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Normalization of Relations Between Japan and North Korea: Why Is It Necessary and How Could It Be Accomplished?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Wada Haruki  and
Gavan McCormack
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Abstract

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Author Wada notes that following the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945, relations between Japan and all parts of the old empire but one have been normalized, mostly long ago. Only with its neighbour, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) has there been no normalization. In this essay, which is drawn from his extensive writing in Japanese on the subject and follows two earlier related essays in APJJF (2005 and 2022), Wada asks why negotiations, that began in 1991, have been stonewalled for so long. Examining the forces that have shaped Japanese policy, he argues that the issue of abduction by North Korea of Japanese citizens in the 1970s was manipulated by fiercely anti-North Korean elements leading to the adoption as national policy of what he calls the “Three Abe Principles” in the time of the Abe Shinzo (2006-7, 2012-2020) government. Periodic offers of negotiation towards normalization without preconditions since then have not been intended seriously and constitute a thin blanket covering hostility. Those principles are an obstacle to normalization and must be changed, Wada insists.

Keywords

AbducteeabductionDean AchesonAbe ShinzoCamp David DeclarationDNA analysisDPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)ICBMsNorth KoreaNorth Korea Human Rights LawHosoda HosoyukiNormalizationKadenaKim Jong-unDouglas MacarthurNARKINPark San-gilPyongyang DeclarationSato KatsumispyshipsSuga YoshihidesukuukaiStatus of Forces AgreementTanaka HitoshiThree Abe PrinciplesUN forcesYokota MegumiYokota SakieYoshida Shigeru
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 12 , December 2023 , e7
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2023

References

Notes

1 See the report posted on the official site of the Prime Minister of Japan, which includes a rough translation. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/101_kishida/actions/202305/27rachi.html

2 Foreign Ministry of Japan, “The Spirit of Camp David: Joint Statement of Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States,” August 18, 2023.

3 For details, Wada, The Korean War – An International History, 2014, pp. 196–7.

4 For details on this complex story, Gavan McCormack and Haruki Wada, “The strange record of 15 years of Japan-North Korea negotiations,” Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 28 September 2005. https://apjjf.org/-Wada-Haruki/1894/article.html/ For the Japanese government's account, see Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan [MOFA], “Talks between Japan and North Korea on the abductions issue,” 6 August 2021. https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kp/page1we_000069.html/

5 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “The Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration,” September 2002, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/pmv0209/pyongyang.html/

6 Details in Wada, 2022; McCormack and Wada, 2005.

7 Keynote lecture to the National Council of Sukuukai, cited in Wada Haruki, Nicho kosho 30 nen shi [A 30 Year History of Japan-North Korea Negotiations], Chikuma shobo, 2022.

8 Statement to the Security Committee of the House of Representatives, cited in ibid.

9 Wada, 2022, op. cit.