As of: February 16, 2024, 9:30 p.m
By: Sven Hauberg
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Kim Yo-jong, the sister of dictator Kim Jong-un, has promoted new ties with Japan, according to state media.
But there is a huge obstacle: the unknown fate of Japanese hostages in North Korea.
Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un, is notorious for her unforgiving rhetoric;
her biographer describes her as a “nuclear despot” and “the most powerful woman in the world.”
On Thursday, however, Kim Yo-jong, number two in North Korea, was surprisingly conciliatory.
And of all things in the direction of Japan, the archenemy of the isolated dictatorship.
Kim said in a press statement that she could imagine a “new common future” with the neighboring country, according to the state news agency KCNA.
Kim responded to a move by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Kishida announced earlier this month that he was seeking a meeting with dictator Kim Jong-un.
Addressing the Japanese parliament, Kishida said it was "extremely important for me to take the initiative to build relationships at the highest level."
Japan must “not waste any time,” said the prime minister.
As the
Financial Times
reported, citing government officials in Washington and Tokyo, Kishida wanted to use the meeting to secure the release of Japanese hostages who have been held in North Korea since the 1970s and 1980s.
Tokyo claims that North Korea is still preventing twelve Japanese citizens from leaving the country;
According to Pyongyang, eight of the alleged hostages have already died and the other four never set foot in North Korea.
North Korea last released five kidnapped Japanese people in 2002.
Kim Yo-jong, seen here on a visit to Russia last September, is the most powerful woman in North Korea.
© Yuri Smityuk/Imago
Japan and North Korea: last meeting 20 years ago
The US supports Kishida's plans to visit North Korea.
“On the American side, we have made it clear that we are open to dialogue with the North Koreans without preconditions, and I think that also applies to our like-minded partners and our close allies,” said U.S. special envoy for human rights issues in North Korea, Julie Turner, on Wednesday in Tokyo.
If Fumio Kishida does meet Kim Jong-un, it would be the first meeting between a Japanese prime minister and a North Korean leader in 20 years.
Kim Yo-jong assessed Kishida's speech as "positive if it were based on his real intention to boldly break free from the shackles of the past and promote relations between North Korea and Japan."
However, that is just her “personal perspective”;
North Korea's leadership has “no interest” in contacting Tokyo.
Kim also stated that the kidnapping issue had “already been resolved.”
Kim Yo-jong also defended the weapons tests that North Korea has been carrying out for months and which Japan has always sharply criticized.
This is North Korea's “legitimate right to self-defense,” said Kim.
Pyongyang has conducted at least five cruise missile tests since the start of the year and reported testing an anti-ship missile as recently as Thursday.
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Kim Jong-un is also sending a signal to Japan
Kim Yo-jong's statement is the second conciliatory signal towards Japan to come from Pyongyang this year.
At the beginning of January, dictator Kim Jong-un expressed his condolences to the Japanese government and those affected by the severe earthquake in which more than 200 people died on New Year's Day.
Japan and North Korea do not have official diplomatic relations.
The Korean peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, during which time countless Koreans were forced into forced labor and Korean women were also abused as sex slaves by the Japanese occupiers.
For decades, this dark chapter in Japanese history also made rapprochement between Tokyo and Seoul difficult;
However, under the conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, the two countries have recently moved towards each other again.
In addition, South Korea and Japan strengthened their alliance with the USA.
In addition to the threat from Pyongyang, the background is also China's increasingly aggressive behavior in the region.