The World Trade Organization on Wednesday selected Junichi Ihara, Japan's representative in Geneva, as the next chairman of the WTO General Council. Ihara, who will hold the post for a one-year term, becomes the second Japanese to head the General Council following Shotaro Oshima, who ...
Japan, rights expert trade barbs over Tokyo's record on freedom of expression
A senior Japanese diplomat and a U.N. rights expert traded barbs Monday at the U.N. Human Rights Council over a report released in May that criticized Tokyo's record on freedom of opinion and expression. David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom ...
Negotiating team revamped to break deadlock on abduction issue
The government is set to revamp its team dealing with North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals as Tokyo seeks a breakthrough in its dealings with Pyongyang.
Japan's North Korea delegation urges swift action on abductees probe
The delegation demands that North Korean officials put the highest priority on finding out what happened to the Japanese nationals who Tokyo believes were abducted and may still be alive.
North Korea has compiled a list of Japanese nationals who remained there after the end of World War II, and of the Japanese wives of pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan who moved to the North under a 1959-1984 repatriation project, sources say. The Japanese government ...
Japan plans to send officials to North Korea for abduction details
Japan is planning to send government officials to North Korea to learn details about its investigations into the fates of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang, government sources said Tuesday. "Even if we dispatch (officials to North Korea), there would probably be no risk," one source ...
North Korean officials provided an update Monday on Pyongyang's investigation, launched nearly three months ago, into the fate of at least 12 and possibly hundreds of Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted in the 1970s and 1980s. They met with Japanese officials in the ...
Japan, N. Korea reportedly had secret contact over abduction report
Leaks about another secret abduction meeting say Pyongyang's first report on its new probe into the issue is being delayed by a demand to ease Japanese sanctions.
Diplomats in Beijing mull ways to improve Sino-Japanese ties
A high-ranking Foreign Ministry official from Tokyo and his new Chinese counterpart on Tuesday "apparently" discussed ways to improve deteriorated relations between the two countries, NHK television reported. Visiting Beijing, Junichi Ihara, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, talked with ...
Top Korea experts from Japan, China chat before abduction talks in Beijing
Japan's chief negotiator on North Korea met with his Chinese counterpart Monday for talks just a day before Tokyo and Pyongyang were to hold another round of negotiations on the abduction issue. After the meeting in Beijing, Junichi Ihara, head of Asian issues at the ...
North Korea has become open to discussing the abduction issue with Japan again and the two countries agreed Monday in Beijing to carry on with governmental talks. During the first formal negotiations in more than a year, Japan appears to have demanded North Korea reinvestigate ...
At their first formal talks since November 2012, senior Japanese and North Korean diplomats on Sunday agreed to work toward settling "outstanding issues" impeding bilateral ties. The meeting, to end Monday in Beijing, was held amid mixed signals from North Korea over its willingness to ...
