TOKYO — Japan is set to hold its first talks with North Korea in four years, while its diplomatic relations with South Korea suffer over disputed islands and wartime conflicts.
Japan will hold preliminary discussions with North Korea on Aug. 29 in Beijing, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, told reporters Tuesday. The topics discussed will include the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, he said, without specifying which officials will participate.
‘‘We want to go into these talks with the aim of reaching a comprehensive solution to various problems and past misfortunes in order to normalize diplomatic ties,’’ Fujimura said.
The meeting in Beijing will mark the Japanese government’s first dealings with the administration of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who took power after succeeding his father last year. Japan — along with South Korea, China, the United States, and Russia — is a partner to six-nation talks on North Korea’s denuclearization that dissolved when the North withdrew in 2009.
Cho Tai Young, a South Korean foreign ministry spokesman, had no comment Tuesday.
North Korea’s and Japan’s Red Cross societies held talks in Beijing on Thursday and Friday on the possible repatriation of the remains of Japanese who died in what is now North Korean territory at the end of World War II. Those discussions were the first between the two societies in a decade.