Christmas Celebrations

The Christmas period has been particularly busy. We have always tried to organise something with our friends and family, but this year was different: it was my first Christmas in another country. While that, in itself, was not particularly difficult, it meant that things would be slightly different. On Monday 22nd December, I went to Yokohama’s Minato Mirai (literally, ‘future harbour’) to see what Christmas illuminations there might have been. Turns out that there wasn’t much at all…

Lots of photos after the cut…

Hardly a Coincidence…

Given that there are only a few months to the July 2008 G8 Summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, it seems awfully seredipitous that the abduction issue is hitting the headlines again. In May, so far, the Japan Times has thrice reported stories relating to the issue.

On May 4th, it reported:

Don’t delist North: abductee group

A senior member representing families of Japanese abducted by North Korea urged the United States on Friday to keep North Korea on its list of terror-sponsoring nations until the abduction issue is resolved.

Teruaki Masumoto, secretary general of the Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, made the pitch with supporters in a meeting with Christopher Hill, the top U.S. envoy to the six-party North Korea denuclearization talks.

“If North Korea is delisted, it will give the country breathing space and make efforts to rescue our families take longer. So we want North Korea to be kept on the list,” he told reporters after emerging from the meeting at the U.S. State Department.

[...]

“My impression is that Mr. Hill takes what North Korea says at face value and may not believe the victims of the abductions are still alive,” Masumoto said. “We believe the victims are definitely alive.”

Whenever the Kazokukai are in the US, you can be sure that more news will follow as the cohorts renew their politicking.

From May 10th:

Tokyo denies asking Seoul for Yokota meeting

The government Friday denied a media report that Japan asked South Korea to help arrange a meeting between the parents of Megumi Yokota [...] and her granddaughter, who still lives in the reclusive state.

“The media report is not based on facts,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference. “It is a very regrettable article when considering the feelings of the Yokota couple,” he said.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Friday morning that Kyoko Nakayama, an Upper House member and special adviser to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the abduction issue, asked Seoul to help arrange with North Korea a meeting in South Korea between Shigeru and Sakie Yokota and Megumi’s daughter and former husband.

Citing a source knowledgeable of Japanese-South Korean relations, the article said Nakayama made the request during her visit to Seoul last month and said she intended to return cremated remains that North Korea handed to Japan in 2004 claiming they were those of Megumi, if such a meeting were arranged.

Nakayama flatly denied making such remarks when she visited Seoul on April 25. Nakayama told reporters that while she is aware the Yokotas want to meet with their granddaughter, it is not something that can be achieved by making a request to Seoul for help.

Nakayama also said the issue of the cremated remains was not even mentioned in her talks with the officials and repeated that Japan’s policy is that it will not return them to North Korea.

Has North Korea even asked for those ashes back? Doesn’t it still maintain that they are Yokotas, questioning the DNA testing along with assumedly neutral Nature, the science journal/magazine? The story seems absurd, so much so that I wonder what prompted it. Slow news day, perhaps? That the Yokotas would like to meet their granddaughter seems assured, but to suggest that the government would attempt to use the dodgy ashes to bargain with North Korea by way of the warier Lee Administration seems a little far-fetched. Such a policy doesn’t fit within the framework of dialogue and pressure, but, were it true and if it succeeded, it would have made for a good photoshoot ahead of the G8 Summit, in line with the raised stature of the abduction issue while all (some?) eyes are on Japan. Thus, I am on the fence with this one. Was it the Yomiuri trying to show up the government, or was it the matter of the government trying to prepare to raise the abduction issue in the context of the G8 Summit? I can’t tell.

Finally, from May 12th:

N. Korea suggested existence of other abductees in 2004

North Korea suggested to a Japanese official in early 2004 that there were abductees other than the 15 officially recognized as abduction victims by Tokyo at that time, government sources said Sunday.

Yoshiyuki Inoue, who was in charge of the abduction issue at the Cabinet Office, sought information on abductees other than the 15 when he visited North Korea several times between late 2003 and January 2004, and officials there indicated readiness to reveal the fates of some of them, according to the sources.

[...]Inoue was discussing with North Korea repatriation of family members of five abductees who had returned to Japan in October 2002, and examination of the whereabouts of another 10 abductees, the sources said. But Pyongyang suspended the talks in February 2004 when his visits to North Korea came to light in a media report.

This is the clincher. If North Korea can be shown to willfully withheld information from the Japanese government in its 2002-2004 diplomacy efforts, then there is justification for the further pursuit of the abduction issue (beyond the slightly naive notion that Yokota Megumi is alive). However, that Inoue failed to comment is notable: this is surely untrue. Would Abe Shinzo, most particularly, have failed to have levied such a charge against the North? I doubt that.

Abduction politics comes in fits and starts. How extensive this current concentration of noise becomes will not be clear until the G8 Summit begins, but I imagine that Japan will once again call upon the other 7 members to stand against North Korea’s human rights abuses and finally, although perhaps impossibly, bring Yokota Megumi home.

