North Korea attacks Japan’s ‘wicked character’, rejects Shinzo Abe’s offer to meet Kim Jong-un without preconditions

North Korea has dismissed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to hold a summit with leader Kim Jong-un without preconditions, urging Japan to first abandon its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang.

Abe had previously insisted normalisation of ties depended on progress being made on the return of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. His indication last month that he would be willing to hold a summit with Kim without preconditions therefore signalled a shift in Japanese government policy.

Pyongyang’s response, however, was scathing.

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“The Abe group is talking about the ‘opening of summit talks without precondition’ while desperately hurting the DPRK, which is the height of brazen-facedness,” a spokesperson for the country’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee – which is in charge of setting up diplomatic policies and exchanges – said on Monday, according to North Korean state media.

The spokesman also heaped insults upon Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, who last month said loopholes in sanctions – pertaining to ship-to-ship transfers of goods, remittances from North Korean workers abroad and stolen cryptocurrency – needed to be closed to compel Kim to make the “right decision”.

“It is useless to cry out for the improvement of relations unless Japan gives up its wicked character,” the North Korean spokesperson said. “Even though there is no able man in Japan, it is pitiful that such a poor-grade being as weasel-faced Kono who always makes hare-brained and loathsome words serves as foreign minister.

“Abe tenaciously knocks the door of Pyongyang while making an advertisement as if the Japanese government’s policy for negotiation with the DPRK was changed but there is nothing changed in its hostile policy towards the DPRK,” the spokesperson said, adding that Kono had called for the tightening of sanctions on the North “at his master’s beck and call”.

In response, Yoshide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, insisted the government’s position had not changed.

“Prime Minister Abe is prepared to break the shell of mutual distrust and directly face Chairman Kim in order to resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile issues, and most importantly of all, the issue of the abductions [of Japanese nationals],” Suga said.

Attempts to normalise diplomatic ties between Japan and North Korea have regularly been waylaid by the issue of the 12 Japanese nationals believed to have been kidnapped by North Korea.

In 2002, Kim Jong-il abandoned North Korea’s long-standing denials and admitted the country’s intelligence agencies had in fact abducted Japanese citizens, five of whom were subsequently released.

Pyongyang insists the issue has been resolved, claiming the remaining 12 Japanese either did not enter North Korea or have since died. Tokyo rejects this explanation.

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Yuki Tatsumi, the co-director of the East Asia Programme and Director of the Japan Programme at the Stimson Centre, wrote in 38 North on Friday that Abe has sought to “move the needle on Japan’s North Korea policy”.

“It is far from clear, however, that an Abe-Kim summit, which still remains a distant prospect, would yield any meaningful progress on the abduction issue, which would expose Abe to severe criticism at home,” he wrote.

Additional reporting by Kyodo