Normalizing relations between North Korea and Japan

The Korea Herald, Asia News Network, Seoul

When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went to Pyongyang on Saturday for a one-day working visit, his stated mission was to bring home family members of the returned Japanese abductees. That mission was accomplished when five of the eight family members came to Japan.

The American husband of a Japanese abductee, a U.S. AWOL, reportedly decided to remain in North Korea, together with his two children, for fear of being extradited to the United States for a court-martial. There was no easy solution to his tragic case, whose origin was rooted in Japan's colonial occupation of Korea and the U.S. intervention in the Korean War. Still, Koizumi demonstrated compassion for the former U.S. serviceman and his children when he promised to arrange a safe family reunion in a third country.

The Japanese prime minister also garnered a promise from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to reinvestigate the kidnapping of 10 other Japanese, eight of whom Pyongyang earlier said had died. But it claimed the two others had never set foot in North Korea.

Some Japanese critics, who questioned if it was necessary for Koizumi to go to Pyongyang in the first place, suspected he made the visit to save himself and some of his cabinet members from the pension premium scandal. Others claimed that by making the trip, he wanted to boost his party's chances of winning the House of Councilors elections, scheduled for July.

Whatever motivations he might have had for the trip, Koizumi helped improve the outlook for securing peace in Northeast Asia. One immediate effect of his summit talks with Kim was North Korea's reassurance that a moratorium on missile test launches would remain intact.

But the major concern of the two leaders was to restart the process of normalizing relations between Japan and North Korea which was halted in late 2002 when the abductees making a temporary visit to Japan refused to return to North Korea.

By normalizing ties, Japan undoubtedly wishes to free itself from the disgraceful legacy of its past imperialism, which "caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of Korea through its colonial rule," as the Pyongyang declaration, signed by Koizumi and Kim in September 2002, read in part.

On the other hand, North Korea is in dire need to rebuild its moribund economy with Japanese assistance, including grants and long-term loans with low interest rates, as South Korea did after establishing formal relations with Japan in 1965. But the road to normalization is bumpier for Tokyo and Pyongyang than it was for Tokyo and Seoul.

The communist North may not face strong domestic opposition to normalization, as South Korea did. But its talks with Japan may be derailed anytime if no progress is made in the U.S.-led international efforts to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang will have to realize that the normalization process and the six-way talks on the North Korean nuclear project are closely related, regardless whether it likes it or not.

Japan, a participant in the six-way talks, is advised to speed up the normalization process and thus make the prospect of economic aid more appealing to North Korea. By doing so, it will help prod North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions and opt for promoting economic advancement with Japanese help.