The Japanese government requested in February in its first contacts with Joe Biden’s administration that the United States resume bilateral talks with North Korea, according to the Kiodo news agency.
The conversation reportedly took place between the heads of Asian affairs of both countries with Sung Kim of the US State Department on the one hand, and Takehiro Fukanoshi of the Japanese Foreign Ministry on the other.
Fukanoshi stressed the need for a “complete” and “inspectable” dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program.
Japan considers the approach of direct talks between these countries, which led to the summits between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former US President Donald Trump, to have been “highly productive”.
From the Japanese point of view, multilateralism has not been successful in dealing with North Korean denuclearization, hence this commitment to direct dialogue between the Asian country and the United States.
As far as the Japanese government is concerned, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga tried after coming to power to get Kim Jong Un to meet with him without success.
One of the unresolved issues between the two countries is the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, a conflict that Japan wants to resolve with haste despite North Korean refusals because the main complainants -parents of the victims- are dying of old age.
