Kim Jong Un calls Kishida ‘Your Excellency’ on shelling day

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday addressed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as “Your Excellency" and sent the Japanese leader a letter of condolence following the devastating earthquake on Japan's Noto Peninsula that killed at least 126 people. It is the first time a North Korean leader has sent a condolence letter to a Japanese prime minister. It was the same day that North Korea launched a provocation by firing more than 200 artillery shells into the South Korean maritime buffer zone in the South's Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the West Sea. North Korea's escalation of armed provocations against the South, which it defines as a "hostile, belligerent nation not of the same ethnicity or race," and its friendly gestures to Japan are viewed by the Seoul government as a "divisive strategy aimed at cracking the trilateral cooperation between the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, which has been greatly strengthened since last year."

According to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, Kim addressed Prime Minister Kishida as "Your Excellency," saying, "I express my deepest sympathy and condolences to the bereaved families and victims." NHK reported Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi saying, "We express our gratitude (for Kim's condolence letter). I will refrain from answering North Korea-Japan dialogue.” North Korea sent a letter to the Japanese prime minister in the name of then Prime Minister Kang Sung San after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the North sent a letter of condolence to the Federation of Korean Residents of Japan in the name of Supreme People's Assembly Standing Chairman Kim Yong Nam.

South Korean officials and experts believe that Kishida's willingness to hold dialogue with North Korea on the abductees issue is not unrelated to the fact that Japan and North Korea held several working-level contacts in China and Singapore last year. Despite the lack of progress in working-level negotiations between North Korea and Japan last year, Kishida has indicated that a North Korea-Japan summit is possible to resolve the abductees' issue, so it is not impossible to rule out the possibility that contacts between Pyongyang and Tokyo are ongoing behind the scenes. Some watchers say that North Korea may try to adopt a ‘talk with Japan, blockade South Korea’ strategy, similar to the ‘talk with the U.S. and blockade South Korea’ strategy in the past when it refused to talk to South Korea and demanded negotiations with the U.S.


yea@donga.com