An adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held talks Wednesday in Pyongyang with a senior official of North Korea's ruling party, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Details of the meeting between Isao Iijima and Kim Yong Il, a secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, were not immediately known. The meeting was announced with just a single-paragraph dispatch by the state-controlled agency.
The two officials are believed to have discussed ways to address North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, an important issue in Japan.