The Japanese government on Tuesday formally announced that it will provide 100,000 tons of rice to North Korea through the U.N. World Food Program. Japan is taking humanitarian action to follow up an agreement that the countries recently reached to resume the normalization talks -- which broke down in November 1992 -- in early April.
Tokyo and Pyongyang are now ready to revive the long-stalled negotiations that would establish diplomatic relations. This is a welcome development. However, it promises to be rough going. The last round of talks collapsed because the two sides failed to bridge their differences over a number of knotty issues, including the suspected abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents and Pyongyang's demand for Japanese compensation for the colonization of Korea. Solutions to these issues are still nowhere in sight.
The absence of official relations with North Korea is proof that Japan has yet to settle a major post-World War II problem. To remove this roadblock and normalize ties with the North Koreans is a pressing priority. Normalization will help remove a major destabilizing factor in East Asia.