Abe urged to ensure Trump-Kim talks help resolve N Korean abductions

Family members of Japanese victims of kidnappings by North Korea urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday to convey their hope to resolve the decades-old issue to U.S. President Donald Trump, who will meet with the North's leader Kim Jong Un later this month.

Abe told the family members he will soon talk with Trump by phone so that the president could relay to Kim the Japanese government's plan to address the issue that has prevented the normalization of diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang. "We would not oppose diplomatic normalization if all the abduction victims are immediately returned altogether," 80-year-old Shigeo Iizuka, who heads a group of the families, said in line with the message they wrote. They visited Abe at his office.

"I take your wish seriously and will make efforts to settle the problem," Abe responded, pledging he will "not miss any opportunity." Trump and Kim are set to meet on Feb 27 and 28 in Hanoi for their second summit. When they last met in Singapore in June, Trump took up the abduction issue at Abe's request. Abe has expressed readiness to hold talks with Kim.

"The shortest way to settle the issue is a direct meeting between the prime minister and Mr. Kim," Sakie Yokota, the 83-year-old mother of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted at age 13 in 1977, said at the meeting with Abe. Tokyo officially lists 17 citizens as having been abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, and suspects the country's involvement in many more disappearances. Five of the 17 were repatriated in 2002, but Pyongyang maintains that eight have died and the other four were never in the country. North Korea has confirmed that Minoru Tanaka, one of the 17 victims, is living in Pyongyang with his wife, and Tatsunori Kaneda, who Tokyo suspects was also abducted, is also in the country, a Japanese official recently said.

Source: https://japantoday.com/category/politics/abe-urged-to-ensure-trump-kim-talks-help-resolve-n.-korea-abductions