Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung reconfirmed Wednesday that they will cooperate with the United States to urge North Korea to improve ties with all three of the countries, a Japanese government official said.
Mori and Kim, who met shortly before the opening of the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, reaffirmed the importance of the three exchanging information on North Korea, the official said.
"It is necessary to maintain contacts and cooperation so that relations between South Korea and North Korea, Japan and North Korea, and the United States and North Korea make progress while giving each other positive effects," Kim reportedly said.
Mori briefed Kim on this year's third round of diplomatic normalization talks between Japan and North Korea, which was held late last month in Beijing.
"We have begun work on searching for common points on basic issues and economic matters," the official quoted Mori as telling Kim. "Japan will continue to hold negotiations in a steadfast manner."
Japanese and North Korean negotiators ended the round without a breakthrough. They agreed to continue efforts to establish diplomatic ties, but did not set a date for the next round of negotiations.
The sticking points in the negotiations are North Korea's demand for an apology and compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, and Tokyo's demand to learn the fate of Japanese believed abducted by North Korean agents.
Mori also briefed Kim about Japan's decision last month to send 500,000 tons of rice as food aid to North Korea, saying it was a decision that was at least partly due to Kim's advice.
"We decided on the food aid from the viewpoint of securing the existing positive trend," Mori was quoted as saying.