The 6-party talks are still going on, of course:

At the opening ceremony of the six-way talks, which resumed after 13 months of suspension at the the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said concerned parties were required to have political will and make strategic decisions if they intended to make progress toward the denuclearization of the peninsula. He added that North Korea was fully prepared to do so.

…

But the North Korean chief delegate went on to say that he believed the United States and other participating nations should also be willing to make strategic decisions.

The delegates were again struck by Pyongyang’s unyielding stance.

By referring first to its readiness to make a strategic decision, a course of action U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had urged Pyongyang to take, North Korea showed a positive stance apparently aiming at preventing other nations from increasing pressure on Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program.

North Korea argued in the July 24 editorial of the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea, that the United States had transformed South Korea into a nuclear arsenal by bringing in various nuclear weapons. South Korea has denied the allegation that any nuclear weapons are deployed in the nation.

In February, Pyongyang declared it possessed nuclear weapons. Denuclearization of the peninsula means that Pyongyang’s own nuclear programs and nuclear weapons, and those held by the U.S. military stationed in South Korea, must be abandoned at the same time. North Korea therefore insists that the United States, which drove Pyongyang to develop its nuclear programs by bringing the weapons into South Korea, also should make a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Retaining this view, North Korea is able to argue that the two nations, as equal nuclear powers, can then proceed with direct negotiations.

Right…which means that the probability of the DPRK’s actually disarming (what leverage would it have left then–economic might?) is around zero.

Everyone seems to agree that it would be a bad idea for Japan to push the abductee issue at this week’s talks. Not everyone agrees on how the talks themselves could be “productive,” but perhaps it really is possible for a sort of Dilbert-ish chain of never-ending committees and conferences and inquiries and stuff to be established and kept lamely going until the DPRK actually does collapse.

Poor North Korea. All it wants is to get along with everybody, and then what do the democracies of the world go and do? Kim Il-sung’s people abduct a few Japanese citizens from moonlit walks on their own beaches, and a quarter-century later the Japanese are still freaking out about it. It’s not like it just happened yesterday, or anything. Can’t people focus on the big picture?

The DPRK’s Democratic Choson published statements on 23 July that, given that Japan plans to bring up the issue of Japanese abductees at the 6-party talks when they reopen for the fourth time in Beijing on 26 July, “Our definite feeling is that it is not necessary for us to sit in face-to-face meetings with Japan, given that it is determined to use its cunning to make a hindrance of itself at the 6-party talks.” The statements indicated yet again the DPRK’s position that it will not agree to direct talks with Japan for the duration of the meetings.

The CNN report is here. Check out the part about the flower. Good grief.

Secretary of State Rice was here yesterday to talk with Prime Minister Koizumi and Foreign Minister Machimura. (Japanese version)

“I recognize the importance of continuing to implement anti-terrorist measures,” Koizumi told Rice at their meeting in Tokyo.

The prime minister, however, made no mention of what his government plans to do later this year on the status of the Self-Defense Forces dispatched to Iraq. The basic plan for the SDF dispatch expires on Dec. 14.

…

Japan and the United States agreed they would seek “concrete progress” from Pyongyang toward abolishing its nuclear weapons development program during the six-way talks.

At a joint news conference held after their meeting, Machimura and Rice said their two countries confirmed agreement on three points concerning the six-way talks expected to start on July 27:

*Concrete progress is needed in the discussions;

*Japan and the United States want North Korea to deal with the issues seriously and constructively; and

*Coordination between Japan, the United States and South Korea is crucial.

Japan and the United States will hold a trilateral meeting on Thursday in Seoul with South Korea to synchronize their stances for the six-party talks in Beijing, the first since June last year.

The diplomat-speak in that passage is, BTW, just as exquisitely devoid of content in the Japanese as in the English (though at least the Japanese reporter knew not to use the word synchronize).

Everything else was basically a reaffirmation of diplomatic ties: the US supports Japan in its pressure on the DPRK to resolve the abductee issue, supports Japan in its push to become a permanent United Nations Security Council member (just not yet), and wants the beef import ban lifted.

Not many updates on Akihiko Saito, the presumed Japanese abductee in Iraq. The latest Nikkei report I’ve seen was posted this morning; it contributes no new information other than that his company believes, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, he may actually have been fatally wounded in the original attack on his convoy. The Mainichi‘s English version is here.

A Japanese national has been abducted in Iraq, as the Yomiuri‘s Cairo bureau appears to have found out from Reuters (whose current story on the subject is here). The Asahi gives his name as Akihito Saito.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs received word at 5:30 a.m. today from the British security firm Hart Security, Ltd., that Akihiko Saito (44), who was working as a consultant at its Iraq office, has been attacked and that his whereabouts are unknown.

