TOKYO – North Korea has been tempting Japan with the prospect of a visit to Pyongyang by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first leaders’ summit in 20 years – but with a massive catch.

Tokyo must accept Pyongyang’s weapons programme and treat its abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s as a resolved issue for such a summit to be held, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) cited leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister Kim Yo Jong as saying on March 25.

Mr Kishida has said he is open to meeting Mr Kim with no preconditions. But Ms Kim rubbished the idea of any summit unless Tokyo first agrees to terms that it has long considered non-negotiable.

Implying that a summit cannot be a mere photo op to boost Mr Kishida’s awful domestic support, she was quoted as saying: “Just because the Prime Minister wants to, does not mean he can meet our country’s leadership.”

In a separate development that goes against the grain of tentatively warmer ties, North Korea suddenly scrapped a World Cup qualifier against Japan that was to have been played at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Stadium on March 26. Japan won the reverse tie in Tokyo 1-0 on March 21.

Mr Kishida’s approval ratings at home are languishing, and critics believe an unlikely meeting with Mr Kim would allow him to portray himself as a consummate diplomat.

This could give him a quick boost in support, as time is running out before a ruling Liberal Democratic Party leadership contest that will be called in September 2024.

Observers said the Prime Minister faces difficult choices: He may give an inch, but sentiment will turn even further against him if Mr Kim ends up taking a mile.

“The big question is whether Kishida has the strong determination and conviction to assert that – despite all the concerns and risks – it was important to advance the relationship between Japan and North Korea at this point,” Professor Atsuhito Isozaki, an expert on North Korea issues at Japan’s Keio University, told The Straits Times.

A senior government official told the Asahi newspaper that North Korea was trying to excite Japan, adding: “We should be careful not to overreact, or else we would play into their hands.”

Nothing in public statements by either side suggests the needle has shifted from their respective entrenched positions.

Japan regards North Korea – with which it has neither normalised relations nor made reparations for World War II – as a pariah state, even as leaders since the late Mr Shinzo Abe have said they were open to a summit without preconditions.

In January, Mr Kim extended a surprise olive branch to Mr Kishida in a historic condolence message after a 7.6-magnitude New Year’s Day earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula, even referring to the premier as “Your Excellency”.

On March 25, Ms Kim divulged that Mr Kishida had recently made approaches “through another channel” other than the usual diplomatic routes to convey his hopes of meeting Mr Kim “as soon as possible”.

This prompted a rare acknowledgement from Tokyo that it has been lobbying for a summit through “various routes”. Even then, top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi stressed that it was “totally unacceptable” for Tokyo to accept Pyongyang’s word that the abduction issue has been resolved.

Mr Kishida, meanwhile, told reporters: “Nothing has been decided so far on whether a summit will be realised.”

As it stands, both countries hold intractably divergent views.

Tokyo demands that Pyongyang commits to achieving complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation and a resolution of the abduction issue before it will normalise ties and mete out wartime reparations.

Pyongyang, however, says its ballistic missile and nuclear programme is necessary for self-defence and insists the abduction issue has long been resolved.

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that its agents had kidnapped Japanese citizens between the 1970s and 1980s to teach the Japanese language and culture to North Korea’s spies. Their identities were also stolen and used by agents for espionage.

While there are hundreds of suspected victims, Japan formally recognises 17 abductees. But North Korea maintains there were 13 abductees, with the other four having never entered the country.

Five were returned in 2002 after the historic first summit between then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who offered Tokyo a formal apology.

This was followed by a second summit two years later, when family members including the North Korean-born children of the five returnees were brought to Japan.

Pyongyang insists the others are dead and says the matter has long been resolved.

Mr Takuya Yokota, 55, the brother of high-profile abductee Megumi who was snatched from Niigata in 1977 when she was 13, leads a support group for the families of other abductees. He said: “We cannot compromise on our demand that all abductees be immediately returned to Japan.”

Additionally, the geopolitical situation has drastically changed since Mr Kim met then South Korean President Moon Jae-in and then United States President Donald Trump in a flurry of summits from 2018 to 2019. This may have affected the diplomatic calculus.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol and his US counterpart Joe Biden, however, are antipathetic towards Pyongyang.

Mr Kim has stepped up North Korea’s war readiness as he declared the abandonment of the goal of unification with South Korea. KCNA reported on March 25 that he supervised a tank exercise by the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su Guards 105th Tank Division – the first military unit that reached Seoul in a surprise attack in 1950 that triggered the Korean War.

Concurrently, ties between Japan and South Korea are blossoming, while their trilateral partnership with the US is being strengthened.

North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme has advanced by leaps and bounds since 2002, when the abduction issue was top of the agenda.

Pyongyang has launched a military reconnaissance satellite into space, and now possesses intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of striking the US. It has also flown missiles over Japanese territory into the Pacific Ocean.

Ms Kim said on March 25 that Pyongyang will treat Tokyo as its “forever enemy and never friend” if Japan remains hostile. But she added that its arsenal will “never be a threat to the security of Japan”, so long as Tokyo respects North Korea’s sovereignty and legitimate security interests.

Prof Isozaki noted that there has been no change to North Korea’s policy to strengthen its military capabilities, making it extremely unlikely for Mr Kishida to extract any concessions.

Japan’s most-read newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, questioned in a commentary if North Korea was trying to drive a wedge between the US and its two allies in its charm offensive.

“Kishida should not take advantage of the matter for the sake of his own political ambition,” the commentary said. “If he does, it may cause a political and diplomatic disaster in Japan, South Korea and the United States, undermining the trilateral relationship.”