TOKYO: North Korea has agreed to reinvestigate all abductions of Japanese citizens, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday, in what appeared to be a significant breakthrough on an issue that has long hampered Tokyo’s relations with Pyongyang.
“As a result of the Japan-North Korea talks, the North Korean side promised to the Japanese side that it will make a comprehensive and overall investigation into all the Japanese, including abduction victims and missing people whose possibility of being abducted cannot be ruled out,” Abe told reporters.
North Korea outraged Japan when it admitted more than a decade ago that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and customs.
Five of those abducted were allowed to return to Japan but Pyongyang has insisted, without producing solid evidence, that the eight others are dead.
The issue is a highly-charged one in Japan, where there are suspicions that perhaps dozens of other people were taken.
AFP
