Japan hopes a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held Sunday will reinvigorate stalled denuclearization talks and help resolve the issue of Pyongyang's past abductions of Japanese citizens.

After speaking by phone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Foreign Minister Taro Kono told reporters he welcomed the meeting, saying it was "a big turning point for U.S.-North Korea talks to resume."

"We hope that it will add momentum to efforts toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Kono said. He and Pompeo agreed to coordinate their countries' approaches to North Korea.

Trump and Kim held talks in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas and agreed to start denuclearization talks within weeks following the breakdown of their February summit.

"The meeting could serve as an opportunity for North Korea to come out of its shell," a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.

Tokyo is closely monitoring whether the two countries will move forward negotiations on the denuclearization of North Korea and improve their ties, which could help the U.S. government set up a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Kim, as hoped for by the Japanese leader.

Abe has so far failed to deliver on his promise to resolve the long-standing abduction issue. On Sunday, the prime minister described the situation as regrettable.

"I'm convinced that, at the end of the day, I myself need to meet with Chairman Kim Jong Un to resolve it," Abe said during an online debate with the leaders of opposition parties after the U.S.-North Korea meeting.

Abe is aiming to hold face-to-face talks with the North Korean leader to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by the North in the 1970s and 1980s, a major sticking point hampering Tokyo's relations with Pyongyang.

Abe had said he would not meet with Kim unless an outcome was guaranteed for the settlement of the abduction issue, but he recently changed his position, saying he would meet the North Korean leader "without conditions" to resolve outstanding bilateral issues. </s> Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has welcomed the third summit of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and expressed hope for continuation of such a dialogue

TOKYO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 01st July, 2019) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has welcomed the third summit of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and expressed hope for continuation of such a dialogue.

"Japan supports the US-North Korean process. I hope that the current negotiations at the highest level will continue," Abe said as quoted by Kyodo news Agency on Monday.

On Saturday, Trump met with Kim in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas and held an hour-long meeting in private inside the Freedom House on the South Korean side of the zone.

Trump even briefly stepped over the demarcation line into North Korean soil, becoming the first US president to do so.

Following the meeting, Abe reiterated his intention to have talks with Kim over North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, a pressing issue in relation between Tokyo and Pyongyang.

Kim and Trump first met in Singapore in June 2018, when the two leaders expressed commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The second round of talks, held in February in Vietnam, however, ended abruptly without any agreement. </s> Abe to press Trump to raise issue of abducted at Kim summit

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unable to meet North Korea's leader himself, is heading to Washington to try to make sure President Donald Trump doesn't overlook Japan's security and other concerns at the unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit next week.

Abe will have less than two hours to make his points to Trump at the White House on Thursday, before both go to Canada for a G-7 summit on Friday and Saturday, and the American president then flies to Singapore for his June 12 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Japan, which relied on the U.S. for its post-World War II diplomacy and security, has been absent in the recent burst of engagement with North Korea. Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have both met Kim twice, as Abe waits his turn to raise Japan's concerns directly.

"I want to make sure to be on the same page with President Trump ahead of the first ever U.S.-North Korea summit so we can push forward nuclear and missile issues, and most importantly the abduction problem, and make for a successful summit," Abe told reporters before leaving for the airport.

Abe doesn't want Trump to strike a compromise that would leave Japan exposed to shorter-range missiles that do not threaten the U.S. mainland or that relieves pressure on North Korea before it takes concrete steps toward complete denuclearization. He is expected to ask Trump once again to raise with Kim the fate of Japanese abducted by the North in the 1970s and 1980s.

"It wouldn't be my style to have to ask the U.S. for help on the abduction issue," said Hitoshi Tanaka, a former diplomat and head of a think tank, the Institute for International Strategy. "It's embarrassing that a state leader has to ask another leader in resolving the sovereignty of his people."

While in Washington, Abe will also likely press Trump to remove Japan from U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, as well as express his opposition to threats of sharply higher U.S. tariffs on imported automobiles. Abe said he will show at the G-7 summit his full backing for Trump on North Korea, but he will urge everyone to take leadership in promoting free and fair trade rather than escalating disputes.

