TOKYO — With his cabinet’s popularity hitting new lows according to a poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took the opportunity of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit last week to highlight one of his pet issues — the abduction by North Korean agents of up to 20 Japanese citizens. Abe’s tough stance on North Korea has always been a political trump card for him, bringing him to prominence under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. During Koizumi’s visit to Pyongyang in 2002, he led negotiations on behalf of the families of those abducted, and then [...]
Since it first came to light a few years ago, the kidnapping of up to 17 Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s has captured the attention of the Japanese nation, influenced its domestic politics and become a central concern of Japanese foreign policy. And now, an American folk singer is bringing his talents to bear in an effort to bring some resolution to the situation. On Tuesday, Noel Paul Stookey, a member of the legendary group Peter, Paul and Mary, debuted his “Song for Megumi” at a Tokyo press conference attended by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo [...]
In a surprising — but typically unexpected — move, North Korea has agreed to return to the Six-Party Talks. Both the United States and North Korea have made concessions, brokered by China, to achieve this long-hoped-for diplomatic reengagement. The United States is not insisting on tangible demonstrations of nuclear rollback as a prerequisite to talks and, to achieve the reengagement, it met in a secret diplomatic forum in Beijing that included only representatives from China and North Korea. North Korea has dropped its insistence that the United States removes its financial restrictions on its overseas monies, being satisfied with U.S. [...]
