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N Korea wants Japan to apologise in spy case

TOKYO: North Korea is demanding an apology from Japan in order to help ease tensions in the case of a former Japanese journalist arrested by the Stalinist state for alleged spying, a Japanese news agency reported on the weekend.

Japanese lawmaker Kanji Inoki told Kyodo News Agency that Pyongyang insisted that the Japanese government was involved in the alleged espionage incident and wanted Tokyo to repent.

It came to light late last year when Takasahi Sugishima, 60, a former reporter with Japan's financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, was detained on espionage charges. Pyongyang accused him of gathering information on military and diplomatic secrets for Japan and South Korea.

North Korean officials told the Japanese lawmaker, who just returned from Pyongyang, that Sugishima was being questioned and treated well, Kyodo said in a report from Beijing.

In December and January, Japan's Foreign Ministry refuted the allegations that the former journalist was a spy.

The case has complicated efforts by Tokyo and Pyongyang to work on a venue for talks on normalising diplomatic relations between the two neighbouring countries.

The two sides are expected to hold preliminary talks toward normalisation in the next few weeks.

One of the main sticking points in the talks is the issue of 10 Japanese allegedly kidnapped by North Korea, which scuttled normalisation talks at the start of the 1990s. Tokyo is seeking an investigation of the matter while Pyongyang denies the kidnapping charges.-Reuters