The North Korean abduction issue: emotions, securitisation and the reconstruction of Japanese identity from ‘aggressor’ to ‘victim’ and from ‘pacifist’ to ‘normal’

Abstract

After Kim Jong-il's confession in 2002 that North Korean agents had abducted thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea has become the most detested country in Japan, and the normalisation of bilateral relations has been put on the back burner. The abduction issue has taken precedence in Japan even over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It has also grossly overshadowed the atrocities for which Imperial Japan was responsible in the 20th century. Why has there been such strong emphasis on an issue that could be disregarded as comparatively ‘less important’? This article understands the ascendency of the abduction issue as the epitome of an identity shift under way in Japan – from the identity of a curiously ‘peaceful’ and inherently ‘abnormal’ state, to that of a more ‘normal’ one. The differentiation of North Korea as ‘abnormal’ emphasises Japan's own (claim to) ‘normality’. Indeed, by incarnating the perils of Japan's own ‘pacifist’ ‘abnormality’, which has been so central to the collective sense of Japanese ‘Self’ in the post-war period, the abduction issue has become a very emotional argument for Japan's ‘normalisation’ in security and defence terms. The transformation from ‘abnormal’ to ‘normal’ is further enabled by Japan trading places with North Korea in the discourse, so that Japan is defined as ‘victim’ (rather than former aggressor) and North Korea as ‘aggressor’ (rather than former victim). What is at stake here is the question whether Japan is ‘normalising’ or ‘remilitarising’, and the role of the abduction issue discourse in enabling such foreign and security policy change.

Keywords:

• abduction issue
• emotion
• identity
• Japan
• North Korea
• securitisation

Acknowledgements

For useful comments on earlier drafts of this article, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Robert Boynton, Alexander Bukh, Amy Catalinac, Anthony DiFilippo, Björn Jerdén, Karl Gustafsson, Sebastian Maslow, Paul O’Shea, Hidekazu Sakai, Jens Sejrup, Michael Strausz, Shogo Suzuki, Marie Söderberg, Taku Tamaki, Cecilia Åse and one anonymous reviewer.

Notes

1. North Korea claims that it abducted 13 Japanese nationals; five were returned in 2002 and eight are dead. The Japanese government's official figure has since 2006 been seventeen, but in June 2014 it presented North Korea with a list of 470 persons whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose disappearances might be linked to North Korean abductions. Of these 77 were ‘strongly suspected’ to have been abducted.

2. Linus Hagström's interview with Hirasawa Katsuei, Tokyo 10 December 2013.

3. E-mail correspondence with Murao Tatsuru of COMJAN, 16 June 2014.

4. Unless otherwise indicated, all Internet pages referred to in this article could be accessed on 19 June 2014.