SECONDS OUT IN PYONGYANGN.K. officials bitten by bulldog Japanese journo makes good TV
The Japan Times: Aug. 22, 2004
...The Japanese media, in particular the sensationalist "wide shows," have taken full advantage of the public's interest in the weird goings-on in North Korea by freely downloading news footage by state-run broadcast entity KRT from satellite broadcasts...TV Asahi's "Sunday Project" on Aug. 15, didn't reveal any new information about the abductees, but they did reveal something about the Japan-North Korea dialogue....
Tahara conducted his interviews as if his North Korean interlocutors were not talking to the Japanese government or even to the Japanese media, but rather to Japanese citizens. "Five million people are watching this," he said to Chon, indicating the camera behind him. To Song Il Ho, Chon's boss, he said, "Why don't you use me to alleviate Japanese public concern?"
Of course, no one in Japan is going to take anything these two men say at face value, but Tahara was being sincere. This was a great opportunity to cut through all the diplomatic niceties that obscure the truth, which Tahara felt was being avoided as much by Japan as it was by North Korea.
Predictably, the two North Koreans dissembled their butts off, but for once we got to see them squirm. Chon never referred to the "abductee problem" (rachi mondai); only that his government was collecting "information about dead people" (shibo joho), thus clarifying his government's position that, even if the North is "sincerely looking into the matter" of the 10 abductees, it is working from the premise that these eight people (Pyongyang claims two never entered their country) are already dead. Nevertheless, Tahara got Chon to promise on camera to continue with the search "at the risk of [his] own life."
Tahara's statement in the "Sunday Project" studio that he believed the two men "wanted to convey how seriously they are working [on the abduction problem]," struck his guests, which included relatives of abductees and Tokyo's hardline governor, Shintaro Ishihara, as wishful thinking. To Tahara, just getting the interviews was a journalistic coup, and he wanted to believe that they resulted in some kind of scoop.
