Japan's Asahi newspaper says Japan and North Korea held talks in late October in Mongolia to discuss North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Quoting a source on Japan-North Korea relations, the daily said Saturday that Shoichiro Ishikawa, head of the secretariat of the Tokyo government’s headquarters on the abduction issue, met Song Il-ho, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official in charge of negotiations for normalizing relations with Japan, in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. 

The paper said that even though North Korea criticizes Japan through its official media, it is not opposed to dialogue. 

The daily presumed that Ishikawa demanded North Korea return all abductees to Japan, but Song repeated Pyongyang's earlier call for Japan to settle issues related to Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula first. 

The source said Shigeru Kitamura, head of Japan’s Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, and Kim Song-hye, a senior North Korean official in charge of reunification, have been in contact since July. 

Japan has been holding talks with North Korea under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's initiative to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss abduction and other issues, but apparently no progress has been made so far.