Japan to resume talks with N. Korea

Japan and North Korea will hold bilateral talks at the level of Foreign Ministry bureau chiefs next week in Mongolia, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said yesterday.

It will be the first official talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang since dialogue was suspended in August 2008.

The government is eager to put the abduction of Japanese by North Korean agents on the agenda, according to sources.

The talks will be held in Ulan Bator on Thursday and Friday, Fujimura said at a press conference.

In the run-up to the meeting, Tokyo and Pyongyang agreed in preliminary talks in August between section chief-level officials to discuss "a wide range of issues of mutual interest."

The Japanese government had hoped to resume higher-level talks no later than September 17, the 10th anniversary of the Pyongyang Declaration, which called for efforts to be made toward normalising bilateral relations.

During the preliminary talks, the Japanese government made public what it saw as issues of mutual interest, which included the abduction of Japanese by North Korea in the 1970s and '80s.

North Korea reacted harshly to the announcement, calling it unrealistic. The state-run Korean Central News Agency said in an article issued September 17 that the abduction issue had been "completely settled."

Afterward, the North stonewalled even on such minor issues as setting a date for higher-level talks, the source said.

Shinsuke Sugiyama, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, is likely to represent the government at the upcoming talks, with his counterpart expected to be Song Il Ho, envoy for negotiations over normalising ties with Tokyo, or Kim Chol Ho, vice director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department, the sources said.