The article says that the report was specifically received by the 対策本部 (taisaku-honbu: “measures [taken in response to a situation]” + “head office”), which is the division of Foreign Ministry headquarters that deals with reports of attacks on Japanese citizens abroad. It’s chaired directly by Nobutaka Machimura, the Foreign Minister. Machimura and the Ministry of Defense have stated that they have received no demands from the abductors and that there are no plans to change Japan’s Iraq policy in response.

The Asahi reports that the terrorist (“militant” if you’re just coming back from the Reuters link and need a minute to adjust) group Ansar al-Sunna has posted an image of Saito’s passport on its website and stated that he was seriously injured in an ambush on a vehicle that had just left the Assad US Army Base. Of the 17 people captured, including 12 Iraqis, all but Saito have been killed. (The way it’s phrase, it looks as if they were executed after capture, not killed in the attack on the vehicles itself.)

Even in death, Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota is getting no peace. The DPRK handed over a collection of bones said to be hers a while back. About a month ago, Japanese forensic experts determined that–surprise!–the North Koreans were lying. If I recall correctly, it was suggested that the bones received might not all be from the same person.

It’s taken the DPRK a month or so to respond, and its response, relayed through its state news organ, is, “The Japanese forensic report is a complete fabrication; a thorough fact-finding investigation into the fraud must be undertaken and the responsible parties severely punished.” Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machida replies, justifiably, that if the DPRK has accusations to make, it should make them through direct diplomatic communication.

Yokota’s first name, BTW, is officially written in kana: めぐみ. The meaning, tragically unfulfilled in her case, is “blessing.”

For a stretch there, I was remarking quite a bit on the repatriation of Hitomi Soga and the attempts to get her husband and daughters to Japan to live with her, largely because the developments weren’t getting much play at home and it wasn’t clear how things would pan out. I haven’t lost interest in the story, but I was kind of wary of reading the Time interview with Charles Jenkins, largely because Nancy Gibbs is often the reporter Time gives big-deal human interest stories to, and for some reason, her approach really tends to annoy me. So I know every man, woman, child, and ficus tree in the Western world has read the thing by now, but for the sake of completism, I’ll link it anyway.

It doesn’t really contain a whole lot of new information about Jenkins’s life in the DPRK. It was already known that he lived for years in a house with other American defectors and that they were tortured and assigned to beat each other up as punishment for disobedience. It was also known that the Jenkins-Soga family lived well for North Korea but was no more free than anyone else, and that their daughters were enrolled at the country’s most prestigious foreign language institute, where they would probably be trained to do some sort of espionage work.

The part about how he first got into North Korean hands, however, is new. (At least, I haven’t seen it narrated before.) While Jenkins is not an innocent party, his is a very sympathetic story, and it makes you glad that, at the very least, he and Soga had the comfort of falling in love with each other–I think I speculated a few months ago that theirs may have been a marriage of convenience, but it’s nice to be proved wrong–and starting a family. And that they’ve now been able to come to Japan and bring their daughters with them.

*******

BTW, there’s a push here in Japan again for sanctions against the DPRK, which has squandered the goodwill it earned by releasing Jenkins and (especially) his daughters by throwing together some bones and purporting that they’re the remains of another abductee, Megumi Yokota. The cabinet is not all of one mind on the matter. A nice detail is that the Minister of the Environment (whose name–dead serious, here–means Lily Littlepond!) was one of those who said essentially, “If we cooperate with the US, we can fry their ass!”

Another Mitsubishi Fuso vehicle has had clutch failure–though this time there was no accident. The shaft detached and caused the dumptruck involved to stop in the middle of the highway, though. It was a 1984 model and, thankfully, I suppose, had a clutch that was already under recall (thankfully because it means they haven’t discovered yet another defective part).

*****

For obvious reasons, Hitomi Soga and her family have gotten much of the attention. But there are other touching stories among the repatriated abductees from North Korea. Kaoru Hasuike will be allowed by the law department of Chuo University to return to his studies. Hasuike is 46; he was abducted while a junior home in Niigata Prefecture on vacation in 1978. He hasn’t decided whether to go back to classes or do distance learning–understandably, there are significant readjustments he’s still making.

*****

More darkly, two death row inmates were executed today; one was Mamoru Takuma, who went on a stabbing rampage in an elementary school near Osaka in 2001, killing 8 children. As they always do when Japan carries out an execution, human rights groups (and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations) are understandably protesting the lack of transparency in Japanese capital punishment. This Reuters story outlines things pretty well. Japanese executions take place when they’re least likely to dominate the news cycle, and there’s no prior warning. I’m not familiar enough with the way it all works to know whether the ability to appeal is really significantly curtailed; the part about not letting the families of those to be executed know until the same day does seem pretty harsh.

Of course, the reporter can’t resist ending this way:

Capital punishment has aroused little debate among Japanese, who are shown by polls to strongly support the death penalty, and occasional efforts to suspend or abolish it have made little headway.

