Japanese media on Wednesday questioned North Korea’s sincerity at an historic summit and said the revelation that eight kidnapped Japanese citizens had died there was a bitter pill to swallow at the start of renewed normalisation talks.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s surprise admission on Tuesday that Pyongyang had kidnapped Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s and his abrupt apology reduced the victims’ relatives to tears of grief and anger and caused widespread shock.
North Korea had denied the kidnappings for decades, despite long-harboured Japanese suspicions.
But at his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in North Korea on Tuesday, Kim admitted Pyongyang had kidnapped the Japanese as language teachers and to help spies infiltrate South Korea.
North Korea said six of 11 people on a Japanese list had subsequently died. Four were still alive while one was not confirmed to have entered the country. Two others not on the Japanese list were confirmed dead and one alive.
Japanese officials said they had been told that the Japanese died from disease or natural disasters.
”His remarks are tantamount to acknowledging Pyongyang sponsored these crimes and prove that North Korea was indeed a terrorist state,” the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun argued in an editorial.
”The agreement on the resumption of normalisation talks between Japan and North Korea pales before the act of international terrorism that North Korea finally has admitted carrying out,” it said.
Japan and North Korea decided at the unprecedented summit to reopen negotiations to establish normal diplomatic relations. The paper called for a full investigation into the kidnappings and deaths, efforts to secure the return of both the surviving and dead Japanese, and compensation as ”a minimum precondition for resuming normalisation talks.”
The liberal daily Asahi Shimbun said: ”As the abduction issue makes clear, North Korea is still a dangerous country to the Japanese people.” It argued there might be other undisclosed victims.
But it noted: ”It goes without saying the abduction issue is of prime importance, but we should not use that as a reason to close the window on normalisation talks with North Korea with sanctions or other means.”
The Tokyo Shimbun warned the government to proceed slowly following what it called the ”extremely cruel” fate of the kidnapped Japanese.
”Koizumi has decided to reopen talks, but the government should bear in mind the stern state of public opinion,” it said.
”If it suddenly rushes into providing ‘economic cooperation’, the ill feelings of the Japanese people will be huge. There is also the fear that the money will be put back into development of weapons of mass destruction.”
Kim also promised at the summit to extend indefinitely a moratorium on missile tests, and agreed to observe international nuclear and security conventions.
And Koizumi apologized for Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula and suggested economic aid could follow normalisation.
While cautiously welcoming the moves, most papers recalled that North Korea had a poor record of keeping promises and suggested they were part of cynical ploy to get badly needed Japanese money. The leading economic daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said Kim’s about-face was an indication of his country’s desperate economic straits after having devalued the won some 70 times against the dollar.
”Without a ready supply of materials, the possibility of failure and hyperinflation loom large,” it said.
”For that reason alone, North Korea wants Japan’s support as soon as possible.”
But it noted: ”Since the summit with South Korea two years ago, North Korea has not fulfilled many of the items agreed to”, including a reciprocal visit to Seoul.
The paper warned: ”Rushing too fast to reach success can leave the roots of evil behind.” – Sapa-AFP