North Korea said Saturday that Japan should address its past to improve ties with Pyongyang, the government-sponsored Korean Central News Agency reported.
Ahead of the postponed second round of negotiations on establishing diplomatic ties, to be held this week in Japan, North Korean newspapers said Tokyo should apologize and compensate for its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945 to enable bilateral talks to proceed smoothly.
The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's ruling Workers Party of Korea, said Japan should take advantage of the set of meetings in Tokyo and Kisarazu, Chiba Prefecture, this week to "take a sincere approach to the issue of settling its past."
The issue is key to establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, the paper said, urging Japan to admit it "committed hideous crimes" against Koreans during the years of colonization.