Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Sunday that she hopes Tokyo-Pyongyang talks on normalizing bilateral ties will resume, referring to her scheduled meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun on Wednesday in Brunei.

"I would like to talk about each and every issue in a straightforward way. As (North Korea) is a county with which diplomatic relations are not normalized, I hope (the upcoming talks) lead to that," Kawaguchi said on a TV program.

The two countries held an 11th session of normalization talks in October 2000 in Beijing, but the meeting ended without accord with discussions stalled over Japan's wartime and colonial rule deeds and Pyongyang's alleged abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

On pending bilateral issues, Kawaguchi raised the abductions and urged that Japanese wives of North Koreans be allowed to visit Japan.

Tokyo believes at least 11 Japanese were abducted to North Korea in eight cases from 1977 to 1983. Pyongyang has denied the allegations, claiming those people must be simply missing.

Kawaguchi is to meet Paek on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum. The foreign ministerial meeting between the two countries will be the first since one at the ARF in 2000.

Meanwhile, in reference to her upcoming meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, she said she will convey that Japan's stance is unchanged on the five North Korean asylum seekers who were seized in May by Chinese police and removed from the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, northeastern China.

"I will not compromise," she said. She is to talk with Tang in Brunei on Tuesday and ask China to apologize for the May 8 incident.

Japan claims the police violated the Vienna Convention on consular relations when they entered the compound without permission. But China insists the officers received approval to enter.

Beijing allowed the five North Koreans to fly to South Korea via the Philippines on May 23 after two weeks of detention.

Kawaguchi defended Japan's aid policy toward Beijing, brushing off calls from some lawmakers for cutting official development assistance to the country in the wake of the Shenyang incident.

Annual per capita income in China is about $700 to $800, she said, adding Japan needs to support the country although there are different views toward China.

But she said China needs to "explain" its military modernization program.

Kawaguchi will attend a series of meetings of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, China and South Korea, slated for Tuesday in Brunei, the ARF the following day, and then a meeting of foreign ministers of ASEAN and the three countries.