Japan, NKorea hold 1st senior talks in 16 months

Japan and North Korea have started high-level government talks in Beijing for the first time in more than a year.
A major issue for Japan during the two-day talks is the fate of at least a dozen Japanese people who it says were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations. They held talks in 2012 during a brief warming of relations, but those ended after North Korea launched a rocket in December of that year.
The two countries agreed to resume the talks after an informal gathering earlier this month between Japanese and North Korean foreign ministry officials in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang.