From the Japan Times: “Yasushi Chimura and his wife, Fukie, abducted by North Korea in 1978 but repatriated in 2002, expressed relief Friday that their children [now ages 27, 25, and 21] are adapting smoothly to Japanese life as they marked the fifth anniversary of their arrival in Japan.”

15 August is the 63rd anniversary of Victory over Japan (V-J) Day, or Liberation Day in North and South Korea. It’s hard to imagine how the North Koreans could explain the significance of the day without mentioning the U.S. doing the heavy lifting, but they still manage to do so.

The magazine that “feature[s] reports on North Korea only using accounts from people based in the country,” has started a Japanese version (the Korean-language version came out last year).
Defectors who agree to go back into North Korea are given cameras to document life there, which means that those who are discovered stand a very [...]

From Japan Today: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a high court decision sentencing four men to prison terms of 11-20 years for smuggling several hundred kilograms of amphetamines into Japan from North Korea in 2002.”

From the AP, via Japan Probe: “A Russian air force bomber briefly violated Japanese airspace over an uninhabited island just south of Tokyo on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said… Japan’s navy scrambled 22 fighter jets, including F-15s, and two airborne warning and control aircraft known as AWACs…” See video from Japanese TV at Japan Probe.

Read about it at the Naval Historical Center.

These tactics would be better used on South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun, generally, but I do agree in using them on one of our top allies in this specific case:
The United States warned Japan in March that Washington could no longer back Tokyo on the issue of North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese unless then Prime [...]

Excerpts from the 25 September Department of State Daily Press Briefing on the election of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and new sanctions on North Korean company producing missiles. Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey is responding to questions:
QUESTION: A new Japanese cabinet was formed today under the LDP leader Yasuo Fukuda and what are U.S. expectations of [...]

Though there is no mention of it in the Reuters article, I wonder if “Yakuza Moon” reveals anything about North Korea’s connection to the drug trade in Japan (there is a known connection with reports as recent as March 2007):
The elaborate dragons, phoenixes and a medieval courtesan with one breast bared and a knife between [...]

According to the article, “Kim Is Squeezed as North Koreans in Japan Switch Citizenship,” about 1,200 North Korean citizens living in Japan change their citizenship to South Korea each year, and the rate is increasing:
Kim Jong Il no longer supports the government of North Korea.
Kim is a 66-year-old businessman who owns a shoe factory in [...]