North Korea says Japanese PM offered to meet with Kim Jong Un
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday that Japan’s prime minister has offered to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but stressed that prospects for their countries’ first summit in about 20 years would depend on Tokyo tolerating the North’s weapons program and ignoring its past abductions of Japanese nationals.
Japan acknowledged it has been trying to arrange a bilateral summit but dismissed North Korea’s preconditions for such a meeting as unacceptable, dimming the prospects that Mr. Kim and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida would hold a summit any time soon.
Observers say Mr. Kim wants improved ties with Japan as a way to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies, while Mr. Kishida wants to use possible progress in the abduction issue, a highly emotional issue for Japan, to boost his declining approval rating at home. After admitting in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese nationals, North Korea allowed five to return home but said the others had died. Japan believes some were still alive. In a statement carried by state media, Mr. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, who also is a se-nior official, said that Mr.Kishida recently used an un-specified channel to convey his position that he wants to meet Kim Jon gUn in person“as soon as possible .” She said there would be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations as long as Mr.Kishida’s government is en-grossed in the abduction issue and interfere sin the North’ s“exercise of our sovereign right ,” apparently referring to the North’ s weapons testing activities. Simply deciding to hold a summit is not enough to improve“relations full of dist rust and mis understand-ing ,” she said. In February, Kim Yo Jongissued a similar statement, saying North Korea was open to inviting Mr. Kishidato Pyongyang but that it would only be possible if To-kyo stopped taking issue with North Korea’ s legiti-mate right to self-defense and the abduction issue. Mr. Kishida, speaking in a parliamentary session, said that a meeting with Mr. Kim is“crucial” to resolve the ab-duction issue and that his government has been using various channels to discuss the possible summit. Japa-nese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters later Monday that dropping the abduction issue in talks with North Korea is “not accept-able. ”North Korea and Japan don’t have diplomatic ties, and their relations have been over shadowed by NorthKorea’s nuclear program, the abduction issue and Japan’s1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s colonial wrongdoing is asource of on-again, off-again wrangling between Tokyo and Seoul, as well. After years of denial, NorthKorea acknowledged in an un-precedented 2002 summit be-tween Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, andthen-Japanese Prime Minis-ter Junichiro Koizumi that itsa gents had kidnapped the 13Japanese. Japan believes North Korea used them to train spies in Japanese lan-guage and culture.Mr. Koizumi made a sec-ond visit to North Korea and met Kim Jong Il again in2004, the last summit be-tween the two countries. Talk of a possible new sum-mit comes amid concerns that North Korea could fur-ther intensify its weaponstesting activities in what isan election year both in the U.S. and South Korea.