Koizumi to exit amid high Japan-NKorea tension
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid an unprecedented visit to North Korea four years ago this week, seeking to normalize relations after decades of hostility.
But Koizumi steps down later this month with his goal unfulfilled and tension soaring over North Korea -- and he will likely hand over power to Shinzo Abe, one of the communist state's most vociferous critics.
Abe has already vowed no compromise with Pyongyang, which is locked in an international standoff over its nuclear ambitions. He is expected to slap new financial sanctions on the cash-strapped regime as one of his first acts.
His hardline approach is resented by South Korea and China but finds support in the administration of US President George W. Bush, who has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil."
"Koizumi was holding out hope until some time earlier this year that he could make some progress with North Korea, but that certainly never happened," said Peter Beck, the Northeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group.
"I think the North has already written off Japan and its hopes that the politics of concession would open up the floodgates of assistance," he said.
Koizumi won a historic concession in his September 17, 2002 summit when leader Kim Jong-Il, rarely one to acknowledge wrongdoing, admitted that North Korea kidnapped Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies.
The maverick Koizumi -- who has described Kim as "gentle" and funny -- took a political risk by going again to Pyongyang in 2004, securing the release of five kidnap victims and their families.
For North Korea, establishing diplomatic relations would pave the way for Japan to give much-needed cash as reparations for its brutal 35-year colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
But instead, North Korea's admission triggered calls for sanctions from Japanese politicians led by Abe, who rose to prominence campaigning on the emotionally charged abduction issue.
Abe says North Korea lied to Koizumi by saying other abductees were dead and believes they are kept under wraps because they know secrets.
The most famous victim is Megumi Yokota, who was snatched at age 13 in 1977 as she walked home from school. Her parents have campaigned tirelessly on her behalf, sometimes at Abe's side, drawing national sympathy.
"After Kim Jong-Il's admission, the kidnapping issue came to dominate all aspects of Japan's North Korea policy to the point that the government really lost any flexibility," Beck said.
To the unease of other nations, Japan has repeatedly brought up the kidnapping saga in now-stalled six-way disarmament talks on North Korea, which said last year it had a nuclear bomb and may be preparing to test one.
North Korea, whose official media labels Abe a "political charlatan," counters that far more Koreans remain unaccounted for from slavery under Japanese rule.
The 51-year-old Abe, currently chief cabinet secretary, is all but certain to succeed Koizumi when their Liberal Democratic Party votes on Wednesday.
Abe gave a preview of his tougher approach in July when he openly mulled a theoretical pre-emptive attack on North Korea -- remarks until recently unthinkable for a top leader of officially pacifist Japan.
Robert Dujarric, a North Korea expert based in Tokyo, said that while "the language may become harsher" under Abe, Japan has little leverage left.
"There are really limits to what Japan can do because, unlike the United States, Japan doesn't have a military option and most sanctions that can be imposed have already been imposed," he said.
But like former US president Richard Nixon going to China or previous Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon trying to broker peace with the Palestinians, politicians with hawkish credentials can push through historic policy shifts.
C. Kenneth Quinones, who in 1992 became the first US diplomat to visit North Korea and is now a professor at Japan's Akita International University, said Pyongyang closely assesses whether foreign leaders have the clout "to wheel and deal" before sitting down with them.
In the six-way talks, "Japan, under strong leadership, can capture the leadership of the coalition lost by the Bush administration," he said.
AFP
