Four hijackers who have lived in North Korea since hijacking a Japanese airliner in 1970 say they are ready to return to Japan if their repatriation helps improve ties between the two countries.

In a Sunday interview with Japan's Kyodo News Agency, the hijackers said they would be willing to return for the sake of enhanced Tokyo-Pyongyang relations, even though they would almost certainly face immediate arrest upon their return home.

The four men are among nine members of the radical leftist Japanese Red Army faction who are suspected of hijacking a Japan Airlines' Yodo Flight and its 129 passengers, and subsequently defecting to the communist North in 1970.