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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his firm commitment to holding a North Korea-Japan summit, stating his desire to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un without any preconditions.

“I’d like to meet Kim Jong-un for an honest and candid conversation,” Abe said during an interview printed in the May 2 issue of the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper.

“Since the five abductees [Japanese who were abducted by North Korea] returned home, we haven’t managed to bring any other abductees home. That’s a bitter failure for a politician who has been working to deal with that issue from the very beginning,” Abe said.

“Even as we work alongside the international community, it’s particularly important for Japan to take the initiative in dealing with this. The only way to break through the shell of mutual distrust is for Kim and me to sit down together in person.”

On several occasions since the first North Korea-US summit in June 2018, Abe has said he ought to be the next person to meet Kim. Abe has now voiced this opinion even more forcefully with his comment that he won’t impose any conditions on the meeting.

After former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi held a summit with North Korea in Pyongyang in 2002, North Korea sent back five Japanese. It also informed Japan that eight others, including Megumi Yokota, had passed away. But the Japanese government has been reluctant to trust the news of their death. Abe accompanied Koizumi on his visit to North Korea as the deputy chief cabinet secretary, and his political rise has been fueled by the uncompromising public opinion he has cultivated on the issue of the abductees.

“The first thing that’s necessary to resolve the abductee issue is for North Korea and Japan to normalize their diplomatic relations in accordance with the Pyongyang declaration. I believe that [Kim] will be a leader who can be flexible and strategic in judging what is best for his country,” Abe also said during his interview.

Abe added that he and US President Donald Trump had “talked about the abductee issue for 50 minutes while traveling in a car between golf courses” in the US on Apr. 27.

But there hasn’t been any evidence of official negotiations between Japan and North Korea recently. Even though Japan’s foreign policy blue book, released last month, omitted a phrase about “exerting maximum pressure” on North Korea that had been used until last year, the Japanese government extended its independent sanctions on the North for two years.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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