Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said on Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida conveyed his intention to meet with the North Korean leader soon through “another channel,” state media KCNA reported.
Kim emphasised that improving bilateral relations between the two countries will depend on whether Japan can make practical political decisions. Kim was quoted as saying in the KCNA report in Korean:
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. 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.
Kishida has said he wants to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “without any preconditions” and is personally overseeing efforts to organise the leaders’ first summit in 20 years.
Kim’s sister, who is in the ruling Labour Party, said last month that Kishida may one day visit Pyongyang. KCNA quoted her saying:
If Japan … makes a political decision to open a new path for improving ties based on mutual respect and respectful behaviour, it is my view that the two countries can open a new future.
North Korea and Japan have no diplomatic relations and their relationship has been marred by North Korea’s nuclear programme, abductions of Japanese citizens and Japan’s 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
After years of denial, North Korea admitted at an unprecedented 2002 summit between Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s late father, and then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese, mostly to teach the spies Japanese language and culture. It allowed five of them to return to Japan that year, but said the others had died. Japan believes at least some of them are still alive and believes hundreds of others may also have been kidnapped.
Earlier on Monday, North Korea’s state media reported that Kim Jong Un had led tank drills and urged his armoured troops to step up preparations for war amid rising tensions with South Korea.
