North Korea insulting Japan…

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, North Korea was accused of kidnapping thirteen of Japanese citizens.  After about a year, the North Koreans finally let the victims go, but only five was able to return safely back to Japan.  The rest was presumably dead.  Therefore, Japan cannot let go of that grudge.  On February 9, 2007, there was a conference regarding the international nuclear program.  Throughout the conference, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe couldn’t let go of the kidnapping issue.  North Korea accused Japan of trying to threaten the development of the international nuclear talks.  North Korea also stated that Japan should forget about the whole kidnapping situation.  North Korea than attacked Japan with many ugly words such as “it is ridiculous and disgusting that Japan, which is not even qualified to attend the talks, keeps saying that the abduction issue is a basic agenda.”  Japan does not want to build any relationships with North Korea after the kidnapping ordeal.  “Pledging not to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea until it ‘shows sincerity’ on the matter.”  Since Japan would not budge on the issue until North Korea shows some sort of compassion, it might disrupt the disarmament talks.  The disarmament talks has been an ongoing matter since August 2003. 

 With many nations still at odds end with each other, it is hard to compromise on any important subject matter.  We shouldn’t let those types of disagreement disrupt any solutions to any problems that might be problematic in the future.  North Korea, obviously, do not want to promote peace with Japan, which would be hard for any disarmament talks or any type of talks for that matter. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/09/nkorea.japan.ap/index.html

Japan and the International Whaling Commission

The International Whaling Commission held a meeting regarding the hunting of whales.  Many nations are anti-whaling, such as the United States, Britain, and Australia but they attended the meeting in order to change the policy of whaling.  Japan, on the other hand, doesn’t want to prohibit commercial whaling, but to administer it.  Japan kills hundred of whales every year, due to what they call “research”.  They declare that they use the whales to study the whale feeding habits and breeding.  They claim to use whales as scientific experiments, but many environmental groups feel that its just an excuse for whale hunting.  After the experiments, the Japanese would use the whale meat as food.  The Japanese explains that whale is an essential part of their food traditions.  As a result to the Japanese killing many whales, the anti-whaling nations did not show up to the conference on Tuesday, and they are planning to boycott the Wednesday’s session. 

The Japanese has their own goals in mind, before coming to the conference.  They didn’t want the IWC to ban whaling, because that’s a big part of their economy.   Their goal is to reform some of the regulations that IWC has.  They are using it for their advantage.  “Opponents also accused Japan of buying support from other nations in the IWC with aid.”  Japan is trying to stay ahead of the game by getting more nations on their side rather than going against them.  If they do maintain support from other nations, their political power would grow.  Japan shouldn’t be allowed to kill that many whales.