Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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 Tokyo make no compromises with Pyongyang is one of the reasons why Japan will maintain a hard line at the talks - and therefore find its role in the negotiations increasingly irrelevant...
...North Korea: What Pyongyang Wants...
...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...
...Today, North Korea and Japan have perhaps the most antagonistic relationship in the six-party forum. After Pyongyang's nuclear test in October, Tokyo slapped every sanction it could on the country, down to banning the trade in used bicycles. North Korea continually calls for Japan's exclusion from the talks, claiming that Tokyo is "wasting time by bringing to the table irrelevant issues" - a reference to the abductions, which Tokyo considers unsettled. Tokyo says there may still be kidnapping victims living in North Korea, while Pyongyang insists all the surviving abductees have been returned. Tokyo will try to push...