Observing the prolonged negotiations over the fate of five North Korean asylum seekers seized by Chinese police from the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang and the widespread criticism in Japan over the way that Japanese diplomats handled the matter, it seems vital to decouple the humanitarian issue from the inevitable rise of Sino-Japanese national rivalry. To do so is in the common interests of both Japan and China in ensuring human security and also regional stability in an increasingly volatile Northeast Asia.

Judging from the diplomatic wrangling between Tokyo and Beijing and the escalating domestic reaction to the crisis in both countries, one thing is clear: The longer the deadlock continues, the worse the suffering of those five desperate refugees will seem and the worse the conduct of Japanese and Chinese diplomacy will appear in the eyes of concerned parties all over the world. In order to get out of the current morass, both sides must focus on the humanitarian issue and cooperate in moving the refugees to a third country as soon as possible. If the two sides are determined to avoid a dangerous rift in their 30-year bilateral relationship, they should act to limit the damage already done to their national interests.

More contentious issues of sovereignty and international law are not going to be resolved easily through negotiation, for once national pride and domestic politics are involved, it is extremely difficult for one side to make the other side accept its version of what exactly occurred, let alone obtain an apology. This is because each side naturally believes the story of its own people, which makes it difficult to conduct an impartial joint verification of the actual facts.