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Japanese Prime Minister Hopes for Closer Ties With Pyongyang
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori expressed the hope Wednesday that the first-ever meeting between the foreign ministers of Japan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in Bangkok, Thailand, will help the two countries resume normalization talks as soon as possible.
The first consideration should be on an early resumption of the suspended Japan-DPRK negotiations, Mori told reporters.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and DPRK Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun are scheduled to meet Wednesday evening in the Thai capital on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum.
Speaking at a separate press conference, Japanese Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa also voiced the hope that it will be a meeting in which the reduction of tension on the Korean Peninsula, that was brought about by the inter-Korean summit in June, will be promoted, and dialogue between Tokyo and Pyongyang will be pushed forward.
Negotiators from Japan and the DPRK met in April to resume normalization talks that collapsed in 1992, but a second round of talks, set for late May, was postponed.
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