Word: japanism
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...China: Feeling the Heat •South Korea: Use Carrots, Not Sticks •Japan: Abductions Cloud the Issue •Russia: Trying to Look Relevant...
...wary Japan prepares to re-enter the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, two of the most important voices in the national debate belong not to politicians or diplomats, but to a 73-year-old retired salaryman and his wife. Shigeru and Sakie Yokota's only daughter, Megumi, was abducted on her way home from school by a North Korean agent in 1977, one of many Japanese citizens believed to have been kidnapped by North Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. The Yokotas have become the face of an influential lobby of abductee families, whose insistence that...
...Japan feels uniquely endangered by a nuclear-armed North Korea. While some of that fear has to do with Pyongyang's habit of testing missiles near Japan, or threatening to turn its former colonial occupier into a "nuclear sea of fire," the decisive change came in September 2002, when Kim Jong-il admitted to visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Pyongyang had indeed been guilty of abducting Japanese citizens. Kim paid a heavy price for his uncharacteristic outburst of honesty...
...Koizumi had come to Pyongyang against Washington's wishes, hoping to finally establish formal relations between the two countries, which could have potentially earned the regime billions in Japanese aid and World War II reparations - and given Japan significant leverage over North Korea. Instead, shocked by the abductions, Japanese public opinion turned overwhelmingly against North Korea, and any possibility of a deal was dashed. Koizumi has since been succeeded by Shinzo Abe, a conservative who won the top job on the back of his public support for the abductees and their families. Abe won't compromise on North Korea...
...Japan is willing to take an even harder line than the U.S.," says Malcolm Cook, director of the Asia and Pacific program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. "They...