But with Japan and the United States among a handful of advanced nations where the death penalty is carried out, questions are being raised and international pressure increased.

Unless I’m remembering wrong, a woman Minister of Justice, Ritsuko Nagao, was the one who signed the highest number of execution orders in a single year in recent history. I think it was six inmates in 1996, but I’m not finding confirmation. This was after a long stretch in which executions had been few and far between in Japan. Lately, I think two or three a year has been the norm.

It does not seem frivolous on 11 September to update the story of Hitomi Soga, a now-repatriated Japanese abductee to North Korea, and her husband Charles Jenkins, accused deserter from the US Army during the Korean War. Japan has a mutual-extradition treaty with the US, so there was a long series of negotiations over whether he would bring their two daughters to Japan so that the four of them could restart their lives here. Ultimately, the family was reunited in Indonesia and came to Japan to have Jenkins, who is said to be ill, admitted to one of the major research hospitals.

Japanese public sentiment is pulling hard for Jenkins to be permitted to settle with his wife in her hometown. The Japanese government, accordingly, pressed the US to show clemency. I don’t know how much that has affected Jenkins’s treatment–he just turned himself in–but I do know that it’s hard to imagine the following scenario surrounding an accused military deserter almost anywhere else in the world:

Details are not yet clear, but according to the US Army, pay calculated at the rate for an officer of Jenkins’ rank and years of service would amount to base pay of $2200 per month. Adding in housing and living allowances would bring the total to $3270.

[I’m snipping out the section that explains that he’s been advanced some cash already and will not be asked to repay any money even if found guilty.]

[I]n Camp Zama, where Soga and Jenkins’s family would be able to live together, there are, in addition to barracks, family housing, a school, and recreational facilities. Jenkins would also be free to use the 18-hole golf course and fishing pond.

Yeah, America’s the real world center of barbarous, unforgiving inhumanity, huh?

I haven’t had much to add to everyone else’s comments about the sort of people who would keep hundreds of children captive for days, with no water, in midsummer, and then bring the roof down on their heads. It does dominate the thoughts, though, especially in combination with other news this week.

South Korea has been doing lab tests with uranium enrichment. The results were apparently a small amount that was “close to” weapons grade. Now, if there’s going to be a headline that reads “—– May Be Close to Developing Nukes,” I’d much prefer that the —– be South Korea over some of the alternatives. (Additionally, the experiment was done four years ago, and the IAEA inspectors found no evidence it had been expanded upon since then.) And despite the clear potential for diplomatic problems that would result from the ROK’s developing nuclear weapons, with the DPRK less than a two-hour drive from Seoul, who could possibly blame it for wanting to do so?

I wonder, does North Korea get much play in the US media? Here, it’s in the news all the time. Some of the reasons for that are obvious: It’s nearby, so the potential for patrol boat skirmishes and things is high, and there’s some Japan-North Korea trade. But what you most memorably see (I’m talking over the last five years or so) on television are human interest stories about refugees. For a while there, it seemed as if there were a new Japanese wife of a North Korean escaping back here through China every Thursday. Often, she would tell the reporter, her voice and face distorted to protect her identity, about eating potatoes when there was no rice–a shocking deprivation to East Asians. And that was before the appalling Japanese abductee story broke and began dominating news coverage. Recently, the focus has also been more on diplomatic talks, particularly now that the six-way nattering over the DPRK’s nuclear program is doing the on-again-off-again thing.

And that leads to the other exposure you get to North Korea here: excerpts from its news broadcasts, usually when some higher-up has made an anti-Japanese remark or some trade issue or summit has been reported on. The North Korean TV technology is so antiquated it has to be seen to be believed. The microphones have that dead sound the local news from an unaffiliated station had in the ’80’s. There’s only one camera angle. And this creepy girl in traditional Korean costume (whose job is to grin like a lunatic and deliver fulsome praise about Kim Jong-il) often appears against a blue screen. And I mean just a blue screen, as if they’d forgotten to put in the background footage. In a humorous-but-not-funny way, it reminds you what riches we have: the lamest music video by the most faceless new pop-product non-talent in our world gets production values that are many times better than the broadcasts North Korea uses to remind citizens that they live in the perfect society.

I was going to say that this is all some comfort because, you know, if the DPRK can’t get it together to make a decent news broadcast, they probably can’t contrive something as tricky as nuclear warheads that detonate. But that’s ridiculous, because if there’s one thing all these types care about and will put every last resource into doing successfully, it’s wrecking things. The reasoning runs, If your way doesn’t produce a prosperous society that nurtures its citizens, don’t bother changing; just blow the opposition and their artifacts up (and don’t forget to torture the children while you’re at it) until there’s nothing left to stand as a rebuke to it. There’s no fate bad enough for such people, but the Russian authorities had the right idea in making them dead, even if it’s determined that they acted precipitously.