Japan hopes to hold talks with North Korea after a successful Trump-Kim summit. Abe has said he is open to meeting with Kim, but only if it would lead to resolving the abduction issue. He said Japan would then normalize ties and provide economic aid as rewards for a North Korean commitment to both denuclearization and resolution of the abduction issue.

Japanese analysts agree that if Abe's turn to meet Kim comes, it would be at the very end of a long process as Trump and other regional leaders deal with North Korea's denuclearization.

"Japan eventually should develop its own diplomacy to deal with North Korea independently to resolve its problems, including the abductions," said Atsuhito Isozaki, a Keio University professor specializing in North Korea.

He said that economic aid or financial compensation for Japan's 35-year colonization of Korea could be attractive, but noted that North Korea now has other potential sources of assistance.

"Japan's economy does not stand out in northeast Asia as it did 16 years ago," he said, when Pyongyang and Tokyo last tried to negotiate a normalization of ties. Without Japan's help, North Korea has arranged a summit with the U.S. and possible economic cooperation from South Korea, he said this week at a briefing for media.

After a 2002 summit between then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, North Korea acknowledged abducting 13 Japanese and allowed five of them to visit Japan, though they then stayed, angering North Korea. Japan says at least 17 Japanese were abducted and possibly more.

Japanese officials are scrambling to get information on the Trump-Kim summit. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan will dispatch diplomats to Singapore to try to get the latest updates.

After his last meeting with Trump in April, Abe said the two leaders were in complete agreement on North Korea policy, namely to keep sanctions in place until Pyongyang takes concrete action toward verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

Concerns have since grown in Japan that Trump may be prioritizing holding a summit rather than the goal of full denuclearization. Abe, who has played tough on the North, also worries that a growing reconciliatory mood between the two Koreas may prompt leniency toward Pyongyang.

Trump's recent statement that he doesn't want to keep using the phrase "maximum pressure" against North Korea reinforced those fears.

North Korea's state media Korea Central News Agency criticized Abe and other Japanese officials for insisting on pressuring the North. KCNA, quoting the Rodong Shimmun newspaper, said Japan worries about being "marginalized from the structure around the Korean Peninsula." </s> North Korea has detained a Japanese tourist visiting the country, possibly on spying charges, Japanese media reported Saturday, complicating efforts to seek rapprochement between the two countries.

President Trump has said Japan is among the Asian countries he expects to provide economic aid to North Korea should it give up its nuclear weapons. But Japan is also determined to resolve the issue of its citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

Now, there is another man to worry about.

The Kyodo news agency reported that the man, in his 30s, was detained in the western port town of Nampo while on a group tour organized by a foreign agency.

Broadcaster NTV said the man describes himself as a “video creator” and might have been seized while trying to film a military facility in North Korea’s northwestern region.

TBS Television said he had visited North Korea several times in the past, and the Kyodo news agency and the Asahi newspaper said he could face spying allegations, citing official sources.



 In this June 14 photo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, bows to Shigeo Iizuka, second from right, leader of a group of families of Japanese abducted by North Korea, and Sakie Yokota, third from right, mother of Megumi Yokota, one of the Japanese abductees, and other members during a meeting at his official residence in Tokyo. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AP)

“North Korea may use the man it has held as a bargaining chip for negotiations with Japan,” a government official told Kyodo.

Japan has found itself somewhat on the sidelines since Trump met North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been hoping to arrange his own summit with Kim.

But the abduction issue is a sensitive one in Japan and one that Abe has championed in the past, putting pressure on him to make progress if there was a summit. No date for him to meet Kim has yet been set.

Japan says at least 17 of its citizens were abducted by North Korean agents from beaches and coastal areas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some to teach spies about Japanese language and culture, or simply to obtain their identities.

After decades of denial, North Korea finally admitted in 2002 to having kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens, allowing five to return home and claiming the other eight were dead. It now says the case is closed, something Japan and relatives of the disappeared do not accept.

North Korea has not taken steps to denuclearize, John Bolton says

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news </s> TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brushed off North Korean accusations of "gangster-like" diplomacy during negotiations in Pyongyang, saying on Sunday he will pursue denuclearization talks after meeting his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

Pompeo said in Tokyo there was still a lot of work to do but he was confident North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would stick to a commitment to abandon nuclear weapons he made during a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore last month.

