What is it about?
This article looks at how North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s has become a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to improved relations between the two countries after the issue became publicly known in 2002. This is because Japanese identity discourses have internalized the issue.
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Why is it important?
The abduction issue has served as an important vehicle for an ongoing identity shift from that of a curiously "peaceful" state to that of a "normalizing" state. To the political right, the abduction issue served as a wake-up call, showing once and for all that "pacifism" can't ensure peace. The issue also transformed the postwar narrative into one in which Japan is the "victim" and North Korea is the "aggressor". This understanding can help us interpret Japan's behaviors with North Korea in the future.
Perspectives
The dominant discourse of the abduction issue is mired with emotion, from angry rhetoric to public empathy towards the victims. This analysis demonstrates the connection between emotions and collective identity, providing a concrete example to the growing literature on emotions in IR.
Professor Linus Hagström
Swedish Defence University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The North Korean abduction issue: emotions, securitisation and the reconstruction of Japanese identity from ‘aggressor’ to ‘victim’ and from ‘pacifist’ to ‘normal’, The Pacific Review, October 2014, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09512748.2014.970043.
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