{"id":16412,"date":"2018-09-26T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T13:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16412"},"modified":"2018-09-26T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T13:26:42","slug":"japans-abe-open-to-meeting-north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16412","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s Abe open to meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Japan’s<\/a> Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a longtime hardliner on North Korea<\/a>, said he was willing to meet Kim Jong-un at a speech at the UN General Assembly.<\/p>\n

Abe, who one year ago warned at the United Nations that the window for diplomacy with North Korea was closing, took a more open but still cautious tone on Tuesday in his latest address to the world body.<\/p>\n

But he said that any summit would be devoted to resolving a decades-old row over North Korea’s abductions of Japanese civilians – a deeply emotive issue for much of the Japanese public on which Abe built his political career.<\/p>\n

“In order to resolve the abduction issue, I am also ready to break the shell of mutual distrust with North Korea, get off to a new start and meet face to face with Chairman Kim Jong-un,” Abe<\/a> said in his UN address.<\/p>\n

“But if we are to have one, then I am determined that it must contribute to the resolution of the abduction issue.” Abe added.<\/p>\n

He stressed that no summit was yet in the works – and appealed to Kim to show his own readiness.<\/p>\n

“North Korea is now at a crossroads at which it will either seize or fail to seize the historic opportunity it was afforded,” Abe said.<\/p>\n

North Korea kidnapped scores of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train the regime’s spies in Japanese language and culture.<\/p>\n

Japan’s then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi traveled to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 to seek a new relationship with the current leader’s father Kim Jong-il and was told by North Korea that remaining abduction victims were dead – a stance adamantly rejected by Japanese family members and campaigners.<\/p>\n

Speculation has been rising that Abe could meet with Kim, who reportedly told Trump during their summit in June in Singapore that he was willing to talk to arch-enemy Japan.<\/p>\n

With South Korea’s<\/a> dovish President Moon Jae-in also courting Kim, fears have risen in Japan that it could be shut out of any ultimate resolution on North Korea if it refuses dialogue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a longtime hardliner on North Korea, said he was willing to meet Kim Jong-un at a speech at the UN General Assembly. Abe, who one year ago warned at the United Nations that the window for diplomacy with North Korea was closing, took a more open but still cautious tone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}