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 Japan will lift travel curbs to and from North Korea and end
restrictions on the amount of money that can be sent or brought to
the impoverished North without notifying Japanese authorities. It
will also allow port calls by North Korean ships for humanitarian
purposes.
The sanctions to be lifted are separate from those imposed by Japan
and other U.N. members after Pyongyang's first nuclear test in 2006
that prohibit U.N. member states from arms trade with Pyongyang and
from financial transactions that facilitate such trade.
"This is just a start," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has made the
fate of the abductees a focus of his political career, told
reporters. "We will make every effort to achieve a complete
resolution of this issue."
Easing the sanctions will likely have only a minimal economic
impact, but it could be a first step towards repairing long-chilled
ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang. The decision comes at a time of
persistent international concern about the volatile North's nuclear
and missile programs.
Abe said the government had determined that North Korea took an
unprecedented step in establishing a new entity to investigate all
Japanese nationals involved.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, however, told reporters
separately that Abe was not considering a visit to Pyongyang in the
autumn, as some media have speculated.
The Nikkei business daily said on Thursday that North Korea had
handed Japan the names of at least 10 of its nationals said to be
living in that country, including some of those believed to have
been abducted.
Proof that some of the missing Japanese are alive would almost
certainly boost Abe's popularity. Suga however said the government
had not received any report of such a list.
OUT OF STEP?
The lifting of the sanctions are to be formalized by the cabinet on
Friday.
Japan has stressed that its decision does not mean it is out of step
with the United States and South Korea on dealing with Pyongyang.
But Seoul - while expressing hope for an early resolution to the
abductions issue - urged Japan to make sure that its actions were in
line with international moves.
"This government wants to stress that ... any action taken by the
Japanese government related to this must be within the bounds that
do not compromise the framework of international cooperation on the
North Korean nuclear and missile issues such as between South Korea,
the United States and Japan," the South Korean foreign ministry
said.
Some analysts said cracks were starting to show.
"It seems to me that it's going to become harder and harder for the
U.S. to pretend that everything is fine in terms of coordination on
DPRK (North Korea) policy as Japan moves down this road," Joel Wit,
a former U.S. State Department official and visiting fellow at the
U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies in Washington, told Reuters in an e-mail.
North Korea agreed in May to reopen the probe into the status of
Japanese abductees, who were taken in the 1970s and 1980s to help
train spies. In return, Japan promised to lift some of its sanctions
when the investigation was launched.
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Pyongyang, however, has a history of reneging on deals. But some
relatives of the Japanese abductees said they hoped this time might
be different. "Unlike the past probe, the coming investigation may
produce some effects," said Shigeru Yokota, the father of Megumi
Yokota, who was kidnapped in 1977 at the age of 13 on her way home
from school and has become a sort of poster-girl for the abductees.
Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens and
five abductees and their families later returned to Japan.
North Korea said the remaining eight were dead, including Yokota,
and that the issue was closed, but Japan pressed for more
information about their fate and others that Tokyo believes were
also kidnapped.
In 2008, Pyongyang promised to reopen the probe of Japanese
abductees but it never followed through. It also reneged on promises
made in multilateral talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons
program and declared the negotiations had ended.
Some critics have said that North Korea already knows the fate of
the missing Japanese and that the promised reinvestigation was
largely a diplomatic ploy.
Even after the planned lifting of part of Japan’s sanctions against
North Korea, Tokyo will still have a ban in place on export to and
imports from North Korea, on flights to Japan of chartered planes
from North Korea and on port calls by North Korean ships for
non-humanitarian purposes.
Analysts said the sanctions easing was unlikely to trigger a flood
of cash to North Korea from Japan. Ethnic Koreans living were once
an important source of such funds, but the flow had ebbed even
before Japan tightened reporting requirements.
"Basically, Japan's planned steps are little more than nominal ...
They are not substantive. They are not something that would benefit
North Korea greatly," said Hajime Izumi, a professor at the
University of Shizuoka. "There is no telling whether they can make
substantial progress from here."
(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Jack Kim
in Seoul; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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