The World - News from March 31, 1989

Japan apologized to North Korea for its rule over the Korean Peninsula, which began in 1910 and ended at the conclusion of World War II, in a diplomatic push to get normalization talks back on track. Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita made the apology in Japan’s Parliament, becoming the first Japanese leader to refer to the Communist nation by its formal name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea has repeatedly demanded the apology from Japan as a precondition to resumption of diplomatic talks. South Korea got a similar apology when its relations with Japan were normalized in 1965.