Kim Yo-jong's comments come after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he felt a "strong need" to change the state of current relations between Tokyo and North Korea. "I think there would be no reason not to consider his recent speech as positive, if it is motivated by his true intention to courageously free himself from the shackles of the past," she says.
North Korea admitted in 2002 to sending agents to kidnap 13 Japanese people in the 1970s and 1980s, forcing them to train its spies in the Japanese language.