One element of Donald Trump’s visit to Japan in the realms of his “Asian tour” was a meeting with the relatives of Japanese citizens “abducted” by North Korea.
Following the meeting, some Japanese officials and experts, when asked about the possible normalization of relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo, continued to adhere to “our principled stance” that the DPRK’s denuclearization and the problem of the abducted Japanese citizens should be considered in a “single package”.
We have previously examined the details of the problem; hence, elaborating on them again seems to be of no reason. In September 2002, Pyongyang admitted to having abducted 13 Japanese citizens and allowed five of them to return to their homeland. The rest were declared deceased. However, Pyongyang’s attempt to come clean did not contribute to improved relations with Japan; on the contrary, it evoked a problem that has surfaced with every attempt at inter-Korean settlement.
For example, in 2005, when the parties during the Six-Party Talks were close to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis and signed the so-called Joint Statement, Japan refused to fulfill its obligations under the agreement, citing precisely the “abduction issue,” which, up to the present day, has reliably served as a “torpedo” to sink any projects of bilateral and regional settlement.
On May 29, 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that Pyongyang had promised to start a new investigation into the case of the Japanese abductees, but the parties faced another failure in reaching an agreement.
On September 30, 2020, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato reiterated that Tokyo could not accept Pyongyang’s statements that the issue of the Japanese abductees was already resolved: North Korea’s assertions were unacceptable, and the abduction problem was a top priority for the Japanese government.
In November 2023, at a rally dedicated to the issue of the abductees, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed willingness to meet with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un but got rejected.
On March 27, 2024, North Korea abandoned the plans for a summit meeting between Kim Jong Un and Fumio Kishida due to the stance of Japan stating that during the summit, it would bring up the abduction issue. And although in May of the same year, Fumio Kishida promised to intensify efforts to hold a summit with the DPRK leader, Pyongyang reiterated its “no”.
It is clear that within Japan, this issue is being fuelled not only for propaganda and political purposes. It is difficult for the relatives of the abductees to accept the reality in which their family members will never return home. The unresolved status gives hope and a meaning in life to those who continue to fight for the return of the victims and the punishment of the kidnappers. Especially since the North Korean arguments, which state that all these people died long ago and their graves were washed away during the catastrophic floods of 1995-1996, seem to them a foolish attempt to cover up the traces of the crime. Although, even according to the testimony of Russian diplomats who were in North Korea during the “Arduous March” period, there were indeed many washed-away graves, and the government tried to create new cemeteries and allocate plots for the reburial of bodies that they managed to find.
In terms of the intensity of the claims, the Japanese abduction problem is in some ways comparable to the South Korean “comfort women” issue—in both cases, there is a certain narrative, but when attempting to analyze particular cases, it turns out that there is much more to the story of the abductees than meets the eye.
And in both cases, there is a time factor setting in—the numbers of both the surviving grandmothers and the relatives of the deceased are shrinking, and the issue, if you will, is gradually transitioning from an open humanitarian problem to a memorial or historical one, perceived less and less acutely because the main parties who are most interested in it are gradually leaving this world.
In South Korea, the problem at issue was approached again in a bid to solve it, although previously the Democrats actively used the comfort women issue to play the anti-Japanese card. During his visit to Japan, ROK President Lee Jae-Myung pinpointed that South Korea would abide by the 2015 agreement signed on the matter: “It is very difficult for the people of South Korea to accept this agreement from the previous administration, but this promise was made on behalf of the nation, and its revision is undesirable”.
Perhaps it’s not only that thus Lee Jae-Myung is adapting to the new political climate, but also that this issue, especially among young people, is losing its sharpness and becoming more solvable.
In this context, for the Japanese authorities, it might be reasonable to revise their strategy for settling the “abduction issue,” perceiving it precisely as a problem of humanitarian nature and an analogue of historical disputes. North Korea has no fewer claims against Japan regarding the colonial period than South Korea does. And this is also a demand for apologies, repentance, and compensation, especially since Japan’s policy of ethnocide, carried out in Korea to assimilate by force the Korean population, provides ample opportunities for genuine accusations.
Hence, the DPRK demands that Japan conduct an investigation and apologise to the Korean victims who succumbed to the 1945 bombing of Tokyo, and although the American firestorm killed over a hundred thousand people, in the realms of the North Korean narrative, this is also put down to the Japanese colonial policy: “The Japanese imperialists jawed away that, perhaps taking advantage of the chaotic circumstances of the air raid, Koreans, who were subjected to inhuman humiliation and contempt and perilous and exhausting toil, might escape, and so they collectively confined them and let them go nowhere, which resulted in numerous Koreans having died a violent death”. Another example is the story of the ship “Ukishima-maru”, which was supposed to transport Koreans from Japan to their homeland but was lost to mines on August 24, 1945. In the North Korean version, “the incident of the explosion and sinking of the ship from top to bottom is an unprecedented mass murder of Koreans, committed according to the cunning scenario of the Japanese imperialists.”
However, in the case of starting a dialogue on humanitarian issues, the parties could try to mutually “recognize reality” and settle the problem through a “mutual offset.” It resides in the following. Japan verifies that the abducted citizens have died and drops its demands for their return, thus removing the abduction issue from the potential bilateral agenda in its current form and making the possibility of such a dialogue somewhat more realistic. North Korea, in turn, tones down its demands, and both countries express regret over the unsavory historical moments. Alas, nothing more than just a regret, because in the paradigm of the Far Eastern political culture, regret implies an expression of sorrow, whereas an apology is perceived as an admission of guilt, which must be followed by certain actions aimed at rectifying the guilt.
Of course, even from the author’s perspective, such a possibility seems utopian. However, he hopes that the proposal will be heard, and since in this era of global turbulence, unlikely events have been occurring more frequently, he wants to believe that Pyongyang and Tokyo will manage to pull out and set aside this stumbling block.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Centre for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences
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