What is the best way for Japan and North Korea to resolve the abduction issue?

I don't know but I am sick of hearing about it. My gut feeling is that Megumi Yokota and the others died a long time ago. Unfortunately, their families can't accept that without conclusive proof, so the issue goes around and around. I feel sorry for Yokota's parents being trotted out at press conferences and being used as political pawns.

Well if I had a family member abducted by another country and never knew what happened to them, for sure I'll be bitter and hope there's some resolution or at the least a definitive answer. It's not like Japan's the only country where its citizens have disappeared in another country and people will spend decades and longer trying to find answers, so hopefully something will happen soon.

War. Let's get it over with.

unconditional and unlimited financial and food aid for a fixed period..say 5 years.

Massive outward flows of Japanese money, both via government accounts and via the pachinko winnings ship. In return, North Korea can apologize profusely and offer Japanese students thousands of humanitarian working holidays.

Japan should abduct an equal number of North Koreans.

About 10 years ago Kim's son and family tried to sneak into Japan to go to Disneyland -- they were caught at Narita and can you believe we let them go -- that tells you how spineless the government is about solving the abduction issue.

They did that already.

I think Japan should give North Korea tons of money and help for business opportunities, start to set up dialogs between diplomats and eventually private citizens, get the internet working in North Korea, and so on. I think a lot of the information will come out in the long run.

North Korea to give up the hostages........If they died then give back the bodies/bones......... No excuse to hold on to bones if they are just that now is there.......mmmm

Make it compulsory for japan youths to learn korean, and korean youths to learn japanese. This will guarantee to resolve all communication breakdown issues, in 10 years or less.

Better yet, how about getting rid of article 9 and then put a boot to Kim and his friends from Korea? Mmmmm kick Kim Monchichi in the rear....Nice thought.......

This issue is not going away soon because Japanese politicians love to make it a nationalistic issue. NK is an easy target and if they fail to achieve their goals they can just blame NK even more. I'm sure if North Korea suddenly decided to give back the abductees a lot of Japanese people would be very disappointed.

get rid of fat ugly Kim Jong-il.

NK has very few friends left out there. Everyone is looking out for themselves. They realized this. The nk-gov realize they can make more money if they open up and let some cash roll in so they can get a big share of that pie. If they want to do this, they should do like JoeBigs said and return whatever people or remains they have, so they can be ID using DNA.

There's a lot of pressure to open up NK because its the last big asian frontier of low cost manufacturing, so I'm sure Bush wants to get his friends in there before the party is all over.

They should get NO unconditional and unlimited financial and food aid, just investment, education and real jobs........ if they just get free handouts they will be like Africa for the last 50 years.

The easiest way would be for Japan to give up on ever finding out what happened to the other people who disappeared and quit bugging North Korea about it.

But I'm afraid the only way to truly resolve the issue is to remove the Kim Jong Il regime from power.

Kim Il Jong is really a Big Monchichi dolls.....Only way to make him give up the hostages is to force China who is the real hands behind his strings.....

Cut off all ties and trade to N Korea until act like adults.

gogogo, thats been the strategy for the last few years, and the only result is that the NK-gov is systematically starving and freezing their ppl to death while they get all the foreign aid. Similar situation to Cuba only with -40C temps.

Opening up will be one of the few solutions. It did wonders for Khaddafi, who is now seen as a leader instead of a terrorist, and he got his economy back in line.

One thing, is that even with economic growth, NK people will never have enough power to get rid of their leader, at least not for a few decades. Economic reforms and democratic reforms are two different things, just look at China, who has had 25 years of consistent growth and only recently is becoming more democratic (but still a long way to go).

"Kim Il Jong is really a Big Monchichi dolls.....Only way to make him give up the hostages is to force China who is the real hands behind his strings....."

The best way is to forgive and forget these matters what happened 2~3 decades ago, and do u know how many Chinese & Korean were killed by Japanese another 2~3 decades before this?

to join the world and go with world

YeS i dont't agree with the action of Japanese,i think that they should sit down anf have a good talk.

The LDP looks up and a checks the calendar which states July 2008 not July 1978.

