Japan and North Korea have agreed to resume working-level government talks Saturday and Sunday in Beijing, and Tokyo again will demand the abduction issue be resolved, the top government spokesman said Wednesday.
Japan also will raise security issues, including North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told a regular news conference Wednesday.
The announcement came a day after Pyongyang said it would beef up its nuclear facilities to meet energy demands after the U.S. scrapped a project to provide it with light-water nuclear reactors amid the standoff over the North's atomic threat.