Thu, Sep 18, 2003 page5

• Japan, N Korea face relationship crisis

  NO PROGRESS Despite moves a year ago to end hostilities between the two countries, a recent kidnapping admission by North Korea has sparked renewed mutual distrust

  • AFP
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  One year after North Korea and Japan moved to bring an end to decades of hostility with a historic summit, the goodwill has evaporated and relations are marked by suspicion and hostility.

  North Korea's admission on Sept. 17 last year in Pyongyang that it had kidnapped Japanese citizens during the Cold War era ignited a wave of nationalism in Japan.

  Hostility over the abduction issue has also combined with growing fears here over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, dashing hopes of proceeding with negotiations aimed at normalizing relations.

  "Nothing is more insincere than their [North Korean] attitude," said Toru Hasuike, whose brother Kaoru, 45, was among five Japanese kidnapping victims permitted their first home-coming in 24 years last October after the summit.

  "I thought the summit was a new start ... but I greatly regret there has been no progress since the five returned home," Hasuike told the Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) yesterday.

  During the summit, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il admitted for the first time that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese. Eight of them were said to have died.

  They were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s in order to train the North's spies in Japanese language and culture.

  Five surviving kidnap victims were allowed to visit Japan but later refused to return home. Tokyo now wants eight relatives of the abductees to be allowed to leave North Korea, and it is demanding more information on other suspected kidnapping victims from Japan.

  The two sides are now at an impasse over the issue, with North Korea accusing Tokyo of breaking a promise to send the five abductees back after a fortnight's home-visit.

  "The Japanese public has never felt this much threat from and distrust of a single nation," the influential and liberal Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial.

  "Japan has changed greatly over the past year due to North Korea and nurtured an intolerant, irritated society as if it was countering extreme remarks by North Korea," the newspaper said.

  A week ago, a self-professed rightist made a bomb threat against the Japanese diplomat who was the chief negotiator in talks with North Korea, charging he was too soft on Pyongyang.

  It was the latest in a string of intimidatory incidents aimed at those deemed sympathetic to Pyongyang including ethnic Korean residents.

  Relations between Japan and Korea have been fraught since Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula in 1910 until the superpowers divided it into the capitalist South and communist North in 1945.

  Tokyo has never established diplomatic relations with Pyongyang although talks on the normalization of relations were first held in 1991. Eyeing the US$500 million in aid Japan gave South Korea when it normalized ties in 1965, North Korea has demanded compensation for Japan's rule as a pre-condition.

  Korea Report chief editor Pyon Jin-Il warned North Korean experts should make comments based on cool observation rather than jumping on the bandwagon of attacking North Korea.

  "If this continues, it will lead to a violent opinion like `Let's get this done by war,'" Pyon told the Tokyo Shimbun. "This could make Japan, not North Korea, explode," he said.
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