Roundup: Normalization of DPRK, Japan Ties Still a Long Way to Go

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 26, 2002

Roundup: Normalization of DPRK, Japan Ties Still a Long Way to Go

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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Japan on Sunday resumed their decade-long talks here on establishing diplomatic ties. It will still take a long time for the two Asian neighbors to normalize their relations due to their long-standing disputes and the US hostile policy toward the DPRK.

Senior diplomats from the two countries started the two-day meeting in Pyongyang, which is aimed at setting up diplomatic relations that have been nonexistent between the two rivals.

The DPRK and Japan have had eight rounds of normalization talks since January 1991 but made little progress. The last round of rapprochement talks, held in October 2000 in Beijing, ended in deadlock over issues such as Japan's responsibility for its past colonial rule and aggression and DPRK's alleged abduction of Japanese citizens.

The DPRK has demanded apology and compensation for Japan's colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. But the Japanese government, which refused to pay war reparations by asserting that the two countries were never in a state of war, only agreed to provide economic assistance to the DPRK for its past colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

For Japan, one key issue is the whereabouts of 11 Japanese who were presumably abducted by the DPRK in the 1970s and 1980s. The DPRK has repeatedly refuted as groundless the allegation, which was set by Japan as the precondition for diplomatic ties.

As the first step toward resumption of rapprochement talks, the Red Cross organizations of the DPRK and Japan met in Pyongyang last week. During the two-day talks, both sides reported on the results of investigations into the missing Koreans and Japanese.

Representatives of the two countries also agreed to arrange the fourth hometown visit for the Japanese women living in the DPRK in late October.

It was estimated that some 1,800 Japanese women had moved to the DPRK with their ethnic Korean husbands between 1959 and the early 1980s.

In the near future, unhappy past and outstanding disputes will continue to block the normalization of relations between the two neighbors despite the ongoing talks. Whether they will forge diplomatic ties is also dependent on the US policy toward the DPRK, which was branded by the US President George W. Bush as part of "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

Under the circumstances, Japan will not normalize its relations with the DPRK until the United States, a key player in the Korean Peninsula, change its hostile policy toward the DPRK, observers here note.

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