Japan’s Kishida pushes for talks with Kim Jong-un

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister says Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister says Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother, adding any meeting is unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.

Kim Yo-jong said on Monday it was “Japan’s political decision that matters the most to pave a new charter in North Korea-Japan relationship”, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

“If Japan tries to interfere with our exercise of sovereign rights like it does now and is resolutely preoccupied with the kidnapping issue, which we have no way of solving or knowing about, it will inevitably face the reputation that the Prime Minister’s plan is nothing more than aimed at drawing popularity,” she said.

Mr Kishida on Monday called the talks “important” to “resolve issues such as the abduction issue”, referring to kidnappings in the 1970s and ’80s.

“This is why we have been making various approaches to North Korea at the level directly under my control, as I have said in the past,” he said.

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

North Korea admitted in 2002 that it had sent agents to kidnap 13 Japanese people in the 1970s and ’80s.

The abductions remain a ­potent and emotional issue in Japan and suspicions persist that many more were abducted than have been officially recognised.

Analysts have long said contention over the issue could hinder progress towards a summit between Mr Kishida and Kim Jong-un.

Relations between the two countries have long been dogged by issues including 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.

Mr Kishida has said he wanted to change the relationship ­between Tokyo and Pyongyang and last year expressed his wish to meet Kim Jong-un “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 Kim Yo-jong – one of the regime’s key spokespeople – hinted at a possible invitation for the Japanese leader to visit North Korea.

She said on Monday that Mr Kishida “must know that he cannot meet our leadership just because he wants or has decided to or that we will grant him such a meeting just because”.

“If Japan sincerely wants to improve the relationship between the two and become our close neighbour to contribute to guarantee peace and stability in the region, it needs to have political courage to make strategic choices befitting to its national interests,” she said.

Former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a landmark visit to Pyongyang while in office in 2002, meeting the Kims’ father, Kim Jong-il, and setting out a path to normalise relations in which Japan would offer economic assistance.

The trip led to the return of five Japanese nationals and a follow-up trip by Mr Koizumi, but the diplomacy soon broke down, in part over Tokyo’s concern that North Korea was not coming clean about the abduction victims.

AFP