The first agonizing step towards stabilizing Northeast Asia

Extract

History moved forward, but the movement was accompanied by painful sacrifice. Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to North Korea was intended to carve out a new page in the history of Japan and North Korea, countries whose relations have been suspended for almost half a century. Instead, when North Korea revealed the shocking truth that among the Japanese abducted to North Korea 8 were dead and 5 alive somewhere, the response from the Japanese public was of anger against North Korea combined with suspicion that the Koizumi administration was using the North Korean visit to try to boost its own popularity. The Japanese Foreign Ministry, moreover, compounded its incompetence by delaying distribution of a list recording the dates of the victims’ deaths. Fierce criticism of the government and its handling of foreign affairs mounts daily. In response to this public concern, the outlook for the normalization talks scheduled for October becomes uncertain, and it is possible that the government's schedule for accelerated negotiations towards normalization might collapse.