This is a repost of a chapter first published on June 4, 2018, under the title: “It is Sekiguchi’s Sunday Morning that still continues to employ a man who pours out remarks like these for the sake of the North’s Dear Leader.”
Drawing on a feature in the monthly magazine Seiron titled “Portraits of Japan’s Hollow Men: Hiroshi Sekiguchi,” the passage criticizes TBS’s Sunday Morning for consistently downplaying the abduction issue and favoring commentators sympathetic to North Korea.
In particular, it focuses on Kang Sang-jung’s remarks describing the abduction issue as a “political resource” and arguing that Japanese public opinion critical of North Korea should be changed, presenting them as evidence of the abnormal state of Japanese television commentary.

2019-03-04
Japanese public opinion that criticizes North Korea by taking up the North Korean nuclear issue and the abduction issue must be changed.
And yet nothing is said about the fact that resident Koreans were brought to Japan in the past.

I am reposting the chapter I published on 2018-06-04 under the title:
It is Sekiguchi’s Sunday Morning that still continues to use a man who pours out remarks like these for the sake of the Dear Leader of the North.
What follows is from a feature published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Seiron, in its series No. 18, “Portraits of Japan’s Hollow Men: Hiroshi Sekiguchi,” subtitled “Hiroshi Sekiguchi, the famous host of Sunday Morning, who cherishes ‘friendship’ with North Korea.”
All emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.

TBS’s Sunday Morning, mocked by people online as an “anti-Japan program” because of its frequent reporting that sides with both China and South Korea, caused trouble again in its April 29 broadcast.
On this program hosted by Hiroshi Sekiguchi, regular commentator Kang Sang-jung left the following astonishing remark.

“It has not been resolved in the thirty years since the abductions came to light.
The Abe administration has used it quite a lot as a political resource, but in the end no prospect was found, and only now has it finally come to this point.”

To have a man calmly make such statements on television, which uses the public airwaves.
Outwardly he sells the fact that he was from the University of Tokyo baseball team and that he is from Niigata Prefecture.
A friend of mine, a truly voracious reader, had seen through his laughter as bad laughter, laughter used to conceal the thing hidden in his heart.
And then Ōkoshi openly says on NHK’s Watch 9 that he respects this man, Kang Sang-jung, thereby showing himself to be a fool who has one hundred percent swallowed Kang Sang-jung’s lie that the Japanese people forcibly brought Koreans from the Korean Peninsula.
He calmly declared on Watch 9 that we had forcibly brought Koreans to Japan.
Even if Ōkoshi possesses nothing more than the foolish brain of a top exam-taker.
The fact that there appear to be a certain number of idiots within the University of Tokyo.
Who were taught such lies at university and believe them.
Is, for a national university, something beyond lamentable.

How many politicians other than Prime Minister Abe had truly faced this issue long before North Korea admitted the abductions?
To call it a “political resource” is excessively insulting.
I was left speechless.

Even within TBS, whose leftist coloring is strong, Sunday Morning stands out in the extremity of its pro-North Korea posture.
Especially this Kang Sang-jung, whom Sekiguchi makes such heavy use of.
As can be seen from his view that “normalization talks make only slow progress because of missiles and the ‘alleged abductions’” (Toward a Common House in Northeast Asia, Heibonsha).
He is a man who has even cast doubt on the very existence of the abduction issue and has continued to argue that Japan is merely picking a quarrel with North Korea.

There are also remarks such as,
“If Japan maintains an attitude of not supporting North Korea on the grounds of the abduction issue, it will become isolated from the international community, so it should provide economic assistance.”
At the Unification Policy Forum at Seoul National University on October 1, 2007.

And,
“Japanese public opinion that criticizes North Korea by taking up the North Korean nuclear issue and the abduction issue must be changed.
Saying nothing about the fact that resident Koreans were brought to Japan in the past, and speaking only about the Cold War-era abductions, is contradictory.
Even if the Yokota couple, Yokota Shigeru and Yokota Sakie, were sitting beside me, I could still say this.”
At a lecture on March 25, 2006, at the World Overseas Korean Traders Association.

There is no shortage of such outrageous statements.

He has consistently defended North Korea.

And it is Sekiguchi’s Sunday Morning that still continues to use a man who pours out such remarks for the sake of the Dear Leader of the North.
And that is hardly surprising, because this program itself has consistently ignored, or at least trivialized, the existence of the abduction issue right up to the present.

To be continued.