The Japanese government marked the anniversary by voicing regret at the lack of North Korean moves to settle the kidnapping issue, while a broadside from the North Korean foreign ministry blamed Japan for the collapse of efforts to improve bilateral ties.

"No matter what North Korea charges, we must solve (the kidnapping issue)," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference.

"Five people returned home but nothing has moved forward since then," Fukuda said, referring to the five Japanese kidnap victims permitted their first home-coming in 24 years last October.

North Korea's admission on September 17 last year in Pyongyang that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens during the Cold War era, eight of whom had died, ignited a wave of nationalism in Japan.

Hostility over the abduction issue has also combined with growing fears here over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, dashing hopes of proceeding with negotiations aimed at normalising relations.

"Nothing is more insincere than their (North Korean) attitude," said Toru Hasuike, whose brother Kaoru, 45, was among the five Japanese allowed back.

"I thought the summit was a new start ... but I greatly regret there has been no progress since the five returned home," Hasuike told the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) on Wednesday.

The 13 were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s in order to train the North's spies in Japanese language and culture.

The five kidnap victims who returned later refused to go back to the Stalinist state. Tokyo now wants eight relatives of the abductees to be allowed to leave North Korea too, and it is demanding more information on other suspected kidnapping victims.

The two sides are now at an impasse over the issue, with Pyongyang accusing Tokyo of breaking a promise to send the five abductees back after a fortnight's home-visit.

North Korea's foreign ministry said prospects for improved ties were bright a year ago.

"But, regretfully, the review of the past one year indicates that the present bilateral relations are much worse than those before the declaration was published," it said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The statement blamed Tokyo's hard-line stand on the nuclear crisis and the "fuss" kicked up in Tokyo over the abduction issue, which it dismissed as an "isolated" incident which had now been settled.

The influential and liberal Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial the unprecedented threat Japanese felt from a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea had had far-reaching effects.

"Japan has changed greatly over the past year due to North Korea and nurtured an intolerant, irritated society as if it was countering extreme remarks by North Korea," the newspaper said.

A week ago, a self-professed rightist made a bomb threat against the Japanese diplomat who was the chief negotiator in talks with North Korea, charging he was too soft on Pyongyang.

It was the latest in a string of intimadatory incidents aimed at those deemed sympathetic to Pyongyang including ethnic Korean residents.

Relations between Japan and North Korea were for decades characterised by Cold War hostility, stemming from Pyongyang's bitterness over Japanese colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 until the superpowers divided it into the capitalist South and communist North in 1945.

Tokyo has never established diplomatic relations with Pyongyang although talks on the normalisation of relations were first held in 1991. Eyeing the 500 million dollars in aid Japan gave South Korea when it normalised ties in 1965, North Korea has demanded compensation for Japan's rule as a pre-condition.

On the eve of the anniversary, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters he fully understood "the anger of abduction victims and their families."

"We have to continue to negotiate patiently," he said, admitting Japan would need other nations' assistance in solving the kidnapping issue.

WAR.WIRE