hankyoreh

By Jeong Nam-ku, Tokyo correspondent
Japan and North Korea began two days of director-general level talks on Nov. 15 in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, Kyodo News reported. These are the first talks in four years and three months, with the last coming in August 2008.
The talks at the Mongolian government’s state guest house were attended by Shinsuke Sugiyama, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asia-Pacific bureau, and Song Il-ho, North Korea’s ambassador for negotiations on the normalization of diplomatic relations, Kyodo reported.
According to the news service, the Japanese government plans to clearly position the issue of its citizens’ abductions to North Korea as an item on the agenda, and to look for ways of moving ahead in resolving the issue. It also said Tokyo plans to set up and maintain director-general level talks with strong bargaining authority as a formal framework for future negotiations.
Previously, North Korea refused to discuss the abduction issue when Japan announced it was putting it on the agenda.
The prospects for concrete negotiations appear uncertain for the time being. In particular, Pyongyang will have difficulty trusting Tokyo to honor the results of this meeting with an election coming up in Japan on December 16.
Kyodo added that Japan appears likely to reiterate its demands for a reinvestigation of the abductions and to discuss the return of particular missing persons considered very likely to have been abducted, as well the return of a Japanese woman who followed her husband to North Korea.
　
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