In the run-up to the 2012 election it was politically expedient for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to state that he would push to resolve the issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens.

Since taking office, Abe has not abandoned the issue, even reaching a deal with the North last year in which his government would lighten Tokyo’s sanctions against the North in return for the Pyongyang reinvestigating the abductees and their fates.

But what, then, can Abe and the rest of his government expect to achieve? Will North Korea ever be forthright? Many observers (including a younger Abe,