Former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama offered a compromise to North Korea earlier this month to break a deadlock in normalization talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang, but the North Korean response was not positive, sources to close to Japan-North Korea relations said Saturday.

Murayama, who visited North Korea between Nov. 30 and Dec. 5 as head of a nongovernmental organization delegation, proposed the plan in a meeting Monday with Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, the sources said.

North Korea has demanded an apology and compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, one of the key sticking points between the two countries. Japan has rejected the demand, saying the two countries were not at war during the period of colonial rule.

Tokyo has reportedly proposed that the two sides reach a compromise modeled on the 1965 agreement in which Japan and South Korea agreed to normalize ties on condition that Japan provide financial assistance.

Murayama proposed that a phrase would be used that the North Korean side could interpret to mean that the aid is "compensation," although the two countries would essentially follow the 1965 model, the sources said.

Murayama told Kim that Japan is ready to apologize for the colonial rule using language in line with an August 1995 statement he issued while in office expressing "deep remorse and heartfelt apology" for the suffering and damage inflicted by Japan on other Asian nations before and during World War II, they said.

Murayama apparently made the offer in line with the current Japanese government's position in the normalization talks, the sources said.

However, Kim refused to concede his country's demand that Japan compensate and apologize, the sources said.

Kim said nothing positive about Murayama's proposal and that the apology in the Murayama statement is insufficient, they said.

Kim also denied Japan's allegations that North Korean agents abducted at least 10 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, they said.

Pyongyang denies the allegations, but has promised to search for the individuals as "missing persons."

Japan and North Korea held three rounds of normalization talks this year. The last round, in October in Beijing, ended without an agreement.

Murayama served as prime minister between June 1994 and January 1996 and continued serving as a Lower House member of the Social Democratic Party until retiring from politics in June.