SEOUL: Pyongyang said on Friday it had “nothing to talk” about with Japan after claiming that a Japanese diplomat in China had made contact with a North Korean counterpart.

Relations between the two East Asian neighbours have long been strained over the kidnapping of Japanese people in the 1970s and 1980s and North Korea’s banned weapons programmes, although there had been tentative recent signs of a thaw.

A North Korean diplomat in China said on Friday an official from the Japanese embassy in Beijing had proposed “contact through an e-mail” to a councillor at its embassy in the Chinese capital but the proposal was rejected by foreign minister Choe Son Hui. “... the DPRK will not allow any attempt of Japan to contact the former,” Choe said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name. “The DPRK-Japan dialogue is not a matter of concern to the DPRK.”

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, had said on Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had requested a summit with her brother, although a meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.