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PacNet #43 – True Confessions?

SEOUL/BUSAN – They say that a little bit of confession is good for the soul, but North Korea’s sudden burst of religion is creating a moral dilemma for Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. First, Pyongyang decides to come clean on the kidnapping of Japanese citizens, admitting to Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro that its agents did, as suspected, kidnap a number of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s and that most are now deceased. Then it confirms Washington’s worst suspicions about its secret nuclear weapons program by confessing that it indeed has one, in direct violation to the 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, not to mention the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement, and the 1992 Joint North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. What’s going on here?