Has the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration Been Abandoned?

South Korea’s outsized ability to shape international narratives is well illustrated by the world’s enthusiasm for K-pop. Korean media is also influential, and Japanese outlets have sometimes run Korean-sourced reporting on North Korea without independent verification, often at the expense of a distinctly Japanese perspective.

The recent revisions to the North Korean constitution offer a case in point. North Korea overhauled its constitution at the end of March, including a change in the constitution’s official title. The full text has not been released by North Korean media, but a copy obtained by the South Korean government in early May has been widely circulated. The changes appear to reflect recent shifts in Pyongyang’s tone and can be regarded as authentic.

South Korean media (and, subsequently, Japanese media) has focused on the constitution’s abandonment of unification and its use of South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea. Neither is new, however; North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has signaled both positions repeatedly.

More significant for Japan is the apparent abandonment of North Korea’s claim to Takeshima (Korean name: Dokdo). The revised constitution states that North Korea’s territory borders the Republic of Korea to the south and includes the territorial waters and airspace established on that basis, indicating that Takeshima is naturally excluded, as it lies much farther south than the 38th parallel.

Takeshima has not appeared on North Korean maps since 2024. This constitutes significant circumstantial evidence, reinforced by the fact that North Korean media stopped referring to the island as “Dokdo” from around the time Kim abandoned unification.

In Dokdo in Ancient Map, published in 2010 in Pyongyang, Kim’s father and North Korea’s then leader Kim Jong Il is quoted as saying that “Dokdo has always been our country’s island.” However, in the “Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration” signed by Kim and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro in September 2002, there was no reference to this territorial dispute. The key issues in this declaration between Japan and North Korea were “colonial rule in the past,” “the outstanding issues of concern related to the lives and security of Japanese nationals,” and “issues relating to security,” and unlike South Korea, which occupies Takeshima, North Korea’s territorial claims were never particularly assertive; Pyongyang had merely been piggybacking on Seoul’s position, South Korea being its intended partner in unification.

There are also signs that North Korea has unilaterally walked away from the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration. On May 23 and 24, the 26th Congress of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), a pro-Pyongyang organization of Korean residents in Japan, was held at the Korean Hall of Culture in Tokyo. At such gatherings, large portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are displayed.

South Korean media also reported that the word “unification” was removed from Chongryon’s platform during the congress. Japanese media dutifully followed suit in its own coverage. What has gone largely unreported, however, was that the reference to the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration had also been dropped. The previous platform had explicitly committed Chongryon to acting “in accordance with the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration” in its conduct. That specific phrase has now been dropped, even though the substance of the platform is otherwise unchanged. The removal of “in accordance with the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration” is significant: this is the only agreement ever signed by the leaders of both countries, and the position of the Japanese government is that it remains in effect.

North Korean media have cited the declaration repeatedly, both to criticize Japan and to extol Kim Jong Il’s diplomatic achievements, calling it a “historical miracle” in which “Koizumi formally expressed Japan’s deep remorse and sincere apology for the great harm and suffering inflicted upon the Korean people by Japan’s colonial rule in the past.”

However, since April 2023, North Korean media have not touched on the declaration. It is possible that Kim Jong Un has quietly shelved it — much as he has broken with the unification policy championed by his grandfather and father.

At the 2002 Japan-North Korea Summit, Pyongyang acknowledged the abduction of Japanese citizens for the first time and issued an apology, ultimately allowing five abductees to return after 25 years. Since that time there has been no sign of suspected North Korean spy boats in Japanese waters. Subsequent Japanese governments have sought to use the declaration as a springboard for renewed negotiations with North Korea, but if Japan now finds itself back at zero, the prospects for breaking the deadlock are bleak.