Parental love versus Kim Jong-il (My most recent story)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KD28Dg01.html

I wrote about Megumi Yokota, a tragic heroine who was snatched by North Korea at the age of 13. I interviewed her parents on Thursday.
I know many Western media and scholars have said that Japan has become hysterical and has an obsession with this abduction issue. However, I don’t buy that view.
Regarding any hostage rescue stuff, in a sense, Japan is less hysterical than the US. Remember the US recently sent US Navy Seals, special forces, to Somalia to rescue their American hostages. The US has also sent US Delta Force to Beirut, Lebanon and elsewhere to rescue US hostages many times. By a constitutional reason, Japan cannot and won’t do the same thing as the US has done in the past. All we can do is just to stir up public opinion domestically and internationally…

What would you do if your daughter suddenly gets kidnapped?

In any case, if you get time, please go over this. You will be surprised to know the parents of Yokota Megumi-san got their temper under control very much. The mother of Megumi-san became Christian seven years after Megumi-san was kidnapped by the North. She is very strong and kind…
Thanks and regards,
Kosuke

Parental love versus Kim Jong-il
By Kosuke Takahashi

KAWASAKI, Japan - Until that fateful day, Shigeru and Sakie Yokota had enjoyed a happy family life, just like any other. Then, on the evening of November 15, 1977, their 13-year-old daughter Megumi disappeared on her way home from school in Niigata city, which is about 200 kilometers northwest of Tokyo.

Shigeru Yokota, Megumi's father and then a Bank of Japan official, had loved to take snapshots of Megumi to record her growth and use in prayers for her health. Sakie Yokota, Megumi's mother, had made her skirts and embroidered blouses from the clothes Sakie wore when she was young.

Megumi was a cheerful, bright and active girl who liked music, books and paintings. She loved her twin younger brothers Takuya and Tetsuya, now 40. At 13, she gave her father a turtle-shell comb on his 45th birthday, telling him to pay more attention to his looks. The next morning, she left for school and never returned.

So began the anguish of the Yokota family and their desperate efforts to search for their daughter - said to have been the largest in the history of the prefecture's police department.

On January 1997, 20 years later, they were shocked to learn that Megumi had been abducted by North Korean agents. The Yokotas have since become Japan's most famous crusaders for Japanese abduction victims. Megumi Yokota remains a tragic heroine for the Japanese abductees and for the whole nation.

The Japanese government has confirmed that North Korea kidnapped 17 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s; so far only five have returned and 12 are unaccounted for. In September 2002, when then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted for the first time that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals. Pyongyang has claimed that eight, including Megumi Yokota, are dead, and that the other four never entered the country.

North Korea has claimed Megumi committed suicide in March, 1994 and returned to Japan a set of remains. But Japan has said that a DNA test proved they could not have been her remains, and her family does not believe that she would have committed suicide. While in the North, Megumi reportedly married a South Korean national and had a daughter, Kim Hye-gyong, now 22.

The abducted Japanese nationals, including Megumi, are believed to have been forced to teach Japanese language and culture to North Korean intelligence agents for covert operations against South Korea. There is widespread belief that in October 2002, Kim Jong-il released the only five abductees who had not trained spies or taken part in terrorist operations against South Korea. As the rest did, the North has hesitated to provide any information on them or release them.

Kim Hyun-hee, one of two North Korean agents who bombed a Korean Air airliner in 1987, said at a press conference with relatives of Japanese abductee Yaeko Taguchi in March that she did not believe Megumi was dead. She said Megumi had been admitted to a hospital due to her mental state, but "was told that her condition was not severe".

In an interview from their home in Kawasaki city, adjoining Tokyo, the Yokotas told Asia Times Online that their rescue efforts would continue, despite their age: Shigeru Yokota is now 76 and Sakie Yokota is 73.

Asia Times Online: It has been 32 years since Megumi-san [san is a Japanese honorific] was kidnapped by North Korea. What would you like to say to her now?

Sakie: All I'd like to say to her is, "Please be alive. Please be well. Whatever circumstances you are in, believe that you will be able to return home in the future. We also believe." That is all I want to say to her.

ATol: North Korea launched a missile on April 5, causing a big fuss in the United Nations. Kim Jong-il has also appeared on television after a long absence. The six-party talks remain stalled, as do Japan-North Korea negotiations.

Shigeru: Yes. In August 2008, Japan and North Korea agreed to complete a re-investigation into the Japanese abductees in North Korea. But then prime minister Yasuo Fukuda's abruptly resigned. The North then stalled by saying they wanted to see the new [Taro] Aso administration's diplomatic stance. At the time, the Aso cabinet was thought to be planning to dissolve the Lower House for a snap election.

By around late October 2008, the North said it intended to cancel the negotiation process. Up to today, negotiations have stalled and no action has taken since.

