Japan and North Korea discussed the sensitive issue of Japanese amends for its colonial past yesterday when the often-hostile countries opened their third round of talks this year on normalizing relations.
The talks, in China's capital, come as Japan appears to be lagging behind other countries' diplomatic maneuverings in Northeast Asia's main flash-point.
Long-isolated North Korea has in recent weeks held high-level parlays with the US and moved to open ties with Britain, Germany and Spain.
Meeting at Japan's embassy, Japanese chief negotiator Kojiro Takano and his North Korean counterpart, Jong Thae-hwa, agreed that the US-North Korean talks and the historic summit with South Korea in June created a favorable trend, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
But in a sign of the difficulties in forging diplomatic ties, negotiators only delved into details yesterday for the first time in nine years of talks, said the official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
"We have only entered into the serious phase of real negotiations," said the official.
The talks, scheduled to continue today, will probably yield only an agreement to keep on talking, he said.
Two previous rounds of talks this year sputtered over North Korea's insistence on compensation for Japan's often brutal 1910-45 occupation and Tokyo's demands for information on Japanese citizens allegedly abducted to North Korea to train spies.
North Korea broke off earlier talks on ties eight years ago after angrily rejecting Tokyo's demands to track down 10 Japanese citizens allegedly abducted by Northern agents. Negotiations resumed in April, but North Korea has continued to deny abducting anyone.
While refusing to confirm whether the abduction issue was raised yesterday, the Japanese official said negotiators opened an in-depth discussion into Japan's colonial past and how Tokyo could compensate property and other claims related to the occupation.
"These are very tough issues," the official said.
While Japan has rejected direct demands for compensation, Tokyo has expressed a willingness to extend economic aid, as it did upon normalizing relations with South Korea in 1965.
Since the last round of talks in August, Japan has said it will send half a million tons of rice over the next two years to help ease acute food shortages in the North.
With the North's economy near collapse, Japan's media have speculated that offers of hefty aid packages may be enough to tempt Pyongyang into overcoming any reluctance about signing a normalization agreement.
Japanese negotiators also raised security concerns, in particular North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the official said, describing them as "difficult issues."
North Korea's launch of a three-stage rocket over northern Japan two years ago prompted Japan and the US to jointly research an anti-missile defense shield for East Asia.
RSS