Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi left the North Korean capital late Tuesday for Tokyo after a ground-breaking one-day summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.
Koizumi left Pyongyang’s Sunan airport on board a Japanese government Boeing 747 jet around 8.45 pm (1145 GMT).
Koizumi’s visit, the first to the communist state by any Japanese prime minister resulted in the two countries agreeing to resume stalled negotiations on normalising ties.
The breakthrough came after Kim apologised for the first time for North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals, and vowed to freeze the North’s missile test launch programme indefinitely.
Koizumi extended Japan’s apology for its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and suggested economic aid for the cash-strapped state was now on the agenda. – Sapa-AFP