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.
A plan by Switzerland’s right-wing People’s Party to cap the population at 10 million has the backing of almost half the country, according to a poll before an expected vote next year. The party, which has long campaigned against immigration, argues that too-fast population growth is overwhelming housing, transport and public services. The level of support comes despite the government urging voters to reject it, warning that strict curbs would damage the economy and prosperity, as Swiss companies depend on foreign workers. The poll by newspaper group Tamedia/20 Minuten and released yesterday showed that 48 percent of the population plan to vote
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
RELAXED: After talks on Ukraine and trade, the French president met with students while his wife visited pandas, after the pair parted ways with their Chinese counterparts French President Emmanuel Macron concluded his fourth state visit to China yesterday in Chengdu, striking a more relaxed note after tough discussions on Ukraine and trade with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a day earlier. Far from the imposing Great Hall of the People in Beijing where the two leaders held talks, Xi and China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan (彭麗媛), showed Macron and his wife Brigitte around the centuries-old Dujiangyan Dam, a World Heritage Site set against the mountainous landscape of Sichuan Province. Macron was told through an interpreter about the ancient irrigation system, which dates back to the third century
RSS