Aug 29 (Japan Times) - North Korea may be carefully watching who will succeed Shinzo Abe after the Japanese prime minister, who had made resolving the abduction issue a major goal in his political career, expressed his intention to step down on Friday, diplomats said.
“North Korea might be happy to hear that Abe will resign as he has taken a tough posture” against Pyongyang since he became prime minister in December 2012 following his first one-year stint in the post between 2006 and 2007, one of the diplomats said.
The diplomat said leader Kim Jong Un may be “interested in whether the next Japanese prime minister will stick to the issue like Abe.”
The Abe family’s association with the abduction issue goes back decades. In 1988, when the parents of a university student who went missing in Europe and was believed to have been abducted by Pyongyang visited the office of Abe’s father, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe.
Following his father’s death in 1991, Abe was elected to the lower house in 1993.
In September 2002, Abe accompanied then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea as a deputy chief Cabinet secretary and asked him to take a hardline stance toward the country, which helped draw words of apology for the abductions from the nation’s then leader, Kim Jong Il.
