A senior advisor to Japan’s prime minister has arrived in North Korea for what appears to be high-level talks.  Tokyo is not commenting on the mission.

But Japanese and North Korean news showed Isao Iijima at the airport in Pyongyang being greeted by Kim Chol Ho, vice director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department.

Contacts between Japan and North Korea were cut off with North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons test a few months ago.  But they were strained before that, Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs and by a feud over Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago to help train spies.

Iijima also worked for former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the time when North Korea released five of those abductees.

Meanwhile, South Korea is calling for border talks with the North to discuss bringing finished goods and raw materials out of the Kaesong Industrial Park.  The North and South operated the joint venture until last month, when Pyongyang pulled the plug because of economic sanctions over its nuclear program.

Seoul is still waiting for the North to respond.