Japan and North Korea on Wednesday began intergovernmental talks for the first time in four years to mainly discuss the retrieval of the remains of Japanese nationals who died in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula during the war.
At the working-level meeting in Beijing, attention is focused on whether the two countries will address other pending issues, with Tokyo hoping to seize the opportunity to reopen talks on the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea decades ago, a major obstacle to normalizing bilateral ties.
Japanese officials said they are closely watching how North Korea responds to its calls for a reinvestigation into the cases of Japanese abductees.