The Foreign Ministry's lack of a coherent policy with regard to North Korea was obvious back in autumn, when public opinion forced the government to renege on its promise to Pyongyang that the five Japanese abductees would return to the communist nation after a two-week visit to Japan. The five are now permanently repatriated, and the Japanese government's decades-long avoidance of a consistent stance toward North Korea is now coming back to haunt it.
The ministry's problems have less to do with Japan's wallflower status in the current diplomatic dance between the United States, South Korea and North Korea than it does with the ever-widening refugee crisis.
As a result, the complicated, and as yet unresolved, case of the "Japanese wife" who escaped from North Korea and is currently in the hands of the Chinese authorities has occasioned a great deal of conflicting media coverage. Two weeks ago, the magazine Shukan Shincho and TV Asahi blasted the Foreign Ministry for effectively ignoring the woman, a Japanese national who fled North Korea late last year. Shincho's headline called the ministry "cold-hearted" while "News Station" announcer Hiroshi Kume stated that TV Asahi would not rest until the government did something about the woman's plight.