A two-day meeting began Thursday in Beijing between the Japanese and North Korean Red Cross societies on repatriating the remains of Japanese nationals.

The meeting is being viewed as a litmus test of Pyongyang's readiness to move forward on the abductee issue.

Tokyo is hoping the meeting, the first such contact between the two organizations in a decade, will help jump-start stalled bilateral talks on the abduction of Japanese nationals by the North's agents in the 1970s and '80s, and is cautiously watching new leader Kim Jong Un's approach.