Japan and North Korea Hold First Talks in 4 Years
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Japanese and North Korean officials meet for the first time in four years today, a latest sign of a thaw in the traditionally frosty relations between the two countries.
The talks are being held in Beijing, North Korea’s closest ally and biggest aid donor.
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Japanese and North Korean officials meet for the first time in four years today, a latest sign of a thaw in the traditionally frosty relations between the two countries.
The talks are being held in Beijing, North Korea’s closest ally and biggest aid donor.
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Discussions between Japan and North Korea have been frozen since August 2008 because of animosity over past tensions as well as the North’s nuclear programme.
China has been nudging the North towards greater economic reforms and openness, and the talks will likely focus on the remains of Japanese nationals – a major point of contention – who died in the North during the Second World War.
According to the BBC, analysts will also be searching for indications of the future foreign policy direction of the new North Korean leadership under Kim Jong-um, whose father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011.
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Japanese officials say the meeting was “preparatory” and could set the tone for future talks that could eventually lead to the restoration of “normal relations.”
North Korea is eager to re-establish trade with Japan, Asia’s second largest economy, yet deeply resents Tokyo’s close military ties with the United States as well as the colonisation of the Korean Peninsula before and during World War II.
The AP noted that North Korea, compared with its Southern neighbours and Japan, remains “heavily militarised and largely impoverished, prone to damage from natural disasters such as flooding due to poor infrastructure and deforestation.”
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