SEOUL, Mar 25: North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns powerful sister said Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother, adding a meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.
Relations between the two countries are historically strained, including by a long-running kidnapping dispute and North Koreas banned weapons programmes, but Kishida has recently expressed a desire to improve ties, which Pyongyang has hinted it is not opposed to.
Last year, Kishida said he was willing to meet Kim "without any conditions", saying Tokyo was willing to resolve all issues, including the abduction by North Korean agents of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, which remains an emotive issue in Japan.
"Kishida... conveyed his intention to personally meet the President of the State Affairs of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as soon as possible," Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Kim Yo Jong -- who is one of the regimes key spokespeople -- had hinted last month at a possible future invitation for the Japanese leader to visit North Korea.
But she said the "history of the DPRK-Japan relations gives a lesson that it is impossible to improve the bilateral relations full of distrust and misunderstanding," without a substantive policy change on Tokyos part. —AFP
