N. Korea says Japan PM requested summit with Kim

SEOUL – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother, adding any meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.

“Kishida recently conveyed his wish to meet with the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the earliest date possible,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

SRtealatniondsabertdween the two countries have long been dogged by issues iTncOluDdAin g compensation for Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and more recently by Pyongyang’s firing of missiles over Japanese territory.

The abduction by North Korean agents of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s -- forced to train spies in Japanese language and customs -- has also long been a major point of contention.

Kishida has said he wants to change the relationship between Tokyo and Pyongyang and last year expressed his wish to meet with North Korea’s leader “without any conditions”, saying in a speech at the UN General Assembly that Tokyo was willing to resolve all issues, including the kidnappings.

Last month, the North’s Kim Yo Jong -- who is one of the regime’s key spokespeople -- hinted at a possible future invitation for the Japanese leader to visit North Korea.

She said on Monday that it was “Japan’s political decision that matters the most to pave a new charter in North Korea-Japan relationship.”

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un inspected a tank unit which once invaded Seoul during the Korean War, state media reported Monday, with Pyongyang’s leader calling for ever greater preparations for combat. StIantner-dKaorreadn relations are at one of their lowest points iTnOyDeaArs , with Kim’s military recently conducting a string of banned weapons tests, including launching a ballistic missile and staging a ground test of a “new type” of hypersonic missile engine.