Abe Reiterates Intention to Hold Summit with Kim Jong Un

July 6, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday reiterated his intention to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with the aim of resolving the issue of Japanese abductees in North Korea.

"We should settle the issue through a Japan-North Korea summit," Abe said during a meeting with former abductee Hitomi Soga at the prime minister's office in Tokyo. "The issue won't be resolved unless the two countries leave behind mutual distrust and start a new round of diplomacy."

The mayors of Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, central Japan, and two other concerned cities, who also attended the meeting, requested Abe in writing to fully resolve the abduction issue through direct negotiations with North Korea.

As Pyongyang appears in no mood to have dialogue with Tokyo now, however, the Japanese government plans to monitor for the time being the progress of talks between Pyongyang and Washington on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

At the June 12 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, the North Korean leader is believed to have not mentioned his country's position that the abduction issue has been settled.

But last Friday, Rodong Sinmun, a newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party of Korea, published a commentary insisting that the issue has been entirely resolved.

"Without progress in the U.S.-North Korea talks on the denuclearization process, we may not see an environment that facilitates Japan-North Korea relations," a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.

On the Japanese side, there are views that a Japan-North Korea summit may take place on the sidelines of an Eastern Economic Forum meeting in the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok on Sept. 11-13 or a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in the same month. Jiji Press