Call in Vince McMahon as a mediator. Perhaps you could have a "loser says sorry" pro wrestling event between Mr. Dopey (Fukuda) and the "Master of the Khaki Jumpsuit" (Kim Jong Hairpiece).

The best way is for North Korea to make a bit more effort to draw up a list, and admit openly when it cannot account for some of them, giving plausible reasons. Japan wants to see evidence of genuine effort.

The North obviously don't like the idea that police investigations and lawsuits may follow, which suggests to me that some of those who were involved are still in power.

One further problem is that South Korea has many more missing alleged abductees waiting in the wings, so quite probably N Korea doesn't want to open the Pandora's Box again. They certainly quickly shut the lid again fairly quickly last time.

remove Kim from power in NK, and remove the LDP from power in japan...both permanently

I disagree with all those people who say Japan should give huge amounts of financial aid to North Korea. Japan doesn't own the North Koreans anything (except a better apology for colonization). North Korea's government should grow up and return the abductees or their bodies. Japan in return should provide food aid to the North Korean people as a gesture of good will. As for Japanese studying Korean as a mandatory second language, that's a terrible idea. Japanese are having enough trouble with English which is a much more important language from a global political and economic standpoint.

For crying out loud, this is a regime that let 500,000 of its OWN women and children starve rather than admit its incompetence at taking care the country and the Japanese are trying to figure out how to pressure them to deal with 25 Japanese people it kidnapped three decades ago? As long as we're going to be stubbornly unrealistic, will the Japanese invent a time machine, not bomb Pearl Harbor and keep the US out of WWII?

The Japanese need to let this go, they can't bribe or coerce NK into acting decent or it would have happened when its own people were dying. Sometimes people do bad crap to you and there is no acknowledgment and no closure. Go ask the Education Director and Mayor of Shimonoseki, they seem to know how to deal with it when its the Japanese giving someone else the business.

The best way is to forgive and forget these matters what happened 2~3 decades ago, and do u know how many Chinese & Korean were killed by Japanese another 2~3 decades before this?

Hah? Well if history serves me right there was a war happening ways back when. Also I dont believe the CCP nor their rabid puppy known as SK or NK have forgotten the war.

Also I dont think there was a war happening when the NK terrorist state kidnapped those Japanese citizens....

Republic of China Republic of China[9] 16,200,000

Chinas death toll also includes those Killed fighting their civil war. Its a little known fact but China was in a civil war. So not all those killed can be blamed on the Japanese even those the CCP would lead you to believe that. China has a darn good habit of wiping out its own people.

Imperial Japan 2,700,000

Korea 378,000

Also not all those deaths can also be blamed on the Japanese. Dont know if you know this, buuuuuut many Koreans were fight WITH the Japanese.

Let Kim learn from the Japanese tradition of honor in suicide. Put that Makarov 9mm pistol firmly against your temple and squeeze the trigger ... boom! A better Korean peninsula for all!

My apologies to the families of those abducted or think they were but Jpn has to let this go, its gone next to no where & I doubt it will in the near future.

I mean just imagine if every country acted like Jpn is wrt abductees after WWII it wud take thousands of years to have a slight shot at getting thngs sorted.

Sorry Jpn, you just have to let it slip slide away, you basically have no choice anyway, I mean what can Jpn do if it really wants to push this. If Jpn were to screw up the nuke talks a lot of countries wud be totally pissed!

And the real kicker is Jpn has done such a horrible job dealing with its own ugly history yet wante the entire world to back it 100% on a few abductees.........

Again I feel sorry for families involved but not much if anything is going to happen regarding this issue, sorry its all but done, sad but done

My apologies to the families of those abducted or think they were but Jpn has to let this go, its gone next to no where & I doubt it will in the near future.

Japan rarely if ever asserts herself, she has to put her foot down somewhere and say enough is enough.

RofT, for the record, I was being sarcastic when I recommended massive aid. I do believe however that the abduction issue can never be separated from the broader issues including NK stability, so large flows of money are really the price paid for getting a little truth and reconciliation. If not, they should drop it. In fact, the GOJ had successfully kept the issue off the radar for years until a Diet member decided to make a career play out of it. The genie got out of the bottle and it ain't going back in, except gently and slowly.

forget about it, just like the Japanese forgot about the Comfort women.

