[USFK Forums] Chronology of Japan-North Korea events related to abductions [Kyodo]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Monday, December 26, 2005

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Sunday December 25, 6:50 PM
Chronology of Japan-North Korea events related to abductions

(Kyodo) _ Key events related to officially recognized or alleged abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korea:

May 1997 -- Japan's National Police Agency recognizes 10 Japanese as victims of abduction by North Korean agents.

2002

March 11 -- The NPA adds a Japanese woman to its list of abductees.

Sept. 17 -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visits Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admits that 13 Japanese, including nine on the NPA list, were abducted by North Korean agents. North Korea says five of them are alive and eight are dead. Koizumi and Kim sign the Pyongyang Declaration calling for efforts to normalize diplomatic ties.

Oct. 8 -- The NPA adds four people to its official list of abduction victims, bringing the total to 15. Three are among the 13 the North admitted to abducting.

Oct. 15 -- Five abductees return to Japan.

Oct. 29-30 -- Japan and North Korea hold the 12th round of talks in Kuala Lumpur on normalizing diplomatic ties.

2003

Aug. 27-29 -- The first round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program takes place in Beijing.

2004

Feb. 11-13 -- Senior Japanese Foreign Ministry officials visit Pyongyang for talks on the abduction issue.

Feb. 25-28 -- The second round of six-nation talks is held in Beijing.

May 22 -- Koizumi makes his second trip to Pyongyang, meets North Korean leader Kim. Koizumi returns to Japan with five family members of repatriated abductees. Kim promises to reinvestigate the fates of 10 Japanese on Tokyo's list of abduction victims.

June 14 -- Japan enacts a law that allows the government to ban foreign ships considered a threat to public security, apparently targeting the Mangyongbong-92, the only ferry sailing between Japan and North Korea.

June 23-26 -- The third round of the six-nation talks is held in Beijing.

July 9 -- Hitomi Soga, one of the five Japanese abductees repatriated in October 2002, is reunited in Jakarta with her American husband Charles Jenkins, a U.S. soldier who had defected to North Korea, and their two North Korean-born daughters.

July 18 -- Soga's family arrives in Tokyo from Jakarta.

Aug. 2 -- A private group probing possible cases of North Korean abductions says Susumu Fujita, who went missing on Feb. 7, 1976, at age 19 in Saitama Prefecture, was kidnapped by North Korea.

Aug. 5 -- Japan decides to send North Korea 125,000 tons of food and $7 million worth of medical aid later that year as part of humanitarian aid Koizumi had promised Kim at their May summit.

Aug. 11-12 -- Japan and North Korea hold their first working-level meeting in Beijing on abduction issues. Pyongyang gives a verbal report on its reinvestigation into the 10 cases on Tokyo's list of abduction victims. North Korea acknowledges Japan's request for information on Fujita.

Sept. 25-26 -- Japan and North Korea hold their second working-level talks in Beijing. Pyongyang gives a verbal report on its new findings in the reinvestigation, Tokyo says they are insufficient.

Nov. 9-14 -- Japan and North Korea hold their third working-level talks in Pyongyang. Japanese delegates talk with a North Korean police official in charge of the reopened investigations, interview people who apparently know about them, visit places where the abductees are said to have stayed and obtain items related to them.

Nov. 15 -- Japanese delegates return to Tokyo from Pyongyang with photos, medical records, books and other materials related to Japanese abductees as well as cremated remains that North Korea says belong to abductee Megumi Yokota. North Korea repeats its claim that eight of the 10 abductees are dead and the other two never entered its territory.

Dec. 8 -- Japan concludes through analysis, including DNA tests, that the cremated remains are not Yokota's.

2005

Jan. 24 -- North Korea rejects Japan's DNA analysis and demands that Japan punish those involved in what it calls a fabrication.

April 27 -- The Japanese government puts Minoru Tanaka, who went missing in 1978, on a list of Japanese citizens who Tokyo officially recognizes as having been abducted by North Korea. Tanaka, a noodle shop employee from Kobe, is the 16th person to be put on the list.

July 19 -- Koizumi expresses hope of establishing diplomatic ties between Japan and North Korea before his term as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party ends in September 2006.

July 26 -- The fourth round of the six-nation talks begins in Beijing.

Sept. 13 -- Delegates to the six-way talks resume the fourth round of the negotiations in Beijing.

Sept. 19 -- Delegates to the six-way talks adopt their first joint statement which commits North Korea to abandon all its nuclear programs, with five other countries offering the North energy aid and security guarantees in return. Japan and North Korea agree to resume bilateral talks.

Nov. 3-4 -- Japan and North Korea hold bilateral talks in Beijing. Japan proposes to formally resume negotiations on normalizing ties while handling two other issues -- North Korea's past abductions of Japanese nationals and the country's nuclear programs -- in parallel through separate working groups.

Nov. 9 -- The fifth round of the six-nation talks starts in Beijing.

Nov. 11 -- The fifth round of the negotiations goes into recess. A chairman's statement issued by China says the parties confirm their commitment to implementing the joint statement adopted in September to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and agree to draw up a concrete plan to that end.

Dec. 24-25 -- Japan and North Korea hold bilateral talks in Beijing. The two countries agree to set up three working groups for parallel discussions on diplomatic normalization, the North's past abductions of Japanese nationals and the country's nuclear and missile programs.