Pyongyang has on several occasions offered to allow the families of two Japanese nationals abducted to North Korea to visit Japan in exchange for food aid, but Tokyo has turned down the offers on the grounds that all the abductees' relatives should be allowed to come to Japan, a daily reported Saturday.

According to the Sankei Shimbun, Pyongyang offered to let Kim Hye Gyong, 15, the daughter of Megumi Yokota, and Charles Robert Jenkins, the husband of Hitomi Soga, one of five Japanese who returned last October after being abducted to North Korea in 1978, come to Japan.

North Korea has told Japan that Yokota, who was abducted by North Korean agents from Niigata Prefecture in 1977 at age 13, committed suicide in 1993.