Japan and North Korea will begin the first of three-track normalization talks on Feb. 4 in Beijing, Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Friday.
The meetings are expected to last for four or five days, Aso told a news conference, saying Japan hopes to hold general meetings on the first and last days of talks and break off into the separate-issue talks on Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese, security and settlement of Japan's past aggression in between.
They will be the first normalization talks between Japan and North Korea since a meeting was held in October 2002 in Kuala Lumpur.