Pompeo's meeting with Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha followed two days of talks in Pyongyang that ended on Saturday.

"When we spoke to them about denuclearization, they did not push back," Pompeo told a news conference. "The road ahead will be difficult and challenging and we know that critics will try to minimize the work that we've achieved."

Pompeo spoke after North Korea said the two days of talks with America's top diplomat "brought us in a dangerous situation where we may be shaken in our unshakable will for denuclearization, rather than consolidating trust between the DPRK and the U.S.".

The statement, which referred to the North's formal name of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), was carried by the official KCNA news agency on Saturday soon after Pompeo left Pyongyang.

Kim made a broad commitment in Singapore to "work toward denuclearization" but did not give details on how or when he would dismantle North Korea's nuclear program. Trump in turn offered security guarantees to Pyongyang and pledged a halt to large-scale military drills with South Korea.

North Korea's latest comments, which came after Pompeo said talks had made progress, are a reminder of the difficulties that previous U.S. administrations have had negotiating with the reclusive state and suggest Pyongyang may not agree to any rapid denuclearization.

Leaked U.S. intelligence findings concluded that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear program completely.

Trump has vowed that North Korea will not be allowed to threaten the United States with its ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. His meeting with Kim in Singapore came after months of often bitter rhetoric and threats.

Pompeo said he did not meet Kim on his latest visit to Pyongyang, as he had done twice before.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Twitter there was a danger military action could be called for because Trump might now claim he had tried diplomacy but was betrayed by Kim.

"But a rushed summit and demands that NK denuclearize in short order or else is not a serious test of diplomacy," Haass tweeted.

Japan's Kono thanked Pompeo and said the three allies had reaffirmed a commitment to keeping sanctions on North Korea until it abandoned nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles of all ranges.

"We confirmed that security assurances will be provided to North Korea as agreed in the summit. At the same time we have reaffirmed that the international community will continue to fully implement relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions," Kono said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier heaped praise on Pompeo at his residence in Tokyo.

"I would like to pay my tribute to the strong leadership you have demonstrated in negotiating with North Korea," Abe told Pompeo. "This really shows the unwavering bond of the Japan-U.S. alliance."

South Korea's Kang said her country did not believe the United States had weakened its demands on Pyongyang.

"Secretary Pompeo's visit to Pyongyang this time has taken the first steps," she said. "We expect this to be followed up by further constructive and productive negotiations."

Pompeo said on Twitter after he met Kono he was in Tokyo to discuss the U.S. alliance with Japan and maintaining "maximum pressure" on North Korea, an expression Trump's administration had backed away from after the Singapore summit.

He said before leaving for Pyongyang he was seeking to "fill in" details on North Korea's commitments and maintain the momentum towards implementing the Singapore agreement between Trump and Kim.

U.S. intelligence officials earlier told Reuters Pompeo wanted to agree on at least an initial list of nuclear sites and an inventory that could be checked against available intelligence.

Pompeo said in Tokyo: "There is still much work to do to establish what the precise timeline of the various events will be," Pompeo said in Tokyo.

He said he had also pushed North Korea on a promise to destroy a missile engine test site and that the United States would like that to happen "soon".

Pompeo said talks had yielded an agreement to form a "working level" group to oversee day-to-day interactions between the United States and North Korea.

Officials from the two sides would meet next week in Panmunjom, on the border between the two Koreas, to discuss the return of the remains of the some 7,000 U.S. soldiers missing since the 1950-53 Korean War.

KCNA said Pyongyang had offered to discuss declaring a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War to mark next month's anniversary of the armistice agreement. It said the U.S. side had shown little interest, giving "certain conditions and excuses".

Pompeo also told Abe he had raised the issue of Japanese people abducted by North Korean agents in the 1960s and 1970s to train its spies.

In addition to demanding that North Korea agree to the complete, verifiable and irreversible abandonment of its nuclear weapons and missile programs, Abe has made the return of any abductees still in North Korea or a full disclosure of their fates a condition for providing any major economic assistance.

