Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is heading to the United States, where he will discuss North Korea with President Donald Trump ahead of next week's US-North Korea summit.
Abe is scheduled to hold talks with Trump on Thursday and expected to ask the president to dismiss Pyongyang's claim that the issue of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago had been resolved, Kyodo News agency has reported.
Japan says North Korea abducted at least 17 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to teach the language and its living habits to its agents.
Five of the 17 were returned alive to Japan in 2002. Pyongyang, however, said eight others died and the other four never entered the reclusive nation.
Trump is to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island in Singapore on June 12.
On Thursday, Abe is also likely to ask Trump to convey to Kim that Tokyo would consider negotiating on the normalisation of diplomatic relations and the extension of economic cooperation based on a 2002 bilateral declaration, if progress is made on the abduction issue.
Japan is very concerned about North Korea's nuclear weapons' programme. Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test in September and test-fired about 20 ballistic missiles last year, some of which flew over Japan's mainland.
Abe's meeting with Trump will take place ahead of the G-7 summit meeting in Charlevoix, Canada.
