The government wants the surviving Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korea to return to Japan before it resumes diplomatic normalization talks with the Stalinist state next month, officials said Wednesday.
The government plans to launch a full-scale probe into the abductions of the more than a dozen Japanese citizens about whom Pyongyang provided information during a landmark summit Tuesday between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
"The government must repent" for its slow response to the abduction issue, Koizumi told reporters earlier in the day, effectively admitting the government was at fault for failing to resolve the kidnappings in the roughly two decades since they occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.