North Korea appears willing to improve its ties with Japan although it remains adamant on a bitter dispute over its kidnapping of Japanese nationals, officials here said yesterday.
"We must positively accept the feeling that North Korea is making various moves," Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aizawa said in a television talk show, citing recent signs from Pyongyang on the kidnap issue.
He added that North Korea still refused to hold government-level talks on the abduction of Japanese during the Cold War years to use them for training spies in Japanese customs and language.
Aizawa was commenting the day after four Japanese diplomats ended a visit to Pyongyang, the first by Tokyo government officials in 15 months, which was initially welcomed here as a sign of change on North Korea's part.
The visit was primarily arranged for the team to meet a 42-year-old Japanese gangster who has been held on drug smuggling charges for three months. They also interviewed a 29-year-old Japanese woman who entered North Korea seeking asylum in October.
The team tried in vain to bring up Tokyo's demand that Pyongyang allow the immediate relatives of five Japanese kidnap victims to visit Japan for their reunion, Aizawa said.
The victims in their 40s -- two married couples and the wife of a US army deserter -- returned to Japan in October, 2002, after 24 years in North Korea and refused to go back to the impoverished Stalinist state.
They have remained separated from immediate relatives, seven children and the American husband.
North Korean foreign ministry officials, who talked with the Japanese diplomats, insisted that Japan must send the five kidnap victims back to Pyongyang in accordance with that they called a prior agreement.
Tokyo has denied there was such an accord.
"But they calmly and politely listened to our representation. They duly took notes and promised to report it to their seniors," Aizawa said, adding that the atmosphere was different from previous contacts which often ended in angry exchanges.
The visit came a month after North Korean officials met a Japanese ruling party lawmaker, Katsuei Hirasawa, in Beijing and offered a face-saving solution to the abduction issue.
They proposed that the five kidnap victims come to Pyongyang's airport and meet their immediate relatives there, Hirasawa told the same talk show on the TV Asahi network. The relatives may go to Japan with the former abductees if they so wish, he said.
Hirasawa added that the North Korean side put the same proposal to an unofficial US delegation that inspected nuclear facilities in North Korea earlier this month.
"It has signalled a big change because they acknowledge that the abduction issue remains unsettled," said Hirasawa.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il apologized for the abduction when he met Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Pyongyang in September, 2002.
The resolution of the dispute could lead to a rapprochement between the two countries and bring massive Japanese economic aid to Pyongyang.
But Japan has resolving the abduction issue as one of its top priorities in dealing with Pyongyang, along with eliminating its suspected nuclear weapons.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
Myanmar’s junta chief met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the first time since seizing power, state media reported yesterday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021, overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war. In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias — some with close links to China — opposed to its rule. The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the
RSS