North Korea, Japan sustain stand-off

HONG KONG: Japanese and North Korean diplomats on Wednesday concluded their two-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur without achieving any significant progress in their first effort in two years to negotiate the normalisation of diplomatic relations between their two countries.
Korea was partitioned by the US and the Soviet Union in 1945 when it ceased to be a Japanese colony. While Japan normalised ties with South Korea in the mid-1960s after a protracted negotiation, Japan and North Korea have failed to establish ties after a decade of off-and-on talks.
Predictably, as indicated on Tuesday, there was absolutely no budge by the North Koreans on the key issue of their nuclear weapons programme which they revealed to US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly in Pyongyang on October 4th.
But it was somewhat surprising that the other major issue between the two countries — that of North Korea''s past abduction of 13 Japanese citizens — also saw no progress.
The five abductees who are still living — the other eight having died in mysterious circumstances in North Korea — are currently in Japan for the first time since their abduction. They were not allowed to take along their children, who effectively became hostages.
This issue has created an emotional furor in Japan to such an extent that the Japanese Government has approved the continued stay of the five, even though the original agreement with Pyongyang was that they should return after two weeks.
Now the Japanese are insisting that the children must be allowed to leave North Korea too, and join their parents, while the North Koreans on Wednesday insisted that the abductees must first return to Pyongyang, as originally agreed. As the Japanese negotiators pointed out, North Korea is, in effect, insisting that the crime of abduction continues.
North Korean intransigence on this issue is surprising because it further exacerbates Japanese public opinion and makes it that much more unlikely that Japan will consider giving aid to Pyongyang any time soon.
The North Koreans evidently made two demands during Wednesday''s negotiations. First, they insisted that Japanese aid, in lieu of compensation for the colonial period, must be the first issue on the negotiating agenda. Secondly, that normalisation of relations must be achieved before there can be progress on the nuclear and abduction issues.
The two sides are thus diametrically far apart and there were only two slight signs of progress. On the one hand, both agreed to begin senior official-level security talks late in November, and that these panels would include nuclear and missile development issues on their agenda. While this security panel will be at a lower level than Wednesday''s ambassador-level negotiations, this will be a forum through which the Japanese will be able to go on raising their nuclear concerns.
On the other hand, the two sides agreed to continue to work towards normalisation of bilateral ties without actually agreeing to a new negotiating date. The North Koreans suggested the end of November but the Japanese declined to immediately agree.