North Korea, Japan set for high-level talks in Beijing

High-level officials of North Korea and Japan are set to meet in Beijing on Sunday for the first time in more than a year for discussions expected to focus on the North's abduction of more than a dozen Japanese people decades ago. The two-day talks, scheduled to open on Sunday morning at the North Korean embassy here, will be led by Song Il-ho, the top North Korean envoy handling relations with Japan, and Junichi Ihara, chief of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau in Japan's foreign ministry. Upon arrival in Beijing on Saturday, Song told reporters that it was premature to comment on the progress of the talks before the two sides meet, playing down prospects for a quick breakthrough. "I will have to wait and see." Song said when asked about chances of progress in the government-level talks, the first of their kind since October, 2012. He said no agenda has been set for the talks. North Korea and Japan agreed to resume the government-level talks during their informal gathering in China earlier this month when Red Cross officials of both sides met to discuss the repatriation of the remains of Japanese nationals who died in the North during World War II. A key pending issue between the two countries is North Korea's admitted kidnapping of more than a dozen Japanese citizens in the past. In 2002, North Korea admitted it had abducted 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 80s. The North then let five of them return home, but said eight others died. Japanese officials believe that some of them are still alive. One of those Japanese who North Korea claimed to have died is Megumi Yokota who was abducted in 1977 at the age of 13. Earlier this month, North Korea allowed the parents of Yokota to meet her 26-year-old daughter in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator. Asked whether North Korea would let Yokota's daughter visit Japan for a reunion with her family there, the North Korean envoy did not answer. The Beijing contact comes as North Korea is making an ambivalent approach to the outside world. Last week, the U.N. Security Council condemned North Korea for test-firing two medium-range ballistic missiles in violation of its ban on such activities. North Korea and Japan have never had diplomatic ties, and the abduction issue has long been a key stumbling block in normalizing their bilateral relations.