ATol: Based on testimony by North Koreans involved in the abductions, such as the former spies Kim Hyun-hee and Shin Gwang-soo, we know that Kim Jong-il masterminded them. But Kim Jong-il told prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2002 that the abductions were planned by some people in the North's intelligence who had "fallen into blindly motivated patriotism and heroism".

Sakie: That was a lie. Kim always says nothing but lies. But the truth will come out, perhaps after his death, and this will damage his reputation. I just wonder how much Kim's closest aides have been brainwashed by him and how much they harbor ill-feelings toward him. We don't know. That's sort of scary to me.

ATol: If Kim Jong-il gave Tokyo credible information on Megumi-san and other abduction victims, it would be like signing his own political death warrant. Do you think we will be forced to wait for his death for news or are there other ways to defuse the situation?
Shigeru: We do not think we can defuse the situation with our personal actions. Administrations such as Shinzo Abe's have tried using dialogue and pressure. This balance of talk and pressure is important.

But putting pressure on North Korea will not lead to the collapse of Kim Jong-il's regime any time soon. If the North was a normal nation, that could happen. But the regime's officials do not even care about the death and dying of their ordinary citizens. If they were to run even shorter of food, they would think of their own well-being first before their citizens.

Sakie: They only think about their own survival.

Shigeru: Japan's Foreign Ministry has often said, "We have thrown the ball in their court but the North never throws it back to us." But Japan needs to take more action, not just wait for their response.

Sakie: Aggressive and specific action is needed.

ATol: Japan always seems to lack intelligence. Most recently, without hard intelligence, Japan could not convince China and Russia that the North's recent rocket was actually a missile, not a satellite, in the UN. Japan needs to make more efforts to obtain intelligence.

Sakie: Yes, indeed.

ATol: Alongside possible financial sanctions by the UN, Japan could also begin unilateral financial sanctions against the North. It's widely believed that Kim Jong-il has private funds in Swiss bank accounts. The same Swiss banks do business in Tokyo.

Sakie: Japan's top government officials should take note of such things and move ahead as quickly as possible. I do not know why they are acting so slowly.

ATol: Judging from North Korea's recent activities, the nation still acts like it is at war. From their point of view, the line between the South and the North is just a ceasefire line, not a border. This means Japan may need to act stronger.

Sakie: That's why the South always feels threatened. Still, if we confront the North aggressively with strong determination, conflicts may develop, just like the US and the Iraq War. This will lead to yet another tragedy. This is why, I think, that former US president George W Bush reluctantly removed North Korea from the US's terrorism blacklist. But the North always breaks their promises. The world should realize the true nature of North Korea.
ATol: Kim Hyun-hee has said that if Tokyo could find ways to persuade North Korea without hurting its pride, then a miracle could happen. She also said in North Korea, people the government has said are dead are often alive. What do you think of her remarks?

Sakie: We do not know what she really meant by "pride".

ATol: Her remarks reminded me of US president Bill Clinton's approach to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Clinton tried to negotiate a peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis during the waning days of his presidency by overlooking Arafat's past wrongdoing. Do you think the same kind of approach could be tried with Kim's past wrongdoing if it were to get Megumi-san and others back to Japan?

Shigeru: The problem is that there are nearly 500 missing persons, according to The Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Kidnapped to North Korea, a Japanese citizen group trying to establish links between missing Japanese and North Korea. So it's not clear how far we should go before normalizing ties with North Korea. There is no clear exit policy.

Sakie: Although Kim Jong-il promotes militarism to boost national prestige, he should have a human mind. To win the trust of the world community and to hold his head up high in international society, he needs to first come clean about the abductions. We secretly think that if he returns the abductees to Japan, we can be ready to overlook his past wrongdoing.

ATol: Sakie-san, Megumi-san's daughter Kim Hye-gyong just looks like you!

Sakie: Yes, she looks like me when I was young. Everybody has said that. I feel like meeting her [in North Korea], but cannot meet her now. The abduction issue must be solved first. And before I visit, the world needs to be at peace and the North has no nuclear weapons.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defense Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. He can be contacted at letters@kosuke.net.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

(Yonhap) N. Korean leader's son appointed to post in top military body: source

Yonhap News reported again Kim Jong-um is likely to be the North's next leader. Kosuke

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2009/04/26/17/0301000000AEN20090426000900315F.HTML


N. Korean leader's son appointed to post in top military body: source

SEOUL, April 26 (Yonhap) -- The third son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been assigned to a post in the communist nation's top military organization headed by Kim, apparently a sign of being groomed as the North's next leader, multiple sources privy to North Korean affairs said Sunday.

"Kim Jong-un had been appointed to a low-level post, called 'instructor' at the National Defense Commission days before the first session of the 12th Supreme People's Assembly meeting was held" on April 9, the source said. Another source also said that Jong-un works at the commission, but that his exact post remains unconfirmed.

