TOKYO
- It was 27 years ago to the day that 13-year-old Megumi
Yokota was kidnapped by North Korean agents, her mother
reminded a crowded press conference across the street
from Japan's parliament building on Tuesday. She would
be 40 now, had she lived, and some angry Japanese are
calling for economic sanctions against North Korea,
banning cash and aid.
All indications are that
Megumi is long dead. The question now is whether Japan
will seek to punish North Korea for the crime of
kidnapping at least 15 Japanese that the Japanese
government believes were taken to North Korea several
decades ago, presumably to train Pyongyang agents in
Japanese language, idiom and customs.
The human issue here is so emotive
that it eclipsed the week-long furor over the intrusion
of a Chinese nuclear submarine into Japan's territorial
waters. And it casts doubt on how Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi will respond to North Korea and how he
will handle the next round of talks on defusing
the Korean nuclear crisis. The issue is moot right
now, since North Korea has said all talks are off
until there is a thorough official examination of South
Korea's unauthorized experiments with nuclear materials
years ago.
Japan's retaliation could come
in the form of economic sanctions, such as halting
regular trade and shipping, and even suspending a second
delivery of food that had been pledged as aid to North
Korea, an inducement to release the living hostages,
provide information on the mission and cooperate in the
nuclear talks. Or, the government could simply continue
talks with North Korea after analyzing the documents and
human remains obtained from North Korea by a Japanese
delegation that has recently returned from a week of
talks and investigations into those Japanese believed to
have been abducted, but still unaccounted for.
The latter process of laboratory analysis,
political and strategic analysis might take at least
seven to 10 days, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki
Hosoda told reporters. Just how the public will react to
the findings is hard to judge, but after two years of
frustrating talks the issue still generates high
emotions Japan. The National Police Agency, which is
investigating the kidnappings as domestic crimes, says
it may take much longer than 10 days.
When, in
September 2002, Prime Minister Koizumi went to Pyongyang
for a historic summit meeting, leader Kim Jong-il
admitted to the abduction of 13 Japanese citizens, saying five
were alive and eight were dead. Japan claims (and North
Korea denies) that two other Japanese were kidnapped.
North Korea claims that several of the graves of
deceased Japanese were washed away in floods. Some
Japanese groups claim that many more were abducted.
The families of the eight reported dead and the
two others believed missing have rejected North Korea's
explanation. The five surviving abductees came home in
October 2002 and now live in Japan. One is the wife of
accused deserter Charles Robert Jenkins, who pleaded
guilty to desertion; he was sentenced to 30 days and
given a dishonorable discharge. He expects to live in
Japan with his family.
But back to
little Megumi and the search for more information
about other abductees. Mitoji Yabunaka led the
Japanese delegation to Pyongyang, joined by director general of
the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau;
the North Korean team was led by Ma Chol-su, chief of
the Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department.
The forensic evidence to determine the fate of
Megumi - in the form of cremation ash, provided by her
Korean husband and Korean-born daughter - was carried
back from Pyongyang to confirm the identity through DNA
testing. In Japan, Megumi's mother and father have
become well known as the stubborn leaders of a movement
to pressure the government into action and find out the
truth about other missing Japanese.
Megumi is reported to have
commited suicide in a North Korean hospital in 1993
while being treated for depression. The
family doubts that account, which came out
two years ago. The Japanese delegation talked to the
doctor who treated her, but no details were
uncovered.
At their
press conference, the Yokotas distributed heretofore-unseen pictures of
Megumi, as she grew older in North Korean
captivity. Megumi's final journey home, in a chartered commercial
plane, came just over two years after
Koizumi opened normalization talks with Kim Jong-il.
Hosoda, the Japanese government's chief spokesman, has
already called the latest round of bilateral talks
between the two countries "disappointing".
There was no progress at all in terms of an
outcome, Hosoda said. Other cabinet members joined in
the criticism. Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology Minister Nariaki Nakayama called for
immediate economic sanctions.
"I would
say don't insult us," Nakayama said. "It is time to
show the Japanese are angry at being constantly
insulted. We should consider economic sanctions in stages."
Environment Minister Yuriko Koike also called for
sanctions.
Koizumi wobbled in his
own criticism of North Korea, preferring to wait until
official reports are submitted to his cabinet. " I can
see signs of an effort on the part of the North Koreans,
but there are points in which the contents are not
something that Japan can be satisfied with, " he told
reporters.
Koizumi has learned that dealing with
Kim, the Dear Leader, is not profitable. He has made two
trips so far. North Korea is desperate to normalize
relations with other countries, preferably those that
will provide that country with money and aid. Two years,
one analyst commented, the truth is that meeting the
North Korean leader is not going to be fun.
Kim
remains
an enigmatic leader-for-life of a very poor but well-armed
country that has a nuclear capability. And it is
still at war with the allies that his father, Kim Il-sung,
attacked decades ago. When Koizumi first met
with the current leader, Kim admitted his country had
abducted innocent Japanese men, women and children. He even
apologized. That was a sort of defining moment for Kim.
He was telling the truth, in hopes of gaining
advantages, but it did little to ease the shock for the
families whose children and relatives went missing many
years ago. Instead, it stirred outrage.
Japan
is part of the so-called six-country talks that are
being held to persuade North Korea to give up its
nuclear-weapons program. The other participants are China,
Russia, the United States and South Korea. At the time,
the US, the chief non-Korean combatant in the Korean
War, had already put Pyongyang on its "axis of evil"
list, based on suspicious that North Korea could be
developing nuclear weapons.
The two Koreas do
share the common bad experience of having been made a
part of the Japanese empire early in the 20th century (1912-45). When
Japan and South Korea opened official diplomatic
relations, it came with a hefty financial package to
ease the way. Two years ago in North Korea, Koizumi
offered the same apology for Japan's past behavior that
had been made to the South.
The return of the
ashes of Megumi is part of the legacy that needs to be
brought to a peaceful closure.
Richard
Hanson, veteran correspondent and expert on
Japanese economy, finance and politics, is the author of
Money Lords: The Pride and Folly of Japan's Finance
Ministry Elites.
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