Tokyo
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Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stated she wants to maintain a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – one thing no Japanese leader has completed in additional than 20 years.
“We have already conveyed to North Korea our desire to hold a summit meeting,” Takaichi stated Monday at a rally demanding the return of Japanese residents who had been kidnapped by North Korea many years in the past.
The concern is among the unresolved ache factors between the 2 neighbors divided by sea, whose lengthy historical past of colonization and battle has doomed earlier makes an attempt at bilateral talks.
“I want the leaders to face each other directly and achieve concrete results,” Takaichi stated. “I am determined to break through and resolve the abduction issue during my tenure.”
Japan says at least 17 of its citizens were snatched by North Korean brokers within the late Seventies and Eighties. Five residents had been returned in 2002. The abductions seem to have been a part of North Korea’s espionage program, in accordance to a 2014 UN report.
Pyongyang disputes the entire quantity taken and says some died in site visitors and drowning accidents, in addition to suicide, and it considers the matter over.
But for the households of Japanese abductees who stay lacking, a few of whom had been simply youngsters once they had been taken, there was no closure or aid. They, together with Japan’s revolving door of leaders through the years, have continued urgent the problem with little success.
Takaichi has met with the abductees’ households twice since taking workplace, together with as soon as with US President Donald Trump throughout his go to to Japan. She has beforehand stated she’s dedicated to finishing the mission of her mentor, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who launched the abductees’ households to Trump throughout the US president’s first time period.
The two nations held an unprecedented summit in 2002, with Japan’s then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visiting the North Korean capital Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong Il – the daddy of now-leader Kim Jong Un.
That go to was the first time a Japanese prime minister visited North Korea because the finish of WWII.
It was additionally the primary time North Korea acknowledged its position within the abductions, after a few years of denial. Kim Jong Il supplied an apology on the time, saying the brokers accountable had been punished, and promised to stop it occurring once more, in accordance to Japanese government statements on the time.
The 5 detainees had been returned to Japan the next month and reunited with their households – 20 to 30 years after their abduction.
Koizumi returned to North Korea to meet Kim Jong Il a second time in 2004, throughout which the members of the family of a number of abductees had been additionally allowed to return to Japan.
No additional repatriations have occurred since then – and no progress has been made in talks between the 2 nations, regardless of repeated efforts by successive governments.
Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, had signaled a willingness to meet Kim Jong Un with out circumstances to enhance ties between their nations; a number of years later, then-leader Fumio Kishida additionally conveyed his intention to meet the North Korean leader.
Each time, a gathering failed to materialize. Now Takaichi, who took workplace after successful an election in October, is inheriting a decades-old downside that stumped her predecessors – and hoping to be the one to clear up it.