Japan and North Korea

Sympathy and tea

SEOUL AND TOKYO

The surprising, but nonetheless welcome, change in tone by the normally belligerent regime in North Korea has quickened interest in Tokyo. A cross-bench political mission headed by a former Socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, which visited Pyongyang at the start of the month intended merely to test the waters. It came back instead with an agreement from North Korea's ruling Workers' Party to restart talks on normalising diplomatic relations between the two countries. These have been frosty since the end of the second world war.

Of Japan's two big diplomatic issues left over from 1945, normalising diplomatic relations with a missile-brandishing North Korea ranks higher these days even than settling the long-festering dispute with Russia over the return of four islands off Hokkaido that the Soviet army grabbed in the closing days of the war. Though Japan's 550,000 ethnic Koreans do not have a vote, pundits expect Keizo Obuchi's coalition government to win far more public support in next year's general election from getting the recalcitrant North Koreans to the table than it ever could from prising more territorial promises from the Russians.

The ice between North Korea and Japan was broken by Kim Yong Sun, a senior party official, who spoke with uncharacteristic compassion about Japan's request for information on ten of its nationals who, it claims, had been abducted to North Korea many years ago. "I sympathise", said Mr Kim, "with the pain that the [Japanese] families must be feeling after being concerned about the safety of their loved ones for so long." The Japanese have never heard such words of commiseration from any North Korean official before.

Intelligence reports since the 1970s have suggested that the missing people were kidnapped by North Korean agents to act as language instructors in espionage camps. The Japanese authorities seethe quietly over the North Korean agents who roam around Japan, collecting hard currency as well as intelligence from sympathisers among the ethnic Korean community. The abduction issue, which Japan has made a precondition to any discussions on easing tensions between the two countries, was a main reason for the collapse in 1992 of the previous normalisation talks.

Apart from the sympathy handed round with the tea, Mr Kim also surprised his guests by saying that North Korea would appreciate a quick resumption of Japanese food aid. Though broke and hungry, North Korea has never asked the Japanese for food aid nor thanked them for it when it came. The North Korean regime has treated such aid instead as part of a standing demand for an apology and reparations from the Japanese government for the atrocities committed between 1910 and 1945, when Korea was a Japanese colony. Mr Kim attached no preconditions to reopening talks, asking only that Japan should supply agricultural products until his poverty-stricken country became "self-sufficient" in food.

Unfortunately, though this year's grain crop was up 5% over last year's, North Korea is now more dependent on foreign (mostly American, Chinese and South Korean) food aid than ever. Such aid this year provided more than 10% of its total grain supply, almost twice as much as four years ago.

An outraged Japan had cancelled its food aid, along with direct charter flights between the two countries, after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japanese territory in August 1998. At the same time, Japan suspended its financial contribution to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation. This outfit is part of the scheme hatched by America, South Korea and Japan five years ago to wean North Korea off producing plutonium, with which nuclear weapons can be made, by offering to replace its plutonium-rich nuclear reactor with a pair of less proliferation-prone western-designed light-water reactors.

Japan subsequently ended its ban on charter flights after America had persuaded North Korea to shelve its plans to test-fire another long-range missile. The Japanese government is expected to lift its remaining sanctions shortly. But first the Red Cross societies in the two countries have to arrange a meeting in Beijing to work out ways of dealing with the "humanitarian issues" raised during the Murayama mission last week; these are mainly home visits to Japan for the Japanese-born wives of North Koreans and the alleged abductions of Japanese nationals. Only then will aid begin to flow. Just what is needed from Japan to bring North Korea in from the cold? By all accounts, \1 trillion ($10 billion) would do the trick.

TNE ECONOMIST DECEMBER 11TH 1999