What good does it do NK, just give them back. Japan needs a better strategist. However, we are talking about a crazy man in charge of NK.

Hi, Mr JoeBigs:

let's play a game: suppose an angry N Korean just change couple words to rewrite your openion as following:

"Kim Il Jong is really a Big Monchichi dolls.....Only way to make him give up the hostages is to force China who is the real hands behind his strings....."

to

"Jp gov is really a Big Monchichi dolls.....Only way to make him give up the hostages is to force US who is the real hands behind his strings....."

How do u think about it? so, forget about China. and no matter u like it or not, Korea will be Japan's neighbor for next thousands of years. even S Korean is not very happy about Japan, isn't it? what else except 'Forgive' can u do?

I agree with the "give it up" approach. Yes it is very hard for the families who suffered the loss of their loved ones, and for them I grieve as well.

But Japan does not have the high moral ground--in fact, their "dilemma" is entirely self-imposed.

First, Japan needs to admit that the issue is nothing more than an internal political issue to feed the weekly rumor magazines and to give the Opposition something to yell about in Parliament.

Second, it apparently feels morally good for the average Japanese on the street to have something to hold against a country that it occupied (and brutalized) within the living memory of many many people. The logic is classic xenophobia, and it goes like this: "If I can find the bad things about my neighboring country, I can justify that they are unworthy of my concern, and I can feel better about the bad things my father's and grandfather's generation did to them."

Japan has the money and the food to keep 100,000 people in North Korea from starving to death next winter. Why should they stomp their feet like little children regarding, what, 25 Japanese who were abducted 30 years ago? The necessary aid for North Korea is a perfect opportunity to pay for some of the hardship that Japan inflicted on the Koreans in the 20th century, and to mend fences with both North and South Korea. Why should they pass up such a perfect opportunity to show that the Japanese people are a compassionate people?

why peoples allways go back to pass in mind,did you knew that Japanese also did as North Korea,

Why should they pass up such a perfect opportunity to show that the Japanese people are a compassionate people?

I like Japan, and I have nothing against Japanese people. But as a purely objective observation, making the first move to be more charitable or upstanding than the other guy is NOT what this society is about. This is a country where children are not taught "do unto others as you would have done to you" or "turn the other cheek," but rather "you gotta take care of your own" and it shows. I'm not Christian, but let's face it, if the Good Samaritan had been Japanese, the poor guy by the roadside would have died of thirst.

That is the funniest statement yet....The Japanese are about hospitality and taking care of your guest. Now what part of Japan are you in?????? I myself have been all over and right now live in Tokyo. Wait, do you have two heads? Is that why you are shunned?

Very odd statement to say the least, to be honest it sounds as if you are talking about America rather than Japan.

The Bigs

The Japanese are polite. They are friendly to people they are trying to impress. That is very different from being charitable.

What is the best way for Japan and North Korea to resolve the abduction issue?

The best way is for the 6way talks to reach a settlement over the nuclear issue. With the settlement, the latent emotions of the past wars can be addressed. The problems w/ the past can at least be addressed in a more calm manner, rather than saber rattling and constant "gut checks".

I have no illusions to the seriousness of the 6way talks.

Nothing sort of an all-out annihilation of the DPRK will suffice. It then needs to be rebuilt as an economic colony of the west.

& party talks is going real well. Bush bends over and China gives it to him. Russia does not have a clue, Japan wants votes, NK wants food, SK wants to be NK.......

Dont think this one work.......

Japan needs to get rid of article 9 and build up. Some shacking of boots will loosen Kim`s grip and the hostages will be released.

BTW those people are HOSTAGES they are not an abduction issue. They have names they are human....

To remove someones humanity is a way to make other forget who they were. If people stop calling this an abduction issue and start hitting with a more harsh word, like HOSTAGE issue. Maybe the Japanese gov will take note.

The best way would be for one or both of them to simply releash the people. period. they can hold talks about their differences later. One should take the lead and do it.