Relations between Japan and North Korea could well see further progress.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested the holding of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the latter's influential sister said on Monday, while deeming this meeting unlikely without a change in policy on the side. from Tokyo.
"Mr. Kishida recently expressed his wish to meet with the chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as soon as possible," Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released by the North Korean official news agency KCNA.
Discussions to “resolve disputes”
The Japanese Prime Minister, who clarified that he was not aware of this press release, declared before Parliament that it is “important to have discussions at the top with Pyongyang to resolve disputes (…) It is "That's why we have undertaken various approaches with North Korea at this level, directly under my control, as I have said in the past."
Relations between the two countries are tense due to several problems, from the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 to the launch by Pyongyang of missiles above Japanese territory, including the kidnapping affair.
Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to the kidnapping of 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and culture.
A month after these confessions, five were allowed to return to Japan.
A meeting still pending
Despite this historic conflict, Mr. Kishida said he wanted to change the relationship between Tokyo and the reclusive country and expressed last year his wish to meet Kim Jong Un "without conditions", assuring during a speech to the United Nations that Japan was determined to resolve all disputes, including that of kidnappings.
In February, Kim Yo Jong, one of the regime's most outspoken figures, suggested that it was possible that the Japanese prime minister would be invited to visit North Korea.
It is "Japan's political decision that matters most to open a new era in relations between North Korea and Japan", she however warned on Monday, calling on Tokyo not to "interfere with the exercise of our sovereign rights.