Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list: 

HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said.

However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi Haraguchi said Wednesday night.

“They said they had done all they could, and therefore it was meaningless to have any more talks,” Haraguchi said.  [Yomiuri Shimbun]

For a good summary of the dozens of cases in which the North Korean government  is suspected of abducting Japanese, see this document.  See this  post for a summary of South Koreans who are held hostage; this article for third-country nationals held hostage, and this  post for the story of the Rev. Kim Dong Shik, a South Korean citizen and U.S. lawful permanent resident alien believed to have been abducted from China to North Korea while helping North Korean refugees.   A letter  signed by Henry Hyde, Richard Durbin, Dennis Hastert,  and Barack Obama, among others, said the following:

We, therefore, wish to inform the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that we will NOT support the removal of your government from the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism until such time, among other reasons, as a full accounting is provided to the Kim family regarding the fate of the Reverend Kim Dong-Shik following his abduction into North Korea five years ago.

I wonder if anyone will ask Candidate Obama about that letter he signed, and if that’s still his opinion.  The “international community” has not agreed on how to define terrorism.  Here is the U.S. statutory definition of terrorism:

(1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that –
                  (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
                  (B) appear to be intended –
                            (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
                             (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
                            (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
                  (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;

Admittedly, this fits better in some cases than others.  Kim Dong Shik’s kidnapping probably was intended to intimidate or coerce, although the kidnapping of  citizens off the streets of their home towns to staff a charm school for spies is just too bizarre a thing for the law to have contemplated.  And in fact, the State Department has cited the abduction of Japanese citizens when designating North Korea as a terror sponsor.

If the law isn’t quite clear, the political calculus is.  Politically, this behavior is indefensible, and thankfully,  “soft-on-terror” remains unfashionable.  One thing you can’t accuse our State Department of is ignoring intense pressure from major trading partners.  If Japan decides to make a major issue of this — and I predict it will — then  the Pyongyang Express  may reach stall speed in very short order.  You will recall that even China recently called for North Korea to account for and return Japanese abductees, without mentioning that at least one Chinese national is thought to have been abducted, and that North Korean capture teams operate on Chinese soil.  South Korea even caught Yoo Young-Hwa, one of the North Korean agents who has admitted helping to abduct Kim Dong Shik.