North Korean media said Tuesday there is no way for the country to hold further investigations into 10 Japanese whom Tokyo believes were abducted by the North, and added Pyongyang should take "strong counteraction" against Japan.
North Korea explicitly states to Japan that there will be no reinvestigation into the issue, the official Korean Central News Agency quoted the Minju Joson newspaper as saying in a commentary.
Japan has lodged a protest with North Korea over the country's reinvestigation into the fate of the 10 missing people, saying information and materials provided by the North do not support Pyongyang's claims. The North admitted abducting eight of them, and claimed they have since died, and said the two others never entered its territory.
Tuesday's commentary follows remarks by a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman carried by KCNA on Dec. 31 that North Korea "can neither accept nor admit" a report Japan submitted to Pyongyang, in which Tokyo rejected the outcome of the latest probe.
North Korea provided to Japan what it described as the cremated bones of Megumi Yokota, one of the eight abductees the North claimed claimed are dead, but a DNA analysis in Tokyo showed the remains are of somebody else.
Pyongyang has "made all sincere efforts it can," the commentary was quoted as saying.