North Korea said yesterday it won't deal with Japan at revived nuclear disarmament talks next week, criticizing Tokyo's plan to bring up the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents decades ago.
The comment came after South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said that negotiating partners should focus on resolving the international standoff over the North's nuclear program and refrain from adding other issues to the nuclear talks set to resume on Tuesday in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus.
The goal of the negotiations is "denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and dismantling the North's nuclear weapons program," Chung said in an interview in yesterday's Hankyoreh newspaper. "Issues of North Korea's human rights and Japanese abductions ... should not be on the agenda."
Japanese officials have said they want to meet with North Korean delegates to discuss the abductions on the sidelines of the talks, which also include the US, South Korea, China and Russia.
Yesterday, North Korea criticized Japan's intentions.
"The negative role played by Japan at the previous rounds of the talks compels [North Korea] not to deal with Japan even if the talks are resumed," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary.
"Japan has so far stood in the way" of the disarmament negotiations, KCNA said. "Japan has busied itself to divert the orientation and atmosphere for the six-party talks into those serving its mean interests."
The official news agency said "Japan will find nothing to do" at the nuclear talks and its participation "would only create more complexities to the talks."
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, and allowed five of them to return to Japan, saying the other eight have died. Japan, however, is demanding proof of the deaths and information on other cases of missing Japanese.
China, meanwhile, expressed hope yesterday for progress at the nuclear negotiations.
"I'm pretty sure that all the parties ... will demonstrate good spirit of mutual understanding, mutual respect and work together for the success of the talks," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
The North Korean nuclear crisis began in late 2002, when US officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program. In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since taken steps to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS