Senior Japanese and North Korean officials may have met in Hanoi recently in what would be their first contact since the launch in December 2012 of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration, a diplomatic source said Tuesday.
If the meeting did take place, Tokyo is almost certain to have asked Pyongyang to resume its probe into the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents decades ago.
Junichi Ihara, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, accompanied by Keiichi Ono, chief of the bureau's Northeast Asia Division, were in the Vietnamese capital on Saturday and Sunday, and a North Korean official was also there last weekend, according to the source.