Pompeo also met South Korea's Kang separately in Tokyo before leaving for Vietnam on the next leg of his trip through Asia and Europe. They discussed inter-Korean relations, peace and complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the South Korean government said in a statement. </s> The Latest on the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Singapore (all times local):

President Donald Trump says he will be ending joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea.

Trump made the announcement Tuesday at a news conference in Singapore after his historic meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has long objected to the annual exercises, viewing them as practice for future military action against the North by the United States.

Trump cast his decision as a financial consideration, saying the U.S. will save a lot of money by canceling the drills.

President Donald Trump is thanking North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "for taking the first bold step toward a bright new future for his people" after the leaders' historic Singapore summit.

Trump said at a news conference Tuesday after meeting face to face with Kim that "real change is indeed possible."

He also says that he's prepared "to start a new history" and "write a new chapter" between the two nations.

He says, "The past does not have to define the future."

President Donald Trump says he gave North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a video that laid out the opportunities of their historic meeting.

Reporters were shown the video before the start of Trump's news conference Tuesday. The video resembled a preview of a film. It shows images of warplanes and artillery and says there can "only be two results," one of moving back or moving forward.

The video shows the two leaders and raises the questions: "What if history can be changed? Will the world embrace this change?"

The president says he gave the video "to Chairman Kim and his people."

President Donald Trump is finally revealing that he spoke directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ahead of their Singapore summit.

Trump said in an interview Tuesday with ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he'd spoken with Kim and others before the summit.

Trump had dodged the question for weeks, refusing to answer reporters who asked about their contact.

During a visit to Mar-a-Lago in April, Trump told a reporter that he had spoken with Kim personally, but an aide quickly walked back the statement, saying it was other officials who'd spoken with Kim.

It was later revealed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had traveled to Pyongyang to meet with Kim.

Trump is describing his day with Kim as "very intense." He says he believes Kim wants to get denuclearization "done" and says he trusts Kim.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts after President Donald Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo tweeted shortly after the summit ended Tuesday that he'd telephoned South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. The State Department released a photograph of Pompeo on the phone.

Pompeo says on Twitter he provided the diplomats with "a brief readout of today's meeting" between Trump and Kim. The two leaders concluded their summit by signing a document in which Trump pledged "security guarantees" to the North and Kim reiterated his commitment to "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

The State Department is declining to release any additional information about the calls.

President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un have concluded an extraordinary nuclear summit by signing a document in which Trump pledged "security guarantees" to the North and Kim reiterated his commitment to "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Light on specifics, the document largely amounted to an agreement to continue discussions as it reiterated previous public statements and past commitments. It did not include an agreement to take steps toward ending the technical state of warfare between the U.S. and North Korea.

The pair promised in the document to "build a lasting and stable peace regime" on the Korean Peninsula and to repatriate remains of prisoners of war and those missing in action during the Korean War. </s> Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reportedly considering holding a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, despite earlier reservations about dialog with Pyongyang.

 Japanese local media cited an unnamed government source as saying on Wednesday that Tokyo was considering seeking a summit between Abe and Kim.

 The development came almost a week after US President Donald Trump announced he had accepted an invitation by Pyongyang to sit down with Kim without any preconditions. One of the South Korean official who had earlier met with Kim and who had delivered the invitation to Trump in Washington also met with Abe in Tokyo.

 Tokyo is said to be considering using a future meeting to discuss the fate of citizens that it alleges were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the local media.

 Abe has previously told Seoul that Japan wanted any demilitarization talks with Pyongyang to address the issue of the alleged abductions.

 “A resolution of the abduction, nuclear, and missile issues is Japan’s core policy,” the prime minister said earlier. “North Korea must match its words with actions.”

 Japan seemed to have early reservations about talks with North Korea. Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Abe said Tokyo would continue “utmost pressure” on Pyongyang to bring about denuclearization.

 This is while China and Russia both welcomed the potential meeting between Trump and Kim. Analysts attributed Tokyo’s cold response to fears that if Pyongyang “sits down with Washington, it will have absolutely no interest whatsoever in sitting down with Japan.—Agencies </s> Billy is the editor of Verdict. You can reach him at billy.bambrough@verdict.co.uk

As the world is still reeling from the shock announcement that US President Donald Trump could soon meet with Kim Jong-un, Japan’s top government spokesman has revealed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might soon sit down with the North Korean leader.

