Irrational, unpredictable, insane. These are just some of the epithets our media commentators have been using lately to describe North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il. But Shinzo Abe, Japan's hawkish deputy chief Cabinet secretary and chief architect of Japan's current hardline policies to North Korea, has a different view.
He accompanied Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for two days of intense negotiations in Pyongyang last September. In several television interviews since then, he has said quite openly that he found the North Korean leader to be highly "rational" (gori-teki).
The same cannot be said for Abe's policies. He forced Japan to renege on promises made in those September talks to allow abductees returned by North Korea to go back to Pyongyang to collect their kin. Yet somehow he could convince himself and Japan that the fact the abductees still do not have their kin is entirely the fault of North Korea.