SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said Monday that a summit between her brother and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will not take place if Japan persists in its “unseemly” approach.
Kim Yo Jong’s statement came after Koichi told reporters last week that she told U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Washington that she was “very eager” to meet Kim Jong Un.
“But this is not what Japan wanted or decided,” Kim Yo Jong said. “In order for the top leaders of the two countries to meet, Japan should first resolve to break its anachronistic practices and habits.”
Kim Yo Jong, also a senior official, did not specify what Japan’s “unfashionable practices and habits” were. However, she said in a statement in 2024 that North Korea’s acceptance of a meeting offer from one of her predecessors reportedly hinged on Japan tolerating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and ignoring its past abductions of Japanese nationals. The meeting never took place.
“I don’t want to see the Japanese prime minister come to Pyongyang,” Kim Yo Jong said in her latest statement published by state media on Monday. But she still described her refusal as “just my personal position,” suggesting she was pressuring Japan to make concessions.
Observers say North Korea may want to improve relations with Japan to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies. Tokyo, meanwhile, hopes to resolve cases of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
After years of denials, North Korea admitted at a 2002 summit between Kim Jong Un’s late father, Kim Jong Il, and then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese. North Korea allowed five of them to return to Japan. Japan believes more people may have been abducted, some of whom may still be alive.
Koizumi visited North Korea for the second time and met with Kim Jong Il again in 2004, which was the last time the two countries held talks.
With North Korea refusing to restore diplomatic ties with the United States and South Korea since 2019, chances of a North Korea-Japan summit remain slim. Trump met Kim Jong-un three times between 2018 and 2019, and he has repeatedly expressed interest in resuming dialogue with Kim Jong-un, but the North Korean leader said he could only return to talks if the United States gave up its “delusions about North Korea’s denuclearization.”
Takahiro said Trump expressed support for an immediate resolution of the abductees’ cases and said he would “cooperate in every way” to meet with Kim.
