Japan Wants Contact with N. Korea after Trump-Kim Summit

June 10, 2018

Tokyo- Japan hopes to have direct contact with North Korea just after the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday, informed sources said Friday.

Tokyo began serious discussions to realize such contact on the fringe of an international meeting in Ulan Bator, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his readiness to hold talks with Kim to resolve the issue of North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens, the sources said.

Japan plans to send a deputy director-general or a similarly high-ranking official of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau to the two-day security meeting in the Mongolian capital from Thursday.

From North Korea, a senior official of the Foreign Ministry's Disarmament and Peace Institute is slated to attend the so-called Ulan Bator dialogue meeting.

If the two sides meet, Tokyo will convey its readiness to normalize its relations with North Korea and provide economic assistance under the 2002 bilateral Pyongyang declaration if the issues of missile and nuclear development and the abduction are resolved comprehensively, the sources said.

In June 2017, Japanese and North Korean officials had a chat on the sidelines of the year's Ulan Bator dialogue meeting. Jiji Press