I had intended to leave this debate behind with my penultimate (four syllables!) post, since I had been informed that NBR had decided to move away from the Komori-Clark dustup. ButⅠguess I was wrong. Since I don't have time to engage fully in this controversy, I'll just do the following and lift some lines from the latest post from the good professor, and juxtapoose it with an excerpt from another article that, according to the person who forwarded it to me, he wrote in 2003. I would willingly post this on the NBR Forum, with its larger audience, but only if they post my previous submission as well.
"Tokyo has been equally hawkish and irrational over North Korea. It began with the abductee issue, with Pyongyang blamed for the five abductees being unable to reunite with their families when the real problem was Tokyo's broken promise to let the abductees return to North Korea to see their families."
"On the contrary, in Japan Times columns I have said Japan had every right to be upset by the abductions and even agreed that Tokyo was probably right to break its promise to return to North Korea the first batch of five abductees sent to
Japan in 2002."
There are two ways to reconcile these two statements:
1) the second statement is a hoax, in which case I will apologize profusely to the good professor and confront my source; or
2) the good professor believes Japan had every right to break that promise, but it was a hawkish and irrational act, and caused the problem, and it took two separate articles to make this point.
Actually, there's a third possible interpretation, which reflects better on the human condition. But it's for me to know and... Okay, I did add some comments.
So I lied.
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