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Sweden seeking a resolution to the issue of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

North Korea told Japan at government talks last month that it has no plans of giving up its nuclear program, Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported.

Mainichi indirectly quoted a North Korean official who attended the talks on May 26-28 in Stockholm as saying that “nuclear weapons development and economic recovery are most important. We are absolutely not giving up our nuclear weapons.”

The remarks could be a reiteration of the so-called “two-track approach” announced by Pyongyang in March 2013 - pursuing nuclear and economic development side-by-side - while also making it clear that the nuclear issue was not on the table for discussion with Japan.

The remark drew an interesting response from Japan. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, the Japanese government required that Pyongyang hold off on the “new type of nuclear test” it had announced, which many took as an allusion to an upcoming fourth nuclear test. While no information is available on the conversation that ensued between representatives at the talks, what is clear is that the words “nuclear program” and “missile” appear nowhere in the agreement that was released on May 29.

A subsequent press conference by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga focused only on the broader principle of “achieving a comprehensive resolution to various issues based on the Pyongyang Declaration of 2002, including abductions of Japanese citizens, nuclear weapons, and missiles, and proceeding toward normalization of diplomatic relations.”

One possible take on this is that Tokyo doesn’t intend to directly tie any resolution of the abductee issue - or the lifting of its own sanctions against North Korea as a result - to the nuclear issue. Since returning to office as Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe has repeatedly announced his plans to address the abductee issue. Now it appears that he has decided to separate that issue from the nuclear one, which would be more or less impossible to resolve during his term in office.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Jiji Press reported on June 4 that Junichi Ihara, the director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asia-Pacific bureau and senior representative to last month’s talks in Sweden, would be visiting Washington as early as next week. While there, Ihara is expected to meet with US special representative for North Korean policy Glyn Davies to explain the agreement with Pyongyang to reinvestigate the abductee issue and lift some independent sanctions against North Korea, and to ask for Washington’s understanding.

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