Sources noted that Jong-un's course of "succession lessons" is different from that of his father, who started his political career in the Workers' Party. They said the move shows the authority of the National Defense Commission headed by Kim under his military-first policy.

Kim Jong-il was tapped as successor at 32 by his father and the nation's founder, Kim Il-sung, in a general meeting of the Workers' Party in 1974. He took over after his father's death in 1994.

Early this year, the North's leader delivered a directive on his nomination of Jong-un as his successor in the Workers' Party leadership, according to the sources.

The 25-year-old is the youngest of Kim's three sons. Jong-un was educated at the International School of Berne and is known to be a fan of NBA basketball. After returning to Pyongyang in his late teens, he has lived a reclusive life, and very little is known about his character.

The North's leader, who turned 68 in February, suffered a stroke last year, according to South Korean intelligence officials. He has recovered from the illness well enough to meet foreign guests and appear in public events. (END)

Pyongbang! By Victor D. Cha

After all, what "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il is doing is to protect his regime against any foreign interference in domestic affairs. The missile launch last Sunday was just a good means of doing so. For Kim Jong-il, nuclear-tipped missiles are still his strongest weapon and best deterrent against regime collapse in the Hermit Kingdom. He will hang onto them by all means.

This is what I wrote for Asia Times last September.
Nukes and missiles keep Kim going
By Kosuke Takahashi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/JI23Dh01.html

Japan can solely impose financial sanctions on individuals and entities, including gnomes of Zurich, for involvement in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile activity. Thanks. Kosuke

Pyongbang!

Washington’s Korea Conundrum
VICTOR D. CHA is Associate Professor, Director of Asian Studies, and D. S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and Government at Georgetown University. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Director of Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council and Deputy Head of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks.

On Sunday, North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that went farther than any of its predecessors before falling harmlessly into the Pacific. What was the point of the exercise? Pyongyang claims the launch was designed to put a communications satellite into orbit and that it succeeded in doing so. Nobody else believes either assertion, with officials in the United States, Japan, and South Korea portraying the launch as a test of a long-range delivery system for a nuclear weapon.

Instant commentary in the West saw the launch as essentially a cry for help -- a bid to win attention from the Obama administration and start a new round of talks from a stronger bargaining position. The problem with this explanation is that Stephen Bosworth, Washington's newly appointed special envoy for North Korea, was just in Asia armed with a very clear message from President Obama about the administration's readiness to engage in immediate high-level bilateral negotiations -- and got no answer.

In reality, the launch probably reflects two other dynamics. The first is a straightforward desire by North Korea to advance its ballistic missile technology. Countries do not pursue ICBMs or nuclear weapons simply to accumulate negotiating chips. Pyongyang's devotion of massive amounts of very scarce resources to such projects suggests it actually wants to acquire these capabilities and be accepted by the world as a nuclear weapons state. It is unlikely to be willing to trade them away in return for international acceptance and a peace treaty with the United States.

The second dynamic apparently at work is turbulence inside the North Korean ruling elite provoked by the poor health of Kim Jong Il. The missile test, after all, represents only the latest in a string of bad behavior on North Korea's part over the last several months. At the end of 2008, Pyongyang walked away from previous understandings it had reached with U.S. negotiators regarding verification of its nuclear declaration. In early 2009, it spewed fiery rhetoric against South Korea and Japan. And in the month before the launch, it ejected U.S. food-donor teams and detained two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. All these actions are likely external manifestations of political fluidity within Pyongyang sparked by Kim's debility.

So how do you solve a problem like Korea? Should the United States and its allies just ride out this rough patch in North Korean behavior, hoping to reengage at some later date? Absolutely not -- even though that is what is likely to happen, with Pyongyang once again suffering little more than a slap on the wrist for its actions.

Sunday's launch was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718 -- passed in the aftermath of North Korea's 2006 nuclear test -- but opposition from China and Russia will probably prevent the Security Council from imposing sanctions. And the United States, bogged down in two wars, will not contemplate military action that could precipitate a third. Far from punishment, in fact, what North Korea's brazen actions will most likely bring is more inconclusive diplomacy. China will use its leverage to press Pyongyang back to the six-party negotiating table, where the North will entertain urgent appeals from others to open a new track of missile negotiations in conjunction with the far from finished denuclearization talks. North Korean negotiators will then string out the new diplomatic track, eliciting goodies from the other parties while giving away little, even as North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear warhead programs slowly advance.

