Leaders of North Korea, Japan to Meet

In a sign that isolated North Korea is trying to mend fences with its neighbors, leader Kim Jong Il has agreed to a summit next week with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, officials in Tokyo announced Friday.

The most pressing matter to be discussed at the one-day meeting in Pyongyang on May 22 is North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Kim apparently has decided to reward Koizumi for the visit by allowing family members of Japanese abductees to travel back to Tokyo on the prime minister’s plane. The abductees were repatriated to Japan after a 2002 trip by Koizumi, but their relatives have not been allowed to join them.

Such a triumphant return could be a publicity coup for North Korea, as it tries to live down its reputation as a rogue state, as well as for Koizumi, whose ruling party faces key parliamentary elections in July.

The increasingly intractable problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is also expected to be on the agenda.

“The purpose of the visit is ... to restore the trust between Japan and North Korea,” Koizumi’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters in Tokyo on Friday.

As if to compensate for its abysmal relationship with the Bush administration, North Korea has been on a rare charm offensive recently to bolster ties with its neighbors.

This week, North Korea’s military brass dropped myriad objections to meeting with its South Korean counterparts and scheduled talks for May 26. A South Korean official told reporters Wednesday that Kim personally intervened to make the long-delayed meeting possible. The reclusive Kim also traveled to Beijing last month to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao.

However, working-level talks this week in Beijing aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program failed to make progress. Reportedly, U.S. envoy Joseph DiTrani held a rare one-on-one meeting with his North Korean counterpart on the sidelines of the six-party conference.

Pak Myong Kuk, a member of the North Korean delegation, told reporters in Beijing afterward that his delegation denied U.S. claims that it had received nuclear technology from Pakistan.

“Such information is false,” Pak said. “As we have said before, there were only missile deals between us and Pakistan.”

Impoverished North Korea is particularly eager to establish diplomatic relations with Japan with the hope that its wealthy neighbor will provide financial aid as well as reparations for its occupation of the Korean peninsula before 1945.

“The North Koreans want diplomatic relations with the Japanese, and they expect economic assistance from Japan. To do that, they need to solve the abduction issue,” said Katsuei Hirasawa, a ruling party legislator who has been closely involved with North Korea.

During Koizumi’s first trip to Pyongyang in September 2002, Kim shocked the world by admitting to long-standing allegations that North Korea systematically kidnapped Japanese citizens, who were to be trained as spies. Shortly after, North Korea allowed five surviving abductees to go home.

But the Japanese public, which was enraged by Kim’s confession, has demanded that the children of the abductees also be released.

Among those who could be sent to Japan with Koizumi on the upcoming trip is Charles Robert Jenkins, an American soldier who defected to North Korea in 1965 and subsequently married Hitomi Soga, one of the abductees.

It is not clear, however, whether he wishes to leave North Korea because of the likelihood that he would be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for desertion.