Megumi: The Anime

Abe may be gone, but the propaganda keeps on coming. The Headquarters of the Abduction Issue, the Cabinet-level office in charge of bringing the Yokota Megumi story to the world, released the 25-minute animation at the end of March, and can be found here.

I’ve skimmed through it, but have not brought myself to  stomach the horrible voice acting in the English version. Doesn’t the Japanese government know that subs are the way? (Joking, of course: dubbing, no matter how terrible, allows them to possibly reach a larger audience). I was unsurprised to find the Paul Stookey song slapped over the credits. It seems that every time the government releases a new piece of what can only be called propaganda, they are going to subject us to the god-awful song.

[via Japan Probe]

Review: Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World, by Gordon G. Chang

North Korea is taking on the world, and we have no choice but to respond.

Nuclear Showdown (2005) is journalist Gordon G. Chang’s conclusion to his contribution to the study of North Korea as a East Asian and global crisis.

It was Chang’s chapter on Japan and the abduction issue that first caught my eye. I found the book as I flicked around the shelves of my local store and immediately I knew I had to buy it. I picked up the 2007 Arrow edition, which includes a new foreword addressing the October 2006 nuclear test.

Chang eases you into the book and takes you along a wandering argument that climaxes with an acknowledgement of the dangerous times in which we live. He is even-handed and incisive throughout, even if his somewhat flowery prose may grate at times. He writes well, although whoever decided to forego conventional footnoting for the bizarre system employed might need rounding up and shooting: finding the relevant comments and references is a pain in the ass.

Chang’s conception of North Korea is of a regime fighting to stay alive as capitalism wells up at the grassroots-level. Chang criticises the US for being to soft on North Korea’s past transgressions, such as the capture of the USS Pueblo in 1968, and for not negotiating and controlling North Korea’s nuclear rise in a consistent and firm manner. He also criticises America’s over-generosity to China who should now look to become a responsible world citizen by reining in its client state, or preferably abandoning it altogether. He criticises South Korea, particularly former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, for sustaining a fragile regime that relying on foreign aid for its survival while snubbing market reform as a result of the brewing bottom-up revolution.

On the issue of Japan, Chang is sympathetic to the country’s more immediate concern of attack: the pressing threat posed by North Korea acts more strongly on Japan than the US. He also notes the overwhelmingly political nature of the abduction issue and its emotional underpinnings. Japan is most at risk from a North Korean nuke, and as a result it is struggling to stay confined to the bounds of the constitution imposed upon it by the American post-War authorities. Despite that, it must: a Japanese bomb would create a whole new arms race and set of global tensions.

It is to this tension that Chang so skilfully leads the reader. For him, the North Korean problem highlights the challenge posed to the global hegemon, the US. Chang finds WWII to be apogee of US power, and from then on it has been relatively weakened as the destroyed nations around it have rebuilt. He is not implying that the US is by any means facing the end of its history, but rather that it has a chance to solidify its position.

Chang believes that the US should reinvigorate the non-proliferation norms and regime by carrying out what it committed to in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: the destruction of its nuclear stockpile. Chang suggests that even a wholesale, yet incomplete, dismantling of the US arsenal would show the state’s good intentions to the currently less-than-impressed non-nuclear powers. “The American president can give the order to eliminate all life on this planet several times over. If he decides to reduce his arsenal so that he can kill everybody only once, are his constituents any less safe?”

Chang is encouraging the US to take the bold step to make an example of North Korea. By unilaterally reducing its nuclear stockpile it will show its commitment to a non-nuclear future. He also encourages the US to be tough on North Korea in the Six-Party Talks and place all the issues on the table: from human rights to counterfeiting. By doing so, the Chinese and South Koreans will be forced to take sides (all the while under pressure from the international community to take the most reasonable side, that of the US). Ultimately, however, Chang believes that the US should be prepared to make an example of North Korea by committing itself to a possible use of force. “But if there ever were a reason to go to war, it is to save the nonproliferation treat and the global arms control regime. No other justification for conflict comes close.”

Chang’s argument is bold in and of itself. He is pessimistic for our future, and quite rightly so. At the moment, his work is still relevant. In the three years since Nuclear Showdown was first published, little progress has been made. Whether one accepts his conclusions is down to the individual, but the claims presented are well-linked and researched and show a broad understanding of the North Korean crisis in the context of global security.

Maybe our struggle with [Kim] is not the clash of good and evil, as some would have it, but it is at the very least a fight to preserve the liberal international system that has been responsible for so much global progress.

Why Kim Jong-il Should Not Join Your Fan Club…

This article from The Japan Times raises an interesting, but not too surprising, prospect:

Police quiz S. Korean actress over abductees to the North
Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Japanese police in February questioned a South Korean actress in connection with North Korea’s intelligence agency’s abductions of two Japanese couples, investigative sources said Tuesday.

Two former senior agency officials believed to have been close aides to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il are suspected of ordering the 1978 abductions of Kaoru and Yukiko Hasuike and Yasushi and Fukie Chimura. [...]

The two agents are Li Wan Gi, former director of what was known as the foreign information research department of the North Korean Workers Party, and Kang Hae Ryong, its former vice director.

