SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea announced Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has proposed a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and North Korea offers Japan the opportunity to improve bilateral relations and begin 2016. He called on the two leaders to show sincerity toward holding their first summit meeting. About 20 years.
The Japanese government did not immediately react to North Korea's announcement. In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo-jong, Kim's sister and a senior official, said that Kishida had communicated to Kim Jong-un through an unspecified channel his desire to meet directly with Kim Jong-un as soon as possible.
Kim Yo Jong said that as long as the Kishida administration takes up the issue of Japanese people abducted by North Korea over the past several decades and opposes what it calls North Korea's “exercise of sovereignty,” there will be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations. Stated. North Korea's weapons testing activities.
“If Japan continues to try to interfere with the exercise of our sovereign rights and continues to be preoccupied with the abduction issue, which has nothing else to resolve or investigate, the prime minister's (offer for talks) becomes inevitable. “It will be condemned as a mere attempt to increase his popularity,” she said.
Kim Yo Jong said, “As long as Japan is hostile to (North Korea) and violates our sovereignty, we will regard North Korea not as a friend but as an enemy within our goals.'' “The Prime Minister must know that he cannot meet our country's leaders simply because he wants to or because he is determined to do so.”
In February, Kim Yo Jong issued a similar statement regarding bilateral relations, stating that North Korea was open to improving relations with Japan and even inviting Kishida to Pyongyang. . But she said those would only be possible if Japan “abandoned its bad habit of unfairly elevating (North Korea) over its legitimate right to self-defense and did not put up obstacles like the already resolved abduction issue.” .
Kishida has previously stated that he believes the summit meeting with Kim Jong-un is important in many ways, including resolving the abduction issue. Asked about North Korea's announcement in parliament on Monday, he said he was unaware, according to Japanese media.
Some experts say North Korea is aiming to improve relations with Japan as a way to undermine the trilateral security partnership between Tokyo, Seoul and Washington, while Kishida also sees declining domestic support. It is said that they hope to improve relations with North Korea in order to increase the
Starting in 2022, the United States and South Korea are expanding military exercises and trilateral exercises, in which Japan also participates, in response to North Korea's provocative weapons tests. North Korean weapons tested in recent years included nuclear-capable missiles designed to attack major Japanese facilities.In South Korea and the mainland United States
North Korea and Japan have no diplomatic relations, a relationship overshadowed by North Korea's nuclear program, North Korea's past abductions of Japanese people, and Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. There is.
After years of denial, North Korea in 2002 held an unprecedented summit between Kim Jong-un's late father, Kim Jong-il, and then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. North Korean agents have admitted to abducting 13 Japanese nationals for the purpose of training spies in Korean and Japanese. culture. In the same year, five of them were allowed to return to Japan, but it was announced that the rest had died. Japan believes that at least some may still be alive and that hundreds more may have been abducted.
early Monday morning, North Korean state media It reported that Kim Jong Un oversaw tank exercises and encouraged armored forces to step up war preparations in the face of rising tensions with South Korea.
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Associated Press journalist Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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