As Japan’s Kishida eyes ties with North Korea, will abduction issue be ‘stumbling block’?

In response, Kim’s sister Yo-jong last Thursday said Pyongyang and Tokyo “can open up a new future together”, according to North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

She also said, however, that a meeting would be possible only if Japan “does not lay such a stumbling block as the already settled abduction issue”.

The last talks between a Japanese prime minister and North Korean ruler was in 2004, when Junichiro Koizumi met Kim Jong-il, father of the hermit kingdom’s current leader, in Pyongyang for the second time.

“For any administration in Japan, the summit will only help if there is progress on these issues,” he added.

From 1977 to 1983, Japanese citizens were reportedly abducted from Japan by Pyongyang’s agents, mainly to teach Japanese language and culture at North Korean spy schools.

For a long time Pyongyang denied the abductions, but during the 2002 meeting between Koizumi and Kim Jong-il, it admitted to the abduction of at least 13 Japanese citizens, issued an oral apology and freed five abductees.

Earlier this month, North Korea extended a provocative series of weapons tests by firing cruise missiles into the sea, said to be the country’s fourth round of missile tests this year.

Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have stepped up cooperation in a wide range of areas in recent months, including strengthening defence and security cooperation and conducting their first-ever trilateral aerial exercise last October.

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Yuko Nakano, fellow with the office of the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, said North Korea might be gauging how far Tokyo was prepared to go for the meeting to take place, adding