Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of DPRK Issues

Press Statement

Pyongyang, May 29 (KCNA) -- Pak Sang Gil, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of
the DPRK, issued the following press statement on Monday:
It is reported that Japanese Prime Minister Kishida said at a rally on May 27 that
it is very important to build the relations between the top leaders of the DPRK
and Japan, and clarified his intention to hold a high-level consultation for the
early hosting of the DPRK-Japan summit.
We know that the prime minister has expressed his desire for the "Japan-DPRK
summit without preconditions" whenever he has an opportunity after he took
office, but we do not know what he really wants to get from it.
Two rounds of the DPRK-Japan summit meetings and talks took place in the 21st
century, but the relations between the two countries are only deteriorating. So it
is necessary to cool-headedly recall its reason.
Japan is now talking about the "summit talks without preconditions" but, in fact, it
is clamoring for settlement over the abduction issue, which had already been
resolved, and the DPRK's right to self-defence, and putting forward it as a
precondition for improving the DPRK-Japan relations.
We are not sure what Japan is going to do and what it wants, but if it tries to fulfill
the unrealizable desire by employing the methods used by the preceding regimes
without any better proposals and bold decision to rewrite history, it will be a
miscalculation and a waste of time.
If one doggedly sticks to the past, one cannot advance towards the future.
It is the stand of the DPRK government that if Japan is to make a new decision
from a broad perspective of recognizing each other as it is in the light of the
changed international trend and times, not being shackled by the past, and seeks
a way of improving the relations, there is no reason for the DPRK and Japan not
to meet.
Japan should show its will to resolve the issue by practice, not by words. -0-