From Tsutomu Nishioka’s Article in Seiron: “Japan-North Korea Parliamentarians’ League, Former Vice Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka—Is a North Korean Conspiracy Already Underway?”
August 10, 2018
The following is from this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Seiron, featuring an article by Tsutomu Nishioka titled “Japan-North Korea Parliamentarians’ League, Former Vice Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka—Is a North Korean Conspiracy Already Underway?”
Tsutomu Nishioka is one of Japan’s true scholars—a lifesaving figure for this nation—who exposed the complete fabrication behind Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the comfort women issue and saved Japan from the immense damage caused by the paper’s anti-Japanese ideology.
North Korea’s Aim: To Extort $10 Billion
While evaluations of the U.S.-North Korea summit vary, one undeniable achievement was that President Donald Trump directly conveyed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s message to the dictator Kim Jong-un regarding the abduction issue.
From within the Kim regime, numerous voices have emerged declaring the summit a success and pushing for a Japan-North Korea summit as the next step.
North Korea began its diplomatic offensive this year with two goals in mind: to get the United States to halt any plans for a decapitation strike, and to extort more than $10 billion from Japan.
During Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to Pyongyang in 2002, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs conveyed in a secret meeting that the scale of economic cooperation Japan could provide post-normalization of diplomatic relations would be about $10 billion—roughly one trillion yen.
This has been confirmed by multiple former senior officials who were in Pyongyang’s inner circle at the time and have since defected to South Korea.
Thae Yong-ho, former minister at North Korea’s embassy in the UK who defected in 2016, wrote in his book published in South Korea this May:
“After Prime Minister Koizumi visited Pyongyang and announced the Pyongyang Declaration with Kim Jong-il, First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju gave a lecture to all Foreign Ministry staff in the ministry hall. ‘Japan has promised to compensate us for its colonial rule through economic cooperation. At minimum, we’ll receive $10 billion. With $10 billion, we can modernize all of our infrastructure—roads, railways, and more.’ Even I was thrilled at the idea of ‘$10 billion.’ My colleagues in the ministry were visibly excited. That’s how important and immense the sum was.”
(From "The Secret Codes of the Third Floor Secretariat", pp. 209–211)
The Japanese government has consistently maintained its official position that no specific amount was promised.
However, according to Prime Minister Abe, Hitoshi Tanaka—the Foreign Ministry bureau chief who prepared Koizumi’s Pyongyang visit—failed to keep records for two of the secret negotiations.
It is suspected that the $10 billion promise may have been included in those missing records.
After the U.S.-North Korea summit, the same figure—$10 billion—was leaked to the media and reported by Sankei, Nikkei, and Asahi newspapers.
The United Nations estimates North Korea’s GNP at approximately $20 billion, while the Bank of Korea estimates it to be around $40 billion.
According to one information source, North Korean economic officials candidly estimate their GNP to be between $20 billion and $30 billion.
There is no doubt that the figure of $10 billion is extraordinarily attractive to them.
To be continued.
