’s continued insistence that it could not accept North Korea’s claim that the abductions had been resolved. As such, Kim said that her country had no interest in summit talks with Japan at this point.

Since the return of five abductees following the second summit in 2004, there has been an intermittent series of official and secret talks between Japan and North Korea. Unfortunately, this has not resulted in any major developments or change in the relationship.

New Revelations and Facts

New facts and information surrounding the abduction issue have, nevertheless, come to light over the last two years.

The first is that following the Stockholm meetings, North Korea offered information on the survival of Tanaka Minoru, an abductee from Kobe, and Kaneda Tatsumitsu, an acquaintance of Tanaka who is also likely to have been abducted. The Japanese government, however, refused to receive the report from North Korea. Saiki Akitaka, former administrative vice minister for foreign affairs, later admitted to the Asahi Shimbun that the government refused to officially receive the report due to it not containing any new details.

A second revelation made by Kyōdō News was that North Korea proposed that these two abductees be temporarily returned to Japan. This was also rejected by the Abe Shinzō administration, which feared that Pyongyang would use this as a pretext to cut off further discussion about other abductees.

A third piece of information comes from the interviews conducted by the Japanese government in 2004 of the abductees who returned to Japan. According to Arita Yoshifu, a prominent journalist and former member of the House of Councillors who was privy to this information, other abductees who had lived in the same facility as Yokota Megumi testified that Megumi suffered from a severe mental disorder. Furthermore, according to these testimonies, North Korean authorities were purportedly searching for Megumi’s remains in 2002 as the first summit meeting took place.

Fourth, NTV’s Fukuzawa Mayumi, a veteran reporter on the abduction issue, revealed in a 2024 book on the abductee issue that a government official confirmed that the urn purporting to contain Megumi’s remains provided by North Korea to Japan contained one of Megumi’s teeth.

The editor of this volume, Wada Haruki (professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo), argued in the book that Japanese government policy should become more flexible. Emphasis should be placed on securing the return of victims who are found to be alive. For those victims who have been notified as dead, a convincing explanation of the circumstances of their death should be sought, but Tokyo should still consider establishing official diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. In particular, Tokyo should be open to negotiations on economic cooperation to facilitate the resolution of outstanding issues on abductions, nuclear and missile testing programs, and compensation for Japan’s colonial rule.

Declining Public Interest in Japan

A major concern shared by the former abductees and families of those still missing is the waning of public interest. Hasuike Kaoru, an abductee who returned to Japan with his wife in 2002, recently published a series of articles in a monthly magazine which exhorted Japan to push back against the “fading” of public and government interest in pursuing the abductee issue. Haisuke argues that North Korea excluded some abductees from its list of survivors because it fears “the possibility of bringing into focus past terrorist incidents that the North Korean authorities have never acknowledged their responsibility for.” This could include the fate of Taguchi Yaeko, who taught Japanese to Kim Hyon-hui, who later bombed Korean Air Flight 858, killing all 115 people on board. Haisuke flatly rejects North Korea’s claim that of the remaining abductees, eight have died and two have not yet entered the country. He also criticizes arguments that pursuing the normalization of diplomatic relations with Pyongyang will not detrimentally affect the resolution of the abductee issue.

North Korea’s Lack of Urgency

North Korea, for its part, is in no hurry to enter back into negotiations with Japan. It neither faces the severe economic hardship of the late 1990s, nor necessarily seeks Japan’s economic cooperation as it did in 2002. North Korea’s increased economic dependence on a more affluent China has in turn reduced Pyongyang’s need to reach out to Tokyo.

Furthermore, the possible reelection of Donald Trump to the presidency in November this year likely has Kim Jong-un looking forward to a repeat of his summits with Trump in Singapore and Hanoi. Unlike in 2002, when Tokyo could serve as an intermediary between North Korea and the United States at a time when US President George Bush had labelled North Korea a member of the “Axis of Evil,” Japan is not viewed as relevant for facilitating improved US-North Korea relations today.

Even if there is no immediate improvement in North Korea’s relationship with the United States, North Korea has been trying to take diplomatic advantage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by holding a series of summit meetings with Russia, including with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pyongyang is looking to leverage this opportunity for greater military cooperation with Moscow in the future. It is also improving relations with China to some extent. In sum, Pyongyang likely sees Tokyo as a less valuable diplomatic partner and thus does not feel compelled to engage Tokyo to resolve these outstanding issues.

The Value of Emphasizing Mutual Interests

This does not necessarily mean future progress is impossible.

The Japanese government has consistently told North Korea it is open to holding summit meetings. Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has in particular been more open to getting things moving. Since May 2023, Kishida has continuously expressed his desire for a leaders’ summit, “without preconditions,” in constructive terms. For example, he has alluded to the importance of “the establishment of fruitful relations between Japan and North Korea” that would be “in the interest of both Japan and North Korea.” He has also asserted the need to bolder than in the past and communicated his resolve to make his “own decision” on how to make diplomatic progress “for the sake of both Japan and North Korea.” In his October 2023 policy speech, Kishida also referred to the “mutual interests of both Japan and North Korea,” saying that the normalization of diplomatic relations would immediately result in beneficial economic cooperation for both countries.

Since January 2023, Prime Minister Kishida has also taken the stance that the abductions are a “humanitarian issue” rather than a security issue. By doing this, he has tried to elicit a positive response from North Korea while maintaining the main principle of trying to forge a comprehensive solution to the abductions and nuclear and missile testing problems. Pyongyang’s interest in resuming dialogue with Tokyo, even if only temporary, was no doubt due to Japanese encouragement.

The reasons for North Korea’s subsequent and sudden rejection of dialogue with Japan in March 2024 is still unclear. It may not necessarily be permanent, however. Various global developments are being monitored by Pyongyang, including events in the Ukraine and North Korea’s own relationship with Russia, the outcome of the presidential election in the United States, and even Prime Minister Kishida’s own declining approval rate.

Japan should continue to call for talks while promoting the benefits of improved relations with Japan for North Korea. Former Vice Minister Saiki Akitaka also believes that there is a possibility that North Korea “will explore dialogue with Japan in the future” while considering global developments and how it can use them to its benefit. Saiki also notes that “As North Korea is a dictatorship with a small number of people involved in decision-making, it is quick to make decisions and policy changes in response to new developments in world affairs.”

Japan will, nevertheless, need to be prepared before it can sit down and pursue such negotiations. If Japan returns to the Stockholm agreement, the Japanese government will be expected to lift certain sanctions, such as the ban on North Korean vessels entering Japanese ports, in return for North Korea restarting investigations on the abductee issue. It must also be prepared for a domestic backlash against whatever agreements and compromises are made, communicating a strong and persuasive stance.

Resolving Humanitarian and Security Issues Simultaneously

Ultimately, what matters most is the determination and leadership of political leaders, as well as the strong will of the Japanese people. The abduction issue must not fade away; at the same time, though, the threat posed to the entire nation by North Korea’s nuclear and missile development must be eliminated. Compromises on either of these issues will not be easy, and there will be times when painful decisions will have to be made.

It is, however, important to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. Which future diplomatic strategy will work best will need to be determined while keeping a close eye on Pyongyang’s attitudes and its own interests. It may well be the case that normalization of diplomatic relations should only come after the resolution of the abductee and the nuclear and missile testing issues. However, Japan should also keep in mind that normalizing diplomatic relations may well be the best entry point for facilitating these outcomes.

A joint investigation by the Japanese and North Korean governments may also become necessary to address the abduction issue in particular. Despite distrust and anger toward North Korea, the two sides will have to be persistent and determined to ascertain and agree on the core facts of the abduction issue. Resolving this as a humanitarian issue, and securing the return of any survivors, will in the long term help promote a more stable security environment.

(Originally published in Japanese on July 18, 2024. Banner photo: Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō, at right, and Korean Workers’ Party General Secretary Kim Jong-il shake hands after the Japan-North Korea summit meeting on the outskirts of Pyongyang, North Korea, May 2004. © Jiji.)