Earlier this week I noted that Condi Rice had told Japan that the resolution of the abductions issue was no longer an obstacle to the removal of North Korea from the US State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.Indicating just how serious this issue is to Tokyo, Yomiuri (article not online) reported yesterday that …
Tag: abductions issue
Alliance tension out in the open
The Asahi Shimbun's English edition printed a story today suggesting that US Secretary of State Rice told Japanese officials last month that resolving the abductions issue is not a precondition for the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.In previous posts such as this one, I suggested that Japan seems …
Asia’s Rip Van Winkle
Georgetown's Casimir Yost, director of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, was in Tokyo last week giving a series of talks. I saw him at the US Embassy's Tokyo American Center on Friday.In the course of his talk, Yost made an interesting point about how the US has been distracted from Asia by Iraq, …
Step back, Mr. Prime Minister
I want to call attention to Prime Minister Abe's email magazine from last week, in which he discusses seeing a performance by Noel Paul Stookey, onetime member of Peter, Paul, and Mary, of his new song "Song for Megumi," about Yokota Megumi, poster child of the abductions issue.Simply put, Abe's note shows just how far …
Tobias S. Harris 