Published on July 15, 2019.
This chapter critically examines Hitoshi Tanaka’s diplomacy toward North Korea, especially his handling of the abductee investigation results during Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s 2002 visit to Pyongyang and the death notifications concerning Megumi Yokota and others.
It questions Tanaka’s claim that his diplomacy prioritized rescuing the abductees, and asks whether he placed normalization of diplomatic relations above the victims’ human rights and Japan’s national sovereignty.

July 15, 2019.
Mr. Tanaka emphasizes that when preparing Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2002 visit to North Korea, he was conducting diplomacy that prioritized rescuing the abductees, but that is a lie.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Hitoshi Tanaka’s betrayal of the abductees.
The recent spread of plot-like information, apparently being carried out by North Korean operative agencies, claiming that Megumi and the others are dead, and the proposal advocated by Mr. Tanaka and others to establish a liaison office in North Korea and conduct a joint investigation, are two sides of the same coin.
They are.
Do Diet member Seishiro Eto and others, and Mr. Tanaka, realize the danger of their own words and actions?
In lectures and magazine essays, Mr. Tanaka criticizes Prime Minister Abe’s diplomacy, saying that it panders to domestic nationalism, takes an entirely hard-line stance, has achieved no results, and should make use of professional diplomats.
I cannot help feeling a strong sense of incongruity about Mr. Tanaka’s criticism of Abe.
Mr. Tanaka emphasizes that when preparing Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2002 visit to North Korea, he was conducting diplomacy that prioritized rescuing the abductees, but that is a lie.
On September 17 of that year, before the summit meeting was held, Mr. Tanaka received from the North Korean side the results of its investigation into the abductees, stating that “five are alive, eight are dead, and there are no others,” and without carrying out any confirmation work at all, had death notifications delivered to the families waiting in Tokyo in the form of “Your daughter has died.”
Many of the families, after being told that “careful confirmation work is being conducted” and made to wait for several hours, then heard the death notifications, and at that moment they ended up believing the deaths.
The next morning, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe, who had accompanied the delegation to Pyongyang at the time, visited the lodging of the Association of the Families of Victims and the Rescue Association, and told us that the Japanese side had not carried out confirmation of the deaths, and that North Korea had merely reported them as dead.
We held an emergency press conference and appealed that the deaths had not been confirmed, and that we wanted the terms “the dead” and “bereaved families” not to be used.
Without that, many citizens would have believed the death theory and would have supported normalization of diplomatic relations.
In order to achieve a personal diplomatic accomplishment, namely normalization of diplomatic relations, Mr. Tanaka tried to make the Japanese public believe, without verification, that Megumi Yokota and the others were dead.
Also, when the five abductees returned to Japan, even though they had secretly conveyed their decision to remain in Japan and wait for their children, he still insisted that the five be sent back to North Korea.
I cannot help suspecting that Mr. Tanaka regards what he calls diplomacy as more important than the human rights of the victims and the sovereignty of the state.
This article continues.