Just Like 2002, Only Five Years Later

Published: September 5, 2007, 6:58 am

Both Pyongyang and Tokyo call it “progress”, but both have done this before. When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met North Korea’s Kim Jong-il in September, 2002, Kim gambled by confessing to the abduction by “rogue Special Forces elements” of Japanese nationals in the 1970’s and 1980s, hoping for Japanese aid and diplomatic normalization. Instead, Kim provoked a nationalist backlash in Japan that has yet to recede. Eerily, though, in the Reuters report, it seems time is moving forward again: Japan insists it cannot normalize relations without resolving the abduction issue and has urged the United States not to strike North Korea from the list or lift the associated sanctions until the abductees are accounted for. If Tom Casey, deputy spokesperson at the US State Department is any guide, Tokyo and the Japanese families of the abductees have a while to wait for that diplomatic development. del.icio.us Tags: north korea, dprk, pyongyang,

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