Japan Imposes Asset Freeze on N.Korean Shipping Firm

Japan on Friday froze the assets of the operator of a North Korean ship seized for smuggling arms, the Foreign Ministry said, just as Tokyo is engaged in talks with Pyongyang to return Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago.

The sanction against Ocean Maritime Management, which operated the ship detained near the Panama Canal a year ago carrying Soviet-era arms, follows similar steps by the United States and U.N. blacklisting of the North Korean firm in July.

It is not immediately clear how much assets, if any, Ocean Maritime Management holds in Japan, the Finance Ministry said.

North Korea in May agreed to reinvestigate the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by the reclusive state in the 1970s and 1980s. In return, Japan last month eased sanctions on the North, lifting travel curbs and allowing port calls of North Korean ships for humanitarian purposes.

The sanctions lifted are separate from those imposed by Japan and U.N. members after Pyongyang's first nuclear test in 2006 that prohibit U.N. member states from arms trade with Pyongyang and financial transactions that facilitate such trade.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government needs to tread a fine line and not appear too close to North Korea and undermine calls for it to abandon its nuclear and missile projects, but keep ties good enough not to derail the kidnapping reinvestigation.

"We have no choice but to do what's right, treating them (reinvestigation and arms smuggling) as separate things," a Foreign Ministry official said.

"We have made it clear that sanctions will be tightened as long as they carry on with their nuclear and missile programmes ... They are well aware of that."

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens and five abductees and their families later returned to Japan. North Korea said the remaining eight were dead, and that the issue was closed, but Japan has pressed for more information about their fate and others that Tokyo believes were kidnapped.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Michael Perry)