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.