Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan is planning rare talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, in a move that could bring both risk and reward.
Kishida's hopes of arranging a high-level dialogue with Kim Jong Un—the first of its kind in 20 years—were buoyed last month after receiving condolences from Pyongyang for Japan's powerful earthquake, the newspaper said.
The high-stakes meeting, if it happens, will focus on the status and potential release of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea decades ago, a diplomatic breakthrough that could reverse Kishida's faltering domestic poll numbers, according to the report.
The talks could have the added benefit of opening a rare official line between Pyongyang and Washington, via U.S. treaty ally Tokyo. But Kishida's push also could offer some leverage to China, observers told the FT, with discussions said to be conducted via back channels in Beijing.
The Chinese foreign ministry didn't immediately answer calls seeking comment.
Kishida, who is due at the White House in April for a state visit, told Japan's parliament last week that it was "extremely important" to build ties with the senior leadership in North Korea.
The regime's military maneuvers, including Kim's frequent weapons tests, have drawn condemnation from Japan as well as South Korea—another U.S. ally—both of which have drawn closer to the United States to shore up regional security on the Korean Peninsula.
Discussions about a possible Japan-North Korea leaders' summit were so sensitive that Tokyo had yet to inform Washington, the FT said. A U.S. official told the newspaper that Japan would be expected to consult South Korea, whose president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has taken a harder line on the North than did his predecessor.
Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, was quoting as saying: "The North Koreans are playing games with the Japanese and the South Koreans, hoping to drive a wedge between them by feeding Seoul's fears that Tokyo could do a deal with Pyongyang behind its back."
The U.S. State Department and North Korea's embassy in Beijing didn't immediately respond to written requests for comment before publication.
Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told an episode of the War on the Rocks podcast posted on Tuesday that the Biden administration remained "open to dialogue" with Kim's government, noting there was no communication between the two sides at present.
In recent years, former President Donald Trump came closest to resolving long-running tensions on the peninsula. Trump and Kim last met in Hanoi in early 2019 for talks on nuclear disarmament in exchange for easing U.S. sanctions. Their second summit eventually collapsed.
Kim's regime has only become more isolated, shutting its borders for more than two years during the COVID-19 pandemic and last year test-firing a record number of ballistic missiles—all meant as warnings for the growing alliance between the U.S., Japan and South Korea.
Long-time North Korea watchers fear Kim may be preparing to launch at least a limited war on the peninsula. Many expect Pyongyang to resume nuclear weapons testing before long.
Kishida raised the issue of Japanese abductees at a press event last May. "I am determined to face Kim Jong Un directly myself, without any preconditions," the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper quoted him as saying.
In 2002, North Korea admitted to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1960s and 1970s. Five people and their families were later released, but Pyongyang claimed the others had died.
Tokyo said at least 17 Japanese nationals were taken and it has been trying to verify the status of its remaining citizens in the Northeast Asian country.
Christopher Johnstone, a former White House official and now a Japan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, D.C., told the FT: "Japan's desire to make progress on the abductions issue is understandable and urgent, given the age of the affected families, but it's a fraught exercise."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
