Former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama offered a compromise to North Korea earlier this month to break a deadlock in normalization talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang, but the North Korean response was not positive, sources to close to Japan-North Korea relations said Saturday.
Murayama, who visited North Korea between Nov. 30 and Dec. 5 as head of a nongovernmental organization delegation, proposed the plan in a meeting Monday with Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, the sources said.
North Korea has demanded an apology and compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, one of the key sticking points between the two countries. Japan has rejected the demand, saying the two countries were not at war during the period of colonial rule.