As North Korea Thaws, Japan Loses Out.

For the most part, the governments involved in the six-party negotiations with North Korea have one aim: to get the hermit state to abandon its nuclear weapons program. In recent months, those nations — including the U.S., Russia, China and South Korea — have made some significant strides, including agreements from Pyongyang to shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and to disclose its nuclear activities. But for Japan, the sixth party to the talks, these diplomatic successes are threatening another of its most tenaciously-held foreign policy goals: discovering the fate of 17 Japanese civilians abducted by the North between 1977 and 1983. [...]

"We will not have satisfaction on denuclearization, human rights or the abductees until the [North Korean] regime is gone," says panelist Michael Green, senior adviser and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington, D.C.

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