“Whatever it takes”? Securing the return of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea
“Whatever it takes”? Securing the return of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea
WRITTEN BY DR JAMES KAIZUKA
27 February 2024
Kim Jong-un’s statement of condolence for the 1 January 2024 Noto Earthquake in Japan has been widely interpreted as an overture signalling a desire to return to active diplomacy. While North Korea’s motivations remain undisclosed, South Korea’s President Yoon has taken a considerably harder line on Pyongyang than his predecessor, and the food security situation remains as precarious as ever, possibly forcing North Korea (DPRK) to seek alternatives.
From the Japanese side, the abductions issue remains the largest obstacle to any further diplomatic engagement with North Korea. Prime Minister Kishida, following numerous attempts by his predecessors, has been seeking a bilateral summit for some time. This is perhaps in the hope that a top-level summit will allow for the kind of momentous progress made at the historic 2002 Pyongyang Summit when then Prime Minister Koizumi negotiated personally with then-leader Kim Jong-il for the release of five Japanese abductees. If this is indeed an opportunity for a summit to take place, it will raise high hopes among the Japanese public for more of the remaining abductees to be freed. Unfortunately, with the abductions issue unsolved, the cost of rapprochement will be high for Japan, both fiscally and politically.
A traumatic history
Those familiar with the region will know the strength of feeling and the criticality of the abductions issue in Japan. North Korea kidnapped potentially dozens of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s for use in spy training programmes. The victims, who were all civilians, ranged from couples out on dates to exchange students kidnapped from as far away as Europe. Some were made to work in translation jobs, and among the female victims, some were married to either North Korean officials or other foreign residents of North Korea. The best-known case within Japan is that of Yokota Megumi, a 13-year-old middle school student who was kidnapped while walking home. After years of denial, Kim Jong-il officially admitted the abductions had taken place at the 2002 Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Summit, blaming what he called “overzealous” members of North Korea’s special forces. The admission allegedly followed from the belief that doing so would permanently resolve the issue, which had been a priority for Japanese negotiators.
“Whatever it takes” ultimately means squaring the circle of North Korea’s likely demands with what the Japanese public is willing to accept as an offering to a dictatorship which may well use any inducement against it in the future.
However, this turned out to be a severe miscalculation. The tragic cases and sympathetic nature of the victims, particularly Yokota Megumi, and ongoing efforts by politicians and advocacy groups mean that this issue still presents arguably the largest barrier to movement on other ongoing issues. It has been further amplified by highly personal coverage of each victim in the Japanese press. Indeed, while growing North Korean belligerence through missile testing and nuclear development presents a more imminent security threat, public sentiment over the abductions issue remains powerful.
Japan-North Korea relations have long been sour, and Japan’s efforts to bring the remaining 12 recognised abductees home have been unsuccessful. The return of five abductees in 2002 (and their families in 2004), while significant, was also tragic in that it was incomplete. Japanese politicians frequently repeat the refrain of doing “whatever it takes” to save those remaining, but the extent of this commitment remains untested, and what is arguably the world’s longest-running hostage crisis has no end in sight.
Ensuring the complete and verifiable return of the abductees
If a summit is realised, questions will be raised over both what North Korea will demand and what Japan will be willing to pay. Previous engagements and agreements between Japan and North Korea have failed to achieve results. The 2014 Stockholm Agreement, in which North Korea promised to “reinvestigate” the abductions issue in exchange for partial sanctions relief, fizzled out after just two years without results. Likewise, the return of the alleged remains of Yokota Megumi in 2004 led to enormous public outcry after testing found the DNA of multiple people.
Perhaps most revealing of the issues in trying to resolve the abductions issue are the results of an attempt by North Korea to return two abductees in 2014-15 in exchange for sanctions relief. Despite his long advocacy for the abductees, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declined this offer. For the Japanese government, returning the two victims would have brought temporary euphoria in Japan, but the deal may have condemned any other victims remaining in North Korea to their fates by closing the book on the issue prematurely.
The situation has become more urgent as the remaining victims and their relatives age, with some having already passed away, and Pyongyang is aware of this. In the most recent survey by the Japanese Cabinet Office, around three-quarters of the Japanese public believed the abductions issue to be important, ranking higher than nuclear development, human rights issues, and normalisation negotiations. Even the missile issue barely ranks higher. North Korea has proven that it is willing to abuse its victims to extract as many concessions as possible. After all, if it can “find” two additional victims after years of insisting that the issue was resolved, how many more also continue to suffer? From the Japanese perspective, there was simply no trust nor satisfactory evidence that North Korea had “only” two victims remaining.
