JAPAN: North Korean Wives’ Visit Brings Hope, Pain

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 17 1997 (IPS) - Last week’s visit here by 15 elderly Japanese women married to North Koreans was largely a sentimental homecoming for the group, which had been separated from their families for nearly four decades.

But the visit which ended Friday, the first since these women left Japan 36 years ago to join their North Korean husbands, also signaled improving relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang, which have yet to conclude a peace treaty. To many, it meant a softening on the part of North Korea’s Stalinist regime.

Tokyo media paid close attention to the visit of the Japanese women. Television networks showed some of the elderly women, who were greeted by their relatives in remote parts of Japan, paying respects to their parents’ graves and meeting old friends.

The majority had requested anonymity, explaining they wanted their visit to be a quiet homecoming.

For many Koreans in Japan who have relatives in North Korea, the visit was viewed as a symbol of hope. “There are so many Koreans who left Japan and now live in terrible conditions in North Korea. Let us hope that the visit will pave the way for more of them to come to see us,” said Kim Min Ha, a Japanese of North Korean descent.

“North Korea is making a gesture and Tokyo is seizing the opportunity to work towards closer ties,” explained Keio University Professor Masao Okongi, an expert on the Korean peninsula.

Thousands of Japanese-born Koreans and Japanese women living in North Korea have been largely shut off from the families they left behind in the years after the division of the Korean peninsula.

Only now, after intense talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang over the last few years, have opportunities emerged for them to return to Japan for a visit.

The women were among the 1,831 Japanese women who went to North Korea to join their husbands under a Red Cross repatriation programme between 1959 and 1984.

The programme, sanctioned by the Japanese government, had the women change their nationality to North Korean, a step that stripped them of all ties to their motherland, according to Japanese laws at that time.

Official documents in Japan reveal that Tokyo, struggling to develop its war-torn economy then, was reluctant to fork out the 16.7 million U.S. dollars in annual government allowance for the rehabilitation of Koreans living in Japan.

The Japanese government, which had brought over large numbers of Koreans during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean pensinsula, thus encouraged them to leave the country.

Analysts say the people-to-people contact marked by last week’s visit cannot but help official ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang, and have in fact been cited by both sides.

While the Japanese wives of North Koreans embarked on a sentimental journey back home, a Japanese delegation was in North Korea on a mission aimed at paving the way for a resumption of negotiations on the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Japan and North Korea began negotiations for normalising ties in 1991, but the talks broke off in November 1992 after Pyongyang turned down Tokyo’s demand for information about a Japanese women allegedly kidnapped by North Korean agents.

North Korea has branded the allegations “groundless” and asked Tokyo last week to refrain from raising this issue again.

This time, the two sides agreed to hold talks at normalising relations “as soon as possible” although no date was fixed. The agreement was reached in a meeting between members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its two allies, and the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Likewise, Japan pledged to donate to the United Nations 27 million U.S. dollars to help alleviate food shortages in North Korea.

This gesture is both political as well as humanitarian, one analyst said. “Politically, the message is that Japan wants to give financial aid to North Korea so that it won’t be left out of the current U.S.-North Korea diplomacy,” said a professor at the University of Osaka.

But while the North Korean wives’ visit helped thaw official ties, it also reopened deep wounds.

“The sight of these women brings back sad memories of the unhappy past between both countries. It also signifies the desperate conditions in North Korea and the enormous hill before us to improve relations in East Asia,” said Ko Il San, a Korean resident in Japan.

Some wives said their visit home was marred by hostility and exasperation. Some relatives did not want the wives’ Japanese names released for fear of embarrassment.

Kim Re Suk, whose family did not want her Japanese name to be revealed, said: “Before arrivng in Japan, I was looking forward to seeing Japanese relatives. But now it seems that people think we have committed a crime by marrying North Koreans and moving to our husbands’ countries.”