North Korea, Japan to Resume Amity Talks Next Month

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had a summit meeting at Pyongyang on May 22 and agreed to resume amity talks soon.

According to the agreement, negotiations about the amity talks between North Korea and Japan will be resumed next month.

In addition, the two leaders confirmed their sincere intention of fulfilling the “Pyongyang Declaration,” which was adapted at the first summit meeting in September 2002. The Pyongyang Declaration includes Japan’s duty to apologize and pay recompense for previous colonialization and North Korea’s duty to hold back its missile-firing experiments.

In the meeting, Kim approved the return of five remaining family members of those kidnapped by North Korea to Japan, and promised the re-investigation into the cases of ten Japanese who died or disappeared in North Korea after being kidnapped.

Declaring that he will not invoke economic sanctions against North Korea due to North Korea’s promise to fulfill the Pyongyang Declaration, Koizumi announced that he would provide North Korea with 250,000 tons of food and $10 million of medicine.

Regarding the refusal of Charles Jenkins, a runaway soldier from the U.S. Armed Force in Korea who is the husband of a kidnapped Japanese woman, to go back to Japan with his two daughters, and his concern about being arrested by U.S., the two leaders also agreed to cooperate to solve his problem by mediating a family meeting in a third country.

At the press conference on the night of May 22, after his homecoming with children of the kidnapped, Koizumi said, “The time has matured for developing the relationship between our two countries from enemy to friend.”

Members of a Japanese organization related to the kidnapped criticized the result of the summit meeting between North Korea and Japan and the Japanese government’s promise to support North Korea, saying, “It was the worst meeting, which was fruitless except for the homecoming of five children.”

Hun-Joo Cho hanscho@donga.com