Days before sitting down with the North Korean leader,... President Moon Jae-in spoke on the phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday,... reaffirming his will to help Tokyo normalize its ties with Pyongyang.
The two leaders also discussed the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea decades ago.
Won Jung-hwan reports.

President Moon Jae-in held a phone meeting with his Japanese counterpart Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday ahead of the upcoming inter-Korean summit on April 27.
During some 40-minutes, Abe welcomed the inter-Korean summit this week, calling it a rare chance to denuclearize North Korea.
The two leaders agreed to maintain pressure against North Korea to achieve complete a complete and absolute denuclearization of the peninsula.

The two leaders also discussed relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo.
While mentioning about a possible meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,… Prime Minister Abe expressed his hope that Tokyo and Pyongyang may be able to put their past behind and fundamentally resolve the existing issues between the two.
Moon agreed with Abe that the success of the inter-Korean summit this Friday could pave the way towards normalizing relations between North Korea and Japan.

Abe also asked President Moon to help resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime.
The prime minister asked Moon to the raise the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s during the summit.
The South Korean leader replied that he has raised the issue on the table with North Korea whenever there has been an opportunity in the past,... and that he will do so again during the unprecedented meeting with the North Korean leader.
Tokyo officially lists 17 citizens as having been abducted by North Korea,... and suspects the regime is also behind other cases of missing Japanese nationals. Won Jung-hwan Arirang News.
Won Jung-hwan, Arirang News.