By Zachary Keck
Both North Korean and Japan use each other primarily to posture towards third parties.
As Clint reported, the Japanese government announced on Monday that it will hold another round of talks with North Korea later this month. Back in March, Pyongyang and Tokyo held their first government-to-government talks in 16 months.
According to The Japan Times, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters on Monday that Japanese and North Korean diplomats will meet in Stockholm on May 26-28 to discuss a wide range of issues, including North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens and its nuclear and ballistic missile program.
The meeting is noteworthy, Clint rightly noted, mainly in that it is being held in Europe instead of Asia. The two sides usually hold their bilateral meetings in Asia, particularly China. The media reports gave no indication as to why the two sides decided to meet in Stockholm this time around but North Korea does maintain diplomatic relations with Sweden.
While it’s impossible to know with any degree of certainty, it’s possible that the decision to hold the talks in Europe rather than China was strategic in nature. One of the reasons that North Korea has mounted something of a charm offensive towards Japan in recent months is to help maximize the small degree of leverage the country holds over China. Beijing has noticeably strengthened its policy against North Korea under Xi Jinping, particularly regarding the country’s nuclear weapons program. Indeed, just this week Russia and China released a joint statement expressing common concern over North Korea’s nuclear program.
By reaching out to Japan at a time when the latter is embroiled in a bitter dispute with China, North Korea is seeking to demonstrate to its patron in Beijing that there are potential consequences for talking a harder line against Pyongyang. Japan too has an interest in demonstrating it can complicate China’s strategic calculus in any way possible, with North Korea being one such way.
Read the full story at The Diplomat