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North Korea said Wednesday that the afternoon session of the normalization talks with Japan has been canceled, reports said, citing the North's embassy in Hanoi, the venue of the talks. The North Korean embassy said that the afternoon talks with Japan will not be held as scheduled, the Associated Press reported.

It provided no further details about the cancellation.

Officials of Pyongyang and Tokyo opened their two-day closed-door talks in the Vietnamese capital earlier in the day in a step toward normalizing relations. The talks were a key part of a six-party agreement reached in Beijing last month, in which North Korea pledged to shut down and seal its nuclear facilities in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives from South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

The bilateral talks with Japan were expected to delve into the dispute over the abductions of Japanese citizens by the North in the 1970s and 1980s.

The North's chief negotiator Song Il-ho was quoted as saying by the pro-Pyongyang newspaper Choson Sinbo based in Japan, "If Japan tries to highlight only the abduction issue and ignore the authentic agenda in the meeting where normalization of relations should be discussed, it will face fierce resistance from (North) Korea."

For its part, North Korea will demand Japan compensate for its colonization of the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century.

The North's official newspaper, the Rodong Shinmun, said Wednesday, "For Japan, this year should be the year when it will clear up its criminal past and make a new start."

The Pyongyang-Tokyo normalization talks came after a 13-month hiatus triggered by a dispute about the abduction issue.

Japan's chief negotiator Koichi Haraguchi said earlier that "there will be no normalization of ties if the abductee issue is not resolved," echoing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's hardline stance on the dispute.

North Korea and Japan have never established diplomatic relations since the North was founded in 1948. The major hurdle to their normalization negotiations was how much and in what terms Japan should pay for its colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Their on-again, off-again talks got a major boost in late 2002 when North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted to and apologized for his country's abduction of 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s.

Amid growing allegations about the abductions in Japan, Kim said the North's agents kidnapped them to train spies in Japanese language and culture.

After a few more rounds of talks, however, relations again chilled over disputes related to the abduction issue in February 2006.

Japan said there were more abductees than the North admitted and called for a new investigation, while the North denied the claim, saying it was politically motivated, and considered the case resolved.

Their relationship now has a rare chance to thaw, with the two-day talks underway in Hanoi amid signs of progress on the nuclear issue. The United States also held normalization talks with the North in New York.
Hanoi, March 7 (Yonhap News)