Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a one-day trip to Pyongyang on Saturday to hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il following their landmark meeting in September 2002.

While state media briefly reported Koizumi's presence for the summit intended to "restore the relations of confidence between the two countries," there were no outward signs of his visit and local people who did know seemed unimpressed.

"History will never disappear even if we try to erase it," said Han Mi-Gong, a 29-year-old souvenir ship employee.

"Naturally, we learn about what Japanese did in the past from our parents and teachers," the Pyongyang resident said.

"This is an unforgettable crime for us," she added.

At a press conference here, Koizumi said he wanted to change the current hostile relations between Japan and North Korea to cooperative ties.

Han was dismissive of Japanese overtures, however, which on Saturday included a pledge of 250,000 tonnes of food aid and 10 million dollars worth of medical supplies.

"The Japanese government never apologizes for its wartime atrocities against us. How can we be expected to have friendly feelings towards such a country?"

Many seemed unaware of Japan's apology for its war-time aggression during Koizumi's first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in 2002.

The process of normalising relations between the two countries has been stalled by a dispute over how to solve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the Cold War era to train North Korean spies.

For North Korea, the top priority is compensation and an apology for Tokyo's harsh occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, when Koreans were forced to speak Japanese and pay obeisance to the emperor in Tokyo.

"Nothing will start unless Prime Minister Koizumi apologises," said a 25-year-old graduate of a Pyongyang law school who declined to give her name.

"We still remember what Japan did to our parents and grandparents."

While Japanese claim that North Korea's abduction of at least 13 Japanese citizens is a serious violation of international law, North Koreans retort that Tokyo's invasion and colonisation of the entire country is an even worse crime.

"I am aware of the abduction case, but Japan took over the whole of our country and all the Korean people suffered misery, which cannot be compared" to the abductions of a few, said Un Kyong-Hi, a college researcher in her 20s.

Kim Nyong, the mother of a 13-year-old boy, said: "I am telling my son about the facts of our history just like my parents told me in the past. I hope the