Japanese PM asks to meet Kim Jong Un ‘as soon as possible’

North Korea says Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida has requested to meet Kim Jong Un “as soon as possible” in what would be the first summit between the two countries’ leaders in about two decades.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior North Korean official and the influential sister of the hermit kingdom’s leader, said the meeting would depend on Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910-45, making “practical political decisions”.

That appears to be a reference to the issue of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago, an episode that has overshadowed relations between the two country ever since. “The prime minister should know that just because he wants to and has made a decision, it doesn’t mean he can or the leadership of our country will meet him,” Ms Kim said.

She said the Japanese prime minister made his intention known through “another channel”, without giving details. “What is clear is that when Japan antagonises the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and violates its sovereign rights, it is considered our enemy and will become part of the target,” Ms Kim added.

Japan acknowledged it has been trying to arrange a bilateral summit but dismissed as “unacceptable” North Korea’s preconditions for it. Mr Kishida yesterday reiterated the importance of a summit to resolve issues such as the abduction matter. “Nothing has been decided for now,” he told reporters.

North Korea and Japan don’t have diplomatic ties, and their relations have been overshadowed by North Korea’s nuclear programme, the abduction issue and Japan’s colonisation of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s colonial wrongdoing is also a source of on-again, off-again wrangling between Tokyo and Seoul.

After years of denial, North Korea acknowledged in an unprecedented 2002 summit between Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, and then-Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi that its agents had kidnapped the 13 Japanese. Japan believes North Korea wanted to use them to train spies in Japanese language and culture.

Ms Kim said here would be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations as long as Mr Kishida’s government is engrossed in the abduction issue and interferes in the North’s “exercise of our sovereign right”, apparently referring to the North’s weapons testing activities. (© The Independent)