Abe wants to discuss the matter of Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang’s agents decades ago with Kim.

Kim is also expected to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April.

Earlier this week, South Korean envoy Suh Hoon visited Tokyo to brief Japan’s leadership on the fast-moving diplomatic process.

It is important to harmonise policies closely among Japan, the United States and South Korea ahead of the North-South summit and the US-North Korea summit. After that, while liaising closing among the three countries, we will address how to comprehensively resolve the nuclear, missile and abduction issues. Amid that, we want to consider what would be most effective and address the issues from that perspective.

It’s thought more than a dozen Japanese nationals were abducted in the 1970s and 1980s. They were then put to work teaching North Korean special forces about the Japanese language and culture to enable them to blend in during missions to Japan.

Read more: Here are all the places where Trump might meet Kim

In 2002 the then Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, meet with Kim Jong-il — the father of the current North Korea ruler — in Pyongyang where he acknowledged the country had targeted Japanese citizens and vowed that the abductions had ended.

Abe has since made the abductees issue a keystone of his political career and has previously used a telephone call with Trump to ask the US for help to resolve the issue.

Japan has also called on US support after North Korean missiles flew over its territory in 2017, sparking outrage and lifting tensions to fever pitch.

Meanwhile, Abe is facing a growing scandal at home over the sale of government land to one of his supporters, and an apparent cover-up of the deal by the finance ministry. </s> The Japanese government plans to explore the possibility of a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as it considers adopting a new way of dealing with the North, government sources said Tuesday.

The decision came after Abe and other officials were briefed by Suh Hoon, one of the South Korean envoys who spoke with Kim in breakthrough talks in Pyongyang last week.

While the Abe administration has long advocated a cautious stance in holding dialogue with North Korea, it now anticipates there is a fresh chance to make progress toward resolving the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, the sources said.

"If we're to resolve the abduction issue, direct dialogue with the top -- Mr Kim Jong Un -- is essential," a source at Abe's office said.

A high-ranking government official also expressed expectations for a Tokyo-Pyongyang summit. "The issues of (North Korea's) nuclear and missile will be discussed at a summit between the United States and North Korea. Japan and North Korea can discuss (at a summit) the abduction issue and the normalization of bilateral ties," the official told reporters.

The last time Japanese and North Korean leaders met was in 2004, when then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met Kim's father Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang.

South Korean President Moon Jae In and U.S. President Donald Trump have already decided to hold summit meetings with Kim in the coming months as a result of the Pyongyang talks.

Abe plans to visit the United States early next month and meet Trump to coordinate their North Korea policies ahead of what will be the first-ever meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

"In the event that we do hold (a summit with North Korea), we will need to watch the actions of both the United States and South Korea, and look for an effective time," a government source said.

"Everything starts from here on," a senior Foreign Ministry official told reporters.

The Foreign Ministry already has its eyes on the resumption of dialogue with North Korea, having decided on a plan to spread the message that Japan is aiming to normalize ties with the North, not just demand an end to its nuclear and missile development and a resolution to the abduction issue.

Asked whether the government will aim for a summit with North Korea, its top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference on Tuesday that Japan will "consider our forthcoming actions from the perspective of what is most effective."

The Abe administration has described North Korea as having taken advantage of previous frameworks for dialogue in order to buy time to further develop its weapons.

But the South Korean president's office said in a statement Tuesday that Abe told Suh, director of the country's National Intelligence Service, he does not think North Korea will merely use the upcoming summits for that purpose.

Japan officially lists 17 of its citizens as having been abducted by North Korean agents and suspects North Korea's involvement in other disappearances of Japanese nationals.

Of the 17, five were repatriated in 2002 after Koizumi's first talks with Kim in North Korea. Pyongyang claims eight of the abductees have died and the other four never entered the country.
After speaking by phone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Japanese Foreign Minister Tarō Kōno says "he hopes the meeting adds momentum to efforts toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula". Kōno also says that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe "wants to meet Kim Jong-un to solve the issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens".