North Korea says summit with Japan is off unless Tokyo drops ‘its anachronistic’ ways

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Monday a summit between her brother and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won’t happen if Japan sticks to “its anachronistic” approach.

Kim Yo Jong’s statement came after Takaichi told reporters last week that she had informed U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Washington that she had “a very strong desire” to meet Kim Jong Un.

“But this is not the one that comes true, as wanted or decided by Japan,” Kim Yo Jong said. “In order for the top leaders of the two countries to meet each other, Japan should first be determined to break with its anachronistic practice and habit.”

Kim Yo Jong, who is also a senior official, didn’t explicitly say what Japan’s “anachronistic practice and habit” are. However, in 2024, she said in a statement that North Korea’s acceptance of a reported offer for a meeting by one of Takaichi’s predecessors would depend on Japan tolerating the North’s nuclear weapons program and ignoring its past abductions of Japanese nationals. The meeting eventually didn’t occur.

In her latest statement carried by state media on Monday, Kim Yo Jong said: “I don’t want to see the prime minister of Japan coming to Pyongyang.” But she still described her rejection as “just my personal position,” suggesting she was pressuring Japan to make concessions.

Observers say North Korea likely aims for better ties with Japan to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies. Meanwhile, Tokyo wants to resolve the cases of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea during the 1970s and 1980s.

After years of denial, North Korea acknowledged in a 2002 summit between Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, and then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese. North Korea allowed five of them to return to Japan. Japan believes more people might have been abducted and that some could still be alive.

Koizumi made a second visit to North Korea and met Kim Jong Il again in 2004, the last time the two nations held talks.

Chances for a North Korea-Japan summit remain slim as North Korea refuses to return to diplomacy with the U.S. and South Korea since 2019. Trump, who met Kim Jong Un three times between 2018 and 2019, has repeatedly expressed his intentions of resuming dialogue with Kim, but the North Korean leader suggested he could only return to talks if the U.S. drops “its delusional obsession with denuclearization” of North Korea.

Takaichi said that Trump expressed his support for the immediate resolution of the abductees’ cases and that he indicated he would “provide cooperation in various ways” concerning meeting Kim Jong Un.