Investigations have already pointed to the likely involvement of the agency and the two officials in the abduction of the actress, Choi Un Gi, and the two Japanese couples. [...]

Choi was kidnapped in 1978, around the same time as the couples, while she was in Hong Kong, and sought asylum through the U.S. Embassy in Vienna in March 1986.

Choi’s husband, filmmaker Sin Sang Ok, also disappeared in Hong Kong. The couple were told by North Korean agents that they were taken to the country to help develop its filmmaking industry, and continued making films in Pyongyang and other locations. [...]

The case of Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok (as the two are more commonly romanised) is well-known.

In the 1970s, Shin was a once-successful director (‘a film director of legendary stature in his native country – the Orson Welles of South Korea‘) struggling under the government controls of General Park Chung-hee. Choi was Shin’s ‘muse and favorite leading lady‘, perhaps comparable to the relationship between China’s Gong Li and Zhang Yimou. Their relationship broke down in 1976 after it was revealed that Shin had sired two children to another woman while Choi had been incapable of conceiving and after the couple had already adopted a child. Choi filed for divorce and moved to Hong Kong where in 1978 she was kidnapped and taken to North Korea. Six months later, while looking for his missing wife, Shin was also kidnapped.

“I was jailed for about five years, but I didn’t know at the time that it would land up being that long,” he said.

“If I had known from the start I would rather have been dead. During this time I was very, very depressed. They expected brainwashing to change me.”

His wife was also ordered to attend re-education classes. She was forced to study North Korea’s “glorious” revolution and later made to sit exams on the subject.

“I was very unhappy. I did think of suicide but then I thought of my family and how much this would hurt them. It was an awful time,” she said. [THOMSON, Kidnapped by North Korea]

In 1983, the pair were reunited at a dinner party in Pyongyang. Their abductions were seemingly ordered by an adoring Kim Jong-il, movie nut of the highest order.

Kim Jong Il borrowed more directly from outside [film influences] when he arranged for the abduction of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee in 1978. Six months later, Kim abducted her estranged husband, famous South Korean director Shin Sang-ok. Before the pair managed to escape in 1986 during a stopover in Vienna, Shin Sang-ok introduced many new innovations into North Korean film. His most famous films during this period-a North Korean version of Godzilla called Pulgasari and a retelling of the famous Korean folk tale of Chunhyang called Love, Love, My Love-added science fiction and musical romance to the North Korean repertoire. [FEFFER, Screening North Korea]

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“The North’s film-makers are just doing perfunctory work. They don’t have any new ideas,” Kim told the couple.

“Their works have the same expressions, redundancies, the same old plots. All our movies are filled with crying and sobbing. I didn’t order them to portray that kind of thing.”

He blamed misunderstandings by thoughtless officials for their unfriendly four-year North Korean welcome. He also apologised for taking so long to get back to them personally, saying it had been busy at the office.

The idea came to Kim, he said, when he heard that Seoul’s repressive, militaristic Park regime had closed down Shin Films.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got to bring him here’,” he said. Infiltrating Shin Films with agents posing as business partners, Kim explained how he lured the two to Repulse Bay, Hong Kong. First Choi disappeared on a trip to discuss an acting job. Then, on the way to dinner one night, Shin had a sack filled with a chloroform-like substance pulled over his head. With that, Kim had imported the best film talent the peninsula had to offer. [GORENFIELD, The Producer from Hell]

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“Kim Jong-il later confessed to me that the reason he kidnapped my wife first was because he wanted me to come and make films for him,” Shin Sang-ok said.

Kim Jong-il is film mad. Soon after the couple arrived in Pyongyang he took them for a private tour of his film library, which holds more than 15,000 movies. [...]

Initially the director was not sure what the North Korean leader meant by a “good” film, until he took note of what he watched most often. Top of the list was Rambo, followed by Friday the Thirteenth and all the James Bond movies. [...]

Meanwhile his wife was given a large room in the leader’s scenic summerhouse overlooking the river.

In a series of charm offensives Kim Jong-il went out of his way to make her feel welcome by bringing her piles of expensive clothes and Western cosmetics. [THOMSON, Kidnapped by North Korea]

Choi recorded the meeting with a tape recorder and would then use that to bargain their way into US custody when on a business trip to Vienna to arrange the distribution of a movie about Genghis Khan in 1986. North Korea claims that the pair made their own way to the North and that they stole $2.3 million taken with them to Austria to fund the film’s possible Western distribution. Choi’s tape recording of her meeting with Kim Jong-il have subsequently been aired in South Korea. By the time they left North Korea, the pair were once more a couple, supposedly with Kim’s urgings.

If it was indeed Kim Jong-il that ordered their abduction, then it casts even more doubt over the paper-thin, tried-and-tested excuse offered by the Dear Leader in his 2002 Pyongyang Summit with Koizumi Jun’ichiro. The abductions were certainly not the work of rogue or overzealous agents, as Kim would have everyone unquestioningly believe, but clearly rested with the top figures of the North Korean government. The news in The Japan Times also shows how inextricably linked Kim might have been to the abduction of other foreign nationals.