Koizumi to Make Historic Visit to North Korea
"I will visit Pyongyang on September 17th for talks with General Secretary Kim Jong-il," Koizumi told reporters at his official residence, moments after a formal announcement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda.
"I want to find clues for solving numerous issues between Japan and North Korea. I want to explore the possibility of resuming normalization talks by meeting him in person.
"I decided on the visit as I thought we could not take the first step forward unless the two leaders talk with political determination," he said.
It will be the first visit by a Japanese premier to North Korea, with which Tokyo has never established diplomatic relations.
His announcement came as South and North Korea put their rapprochement back on track with an accord to resume work next month to relink cross-border railways and roads cut since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Koizumi said he had called U.S. President George W. Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to inform them of his plans, and won their support.
"This concerns not only the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula but also the peace and stability of the world, and I will keep close contact with South Korea and the United States," he said.
China and Russia had also been notified, Fukuda said.
The dramatic development followed talks in Pyongyang between the two sides' diplomats, which ended Monday, but Koizumi revealed negotiations had been going on for more than a year. "I had the feeling that we could not move forwards unless the leaders talk directly, and I believe General Secretary Kim Jong-il thought the same."
Last weekend's contact was the two sides' first meeting since October 2000, when rapprochement talks were suspended as Tokyo focused on the alleged kidnapping of its nationals by Pyongyang, which in turn demanded compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
Those talks ended without public acknowledgement of substantial progress and with both only agreeing to continue their dialogue.
Koizumi said he would bring up the abduction issue.
Tokyo believes North Korea kidnapped 11 Japanese during the 1970s and 1980s primarily to train spies in Japanese customs so they could infiltrate South Korea posing as Japanese nationals.
Fukuda said Tokyo too had a "historical responsibility" to solve outstanding issues and normalize ties with Pyongyang. "The prime minister will explain the basic stance of our country and strongly urge General Secretary Kim Jong-il to make a sincere response."
The KCNA news agency, the official North Korean news agency, also announced Koizumi's visit in a dispatch monitored in Tokyo.
"It is expected that his visit to Pyongyang will mark an important occasion in settling the issues between the two countries and normalizing the bilateral relations," KCNA quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
Takehiko Yamamoto, political scientist at Tokyo's Waseda University, said "Some kind of breakthrough" was made during the recent meeting in Pyongyang as the first press reports of Koizumi's visit came just after he met with the diplomats who went to Pyongyang.
"The fact that a director general from the Japanese Foreign Ministry visited Pyongyang and met with North Korea's premier amounted to de facto recognition of North Korea," Yamamoto said.
Yamamoto said recent moves by North Korea to win the confidence of its neighbors, including Kim's visit to Russia last week were intended to offset the hardline approach of the United States.
"With the renewed appeasement policy of North Korea, Pyongyang is attempting to gain diplomatic leverage against the United States," he said.
In a further sign of a rapid thaw in ties, the two Koreas had agreed on Kim Jong-il visiting Busan for next month's Asian games, the Seoul-based *** Munhwa Ilboan *** daily quoted a diplomatic source in Tokyo as saying.
South Korean officials declined comment on the report.