19.02.2024 – 23.012.2024 A Tate Papers

Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said on February 15 that North Korea will be open to improving relations with Japan.

In addition, Kim Yo Jong hinted at the possibility of inviting the Japanese leader to visit North Korea in the future.

Kim Yo-jong’s comments came after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last week that he believed there was a strong need to change the current relationship between North Korea and Japan.

“There is no reason to deny that the speech he (Kishida) gave recently was a positive statement. If that was his true intention,” Kim Yo-jong said, according to the state-run KCNA news agency.

Kim Yo-jong said that based on Japan’s actions, including putting North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s in the past, our two countries can open a new future together.

“There is no reason for both countries not to be friendly. The day will come when the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit to Pyongyang will happen,” he said. North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens remains a sensitive issue in Japan.

North Korea also admitted in 2002 that it sent agents to abduct 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s and forced those Japanese nationals to train Japanese language and customs to North Koreans in Japan.

But suspicions remain in Japan that North Korea may have abducted more Japanese citizens than it has officially recognized.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last year, Kishida said he wanted to meet with the North Korean leader without conditions and that the Japanese government was willing to resolve all issues, including the abductions.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang in 2002 and met with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, to discuss the normalization of relations between the two countries and plans for Japan to provide economic support.

After that trip, North Korea released five Japanese nationals, but diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed due to Japan’s concerns that North Korea had not come clean about its abductors.

In addition, recently, Japan, the United States, As cooperation with South Korea increased, relations with North Korea became strained.

In some villages in Beilin Township, Mon State, (200-K) transformer boxes have been cut and stolen, according to local residents.

In January, Beilin Township’s Zothut village group, Yun Dalingone village group, Paktaw village group, Zaikala village group A resident of Beilin Township said that there have been thefts of main cables cut from (200-K) transformer boxes in Muthen villages.

A resident of Beilin Township said, “In order to get electricity, they had to form village lighting committees. At the beginning of February, the main ropes from our village were cut and stolen. In terms of value, it is about 75 thousand kyats because it is copper wire. Now to fix it, the villagers have to buy the main ropes together. Now I can’t buy copper wire, so I have to replace it with metal wire,” he said.

According to the locals, the perpetrators of the theft of mains cables have not yet been identified and arrested.