Japan and North Korea are making final arrangements to reaffirm a 2008 bilateral accord that includes a promise by Pyongyang to reinvestigate what happened to the Japanese it abducted in return for an easing of unilateral sanctions, sources familiar with the matter said Friday.

The Japanese government, seeing recent signs of flexibility in the North on promoting bilateral negotiations, hopes the revival of the 2008 deal, which Pyongyang unilaterally scrapped, could break the stalemate over the decades-old abduction issue, the sources said.

Japan wants to ensure that North Korea will make good on its promise on the abduction cases, which date back to the 1970s and 1980s.