North Korea-Japan ties: Hesitant overtures

In response to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s statement last year that he is willing to meet North Korean – Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK} – leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang responded last month, and stated that Japan has to change its overall attitude towards North Korea if such a meeting were to take place.

North Korea’s Central News Agency reported government spokesperson Kim Yo Jong saying: “Kishida…conveyed his intention to personally meet the President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as soon as possible.” Kim Yo Jong, considered one of the important spokespersons of the North Korean government has, however, made it clear that Japan will have to give up its “obsession” with the issue of North Korean kidnappings of the 1970s and 1980s because there is no “further settlement” to be made on the issue. In the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea had kidnapped 13 Japanese to train North Korean spies in Japanese language and manners. In 2002 North Korea had admitted to the kidnappings. Then, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi had visited Pyongyang and met Kim Jong Un’s father Kim Jong II and five of the kidnapped Japanese were returned. Japan had offered economic assistance. But the diplomatic thaw did not last because the Japanese suspected that the North Koreans were not coming clean on the issue of kidnappings.

Kishida said on Monday that he did not see the North Korean Central News Agency report, but reiterated the intention of improving ties with North Korea. The Japanese prime minister said in parliament that “For Japan-North Korea relations, top-level talks are important to resolve such issues as the abduction issue. This is why we have been making various approaches to North Korea at the level directly under my control, as I have said in the past.” But Kim Yo Jong had said in her statement, “If Japan truly wants to improve the bilateral relations and contribute to ensuring regional peace and stability as a close neighbour of the DPRK, it is necessary for it to make a political decision for strategic option conformed to its overall interests.” She has also said that Kishida “should not think that it is possible for him to meet our state leadership when he has wanted and decided.”

Analysts, however, see in the apparently firm stance taken by Kim Yo Jong, considered a key spokesperson of the North Korean government as a way of showing openness to open talks with Japan. According to Hong Min, senior analyst at the Korean Institute for National Unification in Seoul, “It is Pyongyang’s way of testing how serious Japan is in holding the meeting and setting its own summit prerequisites in order to host the meeting.”

It is interesting to note that South Korea and Japan are close allies of the United States in north-east Asia, and they have an ambiguous relationship with North Korea’s communist party-dominated regime. There is also much ambiguity between North Korea and South Korea because some in the south want closer ties with the north, and there are some who hope the two parts will reunite. And both parts of Korea are not on happy terms with Japan because of historical reasons. But North Korea might consider it strategic to establish ties with Japan as a way to outflank South Korea, and Japan too would consider the same reasons for strengthening ties with North Korea. The political tango between Japan and North Korea should be of great interest to global strategic experts where inherent hostilities can still keep the doors open for talks and negotiations. And this is a natural diplomatic gambit for both sides.