The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Japan has proposed summit talks between the regime leader and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

In a statement carried by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) on Monday, Kim Yo-jong said Kishida also recently expressed through a different channel an intent to meet with his North Korean counterpart as soon as possible.

She said Tokyo's practical political decisions would be important in opening a path towards improving bilateral ties, adding a will to simply come to a leaders' dialogue would not be enough to resolve their long-standing feelings of distrust and misunderstanding.

Kim added that any attempt from Kishida to raise the issue of Japanese abductees in the North, which Pyongyang considers to be a closed issue, would lead North Korea to believe the Japanese Prime Minister’s proposal was populist in nature.

At an upper house committee session on Monday, Kishida, in response to Kim's statement, said he was unaware of such a report, adding that top-level talks between Pyongyang and Tokyo are important to resolving issues such as the abduction problem.