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ID:
076785
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ID:
081305
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the summer of 2007, North Korea's decision to abandon its nuclear weapons program in accordance with the September 19 joint statement (2005) and the February 13 agreement (2007) aroused hopes that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would at last become a reality. Such an expectation was strengthened by North Korea's actual suspension of the operation of its Yongbyon nuclear facilities in July 2007 and also by its commitment to disable these facilities by the end of 2007. The breakthrough in the denuclearization of North Korea has been possible as a result of concerted diplomatic efforts on the part of the powers involved in a series of the six-party talks in Beijing from 2003 to 2007.
As a part of the overall settlement of the North Korean nuclear issue, the six powers have pledged in these agreements to bring about diplomatic normalization between Japan and North Korea on the basis of the Pyongyang Declaration of 2002. Thus, the normalization of Japanese-North Korean relations is no longer a bilateral issue for Tokyo and Pyongyang, but also an important matter of concern for major powers in the region, nations which have signed the agreements of 2005 and 2007 at the six-party talks in Beijing.
This article examines Japanese-North Korean relations with an emphasis on the analysis of major issues involved in this bilateral relationship. Since we have already published papers analyzing Japanese-North Korean relations preceding the 2004 Pyongyang summit elsewhere,1 our focus of this paper will be on the post-2004 developments in Tokyo-Pyongyang relations. As will be shown, the inability of the two neighboring countries to normalize diplomatic relations so far can be ascribed largely to Pyongyang's unwillingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program and, to a lesser degree, to its clumsy handling of the abduction issue and to Japan's inflexibility and unwillingness to compromise on the abduction issue. Now that Pyongyang has agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program, the question remains as to whether or not the two neighboring countries can settle the abduction issue and normalize diplomatic relations when Pyongyang disables its nuclear facilities.
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ID:
076784
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