ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reactions within Japan to a series of diverse incidents and issues that continued to stimulate the recalibration of risk through the framing of North Korea in the period after the 1998 Taepodong launch. These include the “suspicious ship” and “spy boat” maritime incursion incidents of 1999 and 2001, and the furore surrounding the abduction issue. The latter is shown to have pivotally hinged on political party and media responses to former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō’s historic visit to Pyongyang and the ensuing admission by Kim Jong-Il that the DPRK had, indeed, abducted a number of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s. This reveals how leading actors in Japan utilized these high-profile elements which drove interactive discourses in the public sphere, priming a particular external object (Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea). Such were then made highly susceptible to the justification and implementation of sudden and oft-times reactionary measures in light of particularly conspicuous events.