If a summit is realised, North Korea will likely exploit the issue to the greatest degree possible to gain concessions from Tokyo. However, since Pyongyang is unreliable and cannot be negotiated with in good faith, Japanese diplomats are likely to pursue stringent conditions to ensure the permanence of any agreement on the abductions issue. They will seek not only the return of the remaining abductees, but also insist that this return is complete, verifiable, and irreversible by including any families of the abductees in North Korea, lest the victims feel compelled to return under threat. Indeed, this factor affected Abe’s decision in 2014, and North Korea has a history of making implicit threats to the family members of freed abductees. Following the 2002 Summit, many victims expressed hesitance at staying in Japan while their family members remained in North Korea, and the Koizumi administration negotiated for two years to secure their release.
What North Korea might demand in exchange
Unfortunately, this is likely to be extremely difficult to achieve in practice. Abe himself once said that a summit would have been pointless if it only produced talk with no results, but ironically this is also precisely how Pyongyang has perceived the prior summit offers by Japan. As aptly put by Tanaka Hitoshi, Japan’s lead diplomat for the 2002 Summit, there is little point in summitry with North Korea without a comprehensive plan. That plan must answer the question of what “whatever it takes” really means if Tokyo is to successfully induce Pyongyang into resolving the abductions issue on its terms.
However, the decades since the 2002 Summit have not been kind to Japan in terms of the geopolitical environment and its relative leverage against Pyongyang. China’s economy has long since surpassed Japan’s and Russia now offers to be another potential economic ally to Pyongyang since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Japan also has few options to expand its punitive leverage; unilaterally imposed sanctions on North Korea are already comprehensive, so all it can do is offer incentives, whether in the form of relieving these sanctions or in humanitarian or other aid.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s options for economic security have expanded dramatically since 2002; it may calculate that Japan is more trouble than it is worth if any incentive offered is too small. North Korea will also be wary of a possible reversal with a change in administration in Japan. It is therefore more likely that it will demand something substantial which cannot be withdrawn later, such as a major finance package. North Korea may also want to pursue the issue of war reparations, previously valued at around USD 5-10 billion; although there is also a desire in Japan to settle its remaining historical obligations, this issue is unlikely to become politically viable in the short term. As with other ransom demands, the kidnapper wants as much as they can get, and they want it immediately.
This is the fundamental dilemma in freeing the abductees — what is politically possible in Japan and what North Korea is likely to accept in exchange for meeting Japan’s conditions are very much at odds. Japan’s basic offer of sanctions relief in exchange for progress on the abductions issue has remained unchanged since 2006, and this is itself a key problem. On occasions when progress appeared to be made, such as in Stockholm with the promised reinvestigation, it evaporated quickly, from both the Japanese and North Korean perspectives. If Japanese policymakers are really willing to do “whatever it takes”, then the first step is to build political support at home for moving beyond approaches that proved ineffective even when Japan had more relative leverage over North Korea.
Japan’s offer to North Korea must be more than just rhetoric
North Korea’s hostages remain unable to return home, and time is running out to secure their rescue. As desperation grows in Japan, so too does the likely ransom demand from Pyongyang. If it materialises, a summit would offer a chance to finally make progress, but Japan will need a meaningful inducement if it is to succeed, and political support will need to be mobilised for this to happen. Unfortunately, potential options are limited. War reparations under the banner of economic cooperation and humanitarian aid have already been floated as solutions, but selling these ideas to the public remains a significant challenge.
“Whatever it takes” ultimately means squaring the circle of North Korea’s likely demands with what the Japanese public is willing to accept as an offering to a dictatorship which may well use any inducement against it in the future. For the Kishida administration, national security and alliance partnerships must also be considered in addition to the safety of the abductees themselves. A summit will be the ultimate test of whether the Japanese government really is capable of resolving this unenviable predicament.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr James Kaizuka is a visiting research fellow at the University of Leeds in the UK, with expertise in Japan-North Korea and Japan-Vietnam relations, East Asian regional security, and developmental security. Image credit: Wikimedia/Prime Minister’s Office of Japan.