Japanese and North Korean university students discussed thorny issues such as Pyongyang's past abductions of Japanese nationals in the North's capital last week, resuming an annual exchange program that had been canceled the previous year amid easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
In the program, organized by a Tokyo-based civic group since 2012, students of the two countries expressed hope to improve bilateral relations while also touching on North Korea's nuclear arms development as well as reparations for Japan's colonial rule of the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Six Japanese students from the University of Tokyo, Ritsumeikan University and four other schools met with eight North Korean students majoring in the Japanese language at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies during the three-day event through Friday.