Given Pyongyang's record of proliferation -- which includes selling nuclear and missile secrets to rogue regimes across the globe -- this cycle of futility has to stop. The stakes for American security are simply too high. Some observers recommend trying to end Kim's nuclear ambitions by offering him a peace treaty and normalized relations with the United States, but such a course would achieve the opposite effect, giving hardliners in Pyongyang a justification for retaining their nuclear weapons while raising fears in Japan about the reliability of Washington's security guarantee. So while Obama should continue to extend the hand of negotiation to Pyongyang, his administration should also embark on two other tracks: in the short-term, calculated pressure to punish Pyongyang's missile launch, and in the longer-term, preparing for a united peninsula, free and democratic.

First, the United States should enforce Resolution 1718 and reimpose economic sanctions, including financial sanctions to target entities that finance ballistic missile development. These types of sanctions, similar to ones used in 2005 and 2006, hit at the personal riches of the North Korean leadership that are stashed away in accounts in Europe and Asia and can be very effective. They were lifted in 2007 in light of North Korea's agreement to allow international inspection and disablement of its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, but it is time for similar instruments to be put to use again.

Second, Obama should consider restoring North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, using the revelations of Pyongyang's help to Damascus's nuclear program as justification.

Third, he should instruct relevant agencies to start a quiet but serious dialogue with China and South Korea about how to deal with a post-Kim leadership, reaching out (along with Japan) to potential new leaders in Pyongyang by offering them the prospect of security assurances and economic assistance in return for constructive policies.

Fourth, the United States and other countries should offer to educate and feed every North Korean child and dramatically increase humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people in general, including food, medicine, education, and energy. (Some of this could even be tied to stimulus package efforts to employ U.S. workers from Michigan and elsewhere on winterization and house-building projects in North Korea.)

All these measures can and should supplement the existing six-party diplomacy. Sustaining the six-party talks is critical for continuing the disablement and degradation of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities. But U.S. strategy needs to acknowledge that there will never be a true end to the North's nuclear ambitions so long as Kim and his immediate circle remain in power. While negotiating today, therefore, the United States needs to prepare for the real opportunities for engagement that may lie down the road.

Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved.
Source URL: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64919/victor-d-cha/pyongbang

Confused on North Korea (Washington Post)

Washington Post, you are absolute right. As Sir Winston Churchill used to say, an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040602717_pf.html

Confused on North KoreaOnce again, the U.S. response to a provocation from Pyongyang is muddled.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009; A22

THE DEFINING characteristic of U.S. policy toward North Korea -- incoherence -- doesn't seem to have changed much as the Bush administration has given way to that of Barack Obama. On Sunday, Mr. Obama treated North Korea's launch of an intercontinental missile like an emergency: Woken in Prague at 4:30 a.m. by his aides, he sternly declared that "rules must be binding" and "violations must be punished," and dispatched his U.N. ambassador to seek an immediate resolution from the Security Council.
The council, however, quickly balked at sanctioning the regime of Kim Jong Il -- and understandably so. Just two days before the much-expected missile test, Mr. Obama's special envoy for North Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, had publicly declared that "pressure is not the most productive line of approach" in dealing with the North. "After the dust of the missile settles a bit," he said, the administration's priority would be persuading Pyongyang to return to negotiations regarding its nuclear program.
Mr. Bosworth offered to go to Pyongyang "whenever it appears to be useful" to conduct bilateral talks -- something the regime has always craved. And he promised "incentives": "I think there are things that we can provide and do that the North Koreans would find positive," he told reporters.
Now, it's true that Mr. Bosworth said he thought there also should be "consequences" for the missile test and that U.S. policy should "combine pressure with incentives." But it's hardly surprising, given his statements, that China and Russia would resist new sanctions -- or that North Korea would have fired the missile in spite of U.S. warnings. Why listen to such warnings, when the administration has already made clear that its main response will be to offer more diplomatic attention, sweetened with "incentives" -- in other words, exactly what Mr. Kim was seeking?
The Bush administration tried isolating and pressuring North Korea, then turned to bribe-laden negotiations. Neither approach succeeded in changing the behavior of the regime, which continued to share its nuclear know-how with other rogue states while retaining its probable arsenal of bombs. Mr. Bosworth sounds surprisingly sure that he can break this pattern. "I'm quite confident that with some intense negotiating and diplomatic activity," North Korea's refusal to allow the verification of its plutonium stockpile can be overcome, he said.
Mr. Obama seems to believe that he can increase the pressure on Pyongyang through the reinvigorated global nonproliferation policy he announced in Prague. The measures he proposed are worthy and needed -- such as a new effort to control loose nuclear materials, a ban on the creation of new fissile material for weapons and the creation of an international fuel bank to supply nuclear reactors.
Still, it doesn't seem likely that either the North Korean or Iranian regimes will be swayed by these policies. Such concessions as have been extracted from Mr. Kim in the past have followed tough steps by the United States and China, above all the squeezing of the regime's foreign bank accounts. It's hard to believe that the Obama administration will make more progress than its predecessors without more consistency in administering that kind of medicine.