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Opinion | Trump-Kim failed, but can Japan’s Abe reach North Korea through China?
- With Washington and Pyongyang in a stalemate, Tokyo has an opportunity regarding Japanese abductees in North Korea
- But if Abe is next to ‘face Chairman Kim’, he’ll need a hotline to Pyongyang. Who’s he going to call?
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Last week’s failed summit in Hanoi between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is likely to have brought about a sense of relief in Tokyo.
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Japan feared in the run-up to the leaders’ second meeting that Trump would make easy concessions to Pyongyang and had made clear it would not lift unilateral economic sanctions imposed in protest against North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.
It is unclear if and when Washington will restart denuclearisation talks with Pyongyang but what are Japan’s options going forward?
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For a start, PM Shinzo Abe has indicated that he would need to “face Chairman Kim myself next”.
However, getting into talks with Pyongyang would be difficult for Tokyo without some measure of progress on the issue of Japanese abductees – Japan has listed about 17 men and women it says were taken by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. But Pyongyang says that only 13 were abducted, five were returned in 2002, while the remaining eight are dead (though the North has never provided any conclusive evidence).
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