Japan: taking no prisoners

Japan has a bone to pick with North Korea outside the framework of continuing six-party talks over the delinquent communist state's nuclear programme. 

Tokyo will reportedly extend economic sanctions against Pyongyang beyond Sunday due to the lack of progress made on the fate of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents between 1977 and 1983. Tokyo imposed the sanctions, which ban North Korean imports and stop its ships from docking at Japanese ports, after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. 

Although a working group dealing with human rights abuses has also been set up at the six-party talks, the emotive abductions issue -- which has handicapped Japan's bilateral and multilateral diplomacy towards Pyongyang since the late 1990s -- is extraneous to North Korea's negotiations with South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia. This process aims to disable North Korea's main Yongbyon nuclear facility, declare all its nuclear activities, and dismantle its nuclear programme so that it cannot be rebuilt.

Administration insiders have made it clear that they do not want Japan to bring the issue into the six-party process or allow it to impede progress on denuclearisation. Indeed, Japan continues to risk a rift with South Korea over the issue: back in February, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak agreed to support Japan's Prime Minster Yasuo Fukuda in seeking a resolution.

As for the abducted nationals, Pyongyang officially admitted in 2002 to kidnapping thirteen citizens. Five of them have been sent home, and North Korea claims the other eight are dead. Japan has demanded proof of the deaths, and asked for more information on another four people it says were also kidnapped.