FILE - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a parliamentary session of House of Councilors in Tokyo, Monday, March 18, 2024. North Korea said Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has proposed a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, made the comments in a state media dispatch Monday, March 25, 2024.
Kim Yo Jong said there will be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations as long as Kishida’s government raises the issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea in past decades and opposes what she described as the North’s “exercise of sovereign rights,” apparently referring to the North’s weapons testing activities.
In February, Kim Yo Jong issued a similar statement on bilateral ties, saying North Korea was open to improving relationships with Japan and even inviting Kishida to Pyongyang. But she said those would be possible only if Tokyo “drops its bad habit of unreasonably pulling up over its legitimate right to self-defense and does not lay such a stumbling block as the already settled abduction issue.”
Some experts say North Korea is seeking to improve ties with Japan as a way to weaken a trilateral Tokyo-Seoul-Washington security partnership, while Kishida also wants better ties with North Korea to increase his declining approval rating at home.
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