Tokyo is reaching out to Pyongyang through "various channels" to hold a summit, the Japanese government said Monday, just hours after the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had conveyed his hopes of meeting her brother “as soon as possible.”
But Kim Yo Jong, who serves as a top adviser to the North Korean leader, said that improving relations — and the chances of any summit — would hinge on whether Japan was willing to make “a political decision,” likely a reference to the long-festering issue of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s.
The history of North Korea-Japan ties “gives a lesson that it is impossible to improve the bilateral relations full of distrust and misunderstanding," without a crucial policy shift by Tokyo, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.