The new conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is making a push to try and resolve the decades-long dispute with North Korea over the fate of a dozen Japanese it claims were abducted by North Korean operatives in the 1970s and 1980s and may be still alive.
The issue was not pressed very hard by the previous Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government until the last months of its administration, but it has been raised anew by the more conservative Abe government.
Japan has a cabinet-level ministry devoted entirely to the abduction issue. The current state minister, Keiji Furuya, recently said that Tokyo would not lift bilateral sanctions against North Korea or resume aid until the issue was resolved, even if the North should agree to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Furuya was in the U.S. a few weeks ago trying to raise awareness of the matter among Americans through symposiums held in Washington and New York. He took with him several relatives of those kidnapped by the North to tell their personal stories.
It may be a good time to be raising the issue, Tokyo thinks, as public attention in the U.S. and elsewhere has been drawn to North Korea as a result of its earlier nuclear bomb test and extreme bellicose threats to launch missiles at everyone. Moreover, the North recently condemned an American citizen of Korean extraction to fifteen years in prison.
The issue involves the fate of more than a dozen Japanese who were snatched by North Korean agents and spirited away to the North, ostensibly to train more agents in Japanese language and manners for future espionage. Most of these disappearances took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it wasn't until North Korean defectors began appearing in the late 1990s that Tokyo became aware of their true fate.
In 2002 former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi flew to Pyongyang for a summit meeting with Kim Jong-il. At that meeting Kim admitted that North Korea had kidnapped Japanese and apologized for it; Leader Kim said that 12 people were kidnapped. Of these, five were returned to Japan; the other eight died. Case closed.
Tokyo disputes this. It claims 17 people were kidnapped (including five that Pyongyang says never entered the country), 5 were returned and 12 remain unaccounted for. It is skeptical of Pyongyang's assertions that they died in mysterious "traffic accidents" or committed suicide.
The families of the abductees have become celebrities. The parents of Megumi Yokota, who was snatched in 1977 when she was only 13, appear on television, at press conferences and are interviewed for their opinions on politics, nuclear weapons and North Korea (the latter not complimentary). Many conservative politicians, including Abe himself, wear the little blue ribbon in their lapel to show solidarity, much as Americans used to wear bracelets with POW names.
It was Abe who created the cabinet post for the abduction issue during his first term as prime minister from 2006 to 2007. The post languished after him. His successor Yasuo Fukuda showed little interest in the matter, as did the first two DPJ premiers. During the DPJ government, seven individuals held the abductee portfolio or were given it as part of other duties.
