🇯🇵 Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, just did what her predecessors wouldn’t – she publicly asked to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
If it happens, it’d be the first Japan–North Korea summit in more than 20 years.
Takaichi says she wants “concrete results” on the abduction issue – the haunting Cold War-era mystery of at least 17 Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Only 5 ever came home. Pyongyang insists the rest are dead. Tokyo never bought it.
It’s part diplomacy, part unfinished business. Takaichi’s mentor was Shinzo Abe, who built his career on those missing citizens.
Now she’s trying to finish what he started – with Trump’s shadow still looming over the Pacific and Kim still playing nuclear poker.
If she pulls it off, Takaichi could become the first Japanese leader in decades to break the freeze – and maybe the first in history to outmaneuver Pyongyang without firing a shot.
