Japan’s PM offered to meet with Kim Jong Un ‘as soon as possible,’ North Korea says

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North Korea said Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “as soon as possible,” but stressed that prospects for their countries’ first summit in about 20 years would depend on Tokyo tolerating its weapons program and ignoring its past abductions of Japanese nationals.

Japan acknowledged it has been trying to arrange a bilateral summit but dismissed as “unacceptable” North Korea’s preconditions for it, dimming the likelihood for a quick realization of the Kishida-Kim meeting.

Observers say Kim wants improved ties with Japan as a way to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies, while 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.

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In a statement carried by state media, Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, said that Kishida recently used an unspecified channel to convey his position that he wants to meet Kim Jong Un in person “as soon as possible.”

She said there will be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations as long as 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 history of the DPRK-Japan relations gives a lesson that it is impossible to improve the bilateral relations full of distrust and misunderstanding, only with an idea to set out on a summit meeting,” Kim Yo Jong said, using the abbreviation of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, Kim Jong Un, center, supervises artillery firing drills in North Korea on March 7, 2024. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Discussions of a summit between the leaders of Japan and North Korea have thus far been held back by the differences in each country’s preconditions for such a meeting. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)

“If Japan truly wants to improve the bilateral relations and contribute to ensuring regional peace and stability as a close neighbor of the DPRK, it is necessary for it to make a political decision for a strategic option conformed to its overall interests,” she said.

In February, Kim Yo Jong issued a similar statement, saying North Korea was open to inviting Kishida to Pyongyang but that it would only be possible if Tokyo stopped taking issue with North Korea’s legitimate right to self-defense and the abduction issue.

Kishida, speaking in a parliamentary session, said that a meeting with Kim is “crucial” to resolve the abduction issue and that his government has been using various channels to discuss the possible summit. Japanese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters later Monday that dropping the abduction issue in talks with North Korea is “not acceptable.”

North Korea and Japan don’t have diplomatic ties, and their relations have been overshadowed by North Korea’s nuclear program, the abduction issue and Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s colonial wrongdoing is a source of on-again, off-again wrangling between Tokyo and Seoul, as well.

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.

In 2004, Koizumi made a second visit to North Korea and met Kim Jong Il again. That was the last summit between the leaders of the two countries.

Talk of a possible North Korea-Japan summit comes amid concerns that North Korea could further intensify its weapons testing activities in what is an election year both in the U.S. and South Korea. Experts say North Korea would aim to use an enlarged weapons arsenal to win concessions from the U.S. such as sanctions relief.

“While North Korea may be waiting out elections in South Korea and the United States before reengaging those countries in diplomacy, it probably wants to strengthen its hand by developing weapons and driving wedges between U.S. allies,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “Kishida feels political urgency to address the abductions issue and is thus showing diplomatic effort.”

The impoverished North also likely thinks about possible Japanese economic assistance it could receive if the two countries normalized their ties, said analyst Moon Seong Mook with the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. He said North Korea could seek the current value of the Japanese assistance that South Korea received when those two countries normalized their ties in 1965 — $500 million — or more.

Moon said Kishida won’t likely make concessions on the abduction issue or North Korea’s nuclear program in defiance of public sentiments and U.N. resolutions, respectively. Easley said a Kim-Kishida summit is unlikely because Pyongyang appears unwilling to address its historical kidnapping of Japanese citizens and Tokyo is unable to relax sanctions on North Korea.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Monday it was closely communicating with Japan on Tokyo-Pyongyang contacts and the North Korean nuclear issue. It said that South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are working closely together to return North Korea to a path of denuclearization.

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North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile arsenals pose a major security threat to Japan as well as South Korea and the United States. The three countries have expanded their trilateral training exercises in response to the North’s provocative run of weapons tests since 2022. Japan and South Korea are two of America’s key allies in the region, together hosting about 80,000 U.S. troops in their territories.

Earlier Monday, North Korea’s state media reported that Kim Jong Un supervised a tank exercise and encouraged his armored forces to sharpen war preparations in the face of growing tensions with South Korea.

While most analysts doubt Kim is genuinely preparing for war, South Korean officials have raised the possibility of smaller provocations in border regions, including the disputed western sea boundary between the Koreas that has been the site of bloody skirmishes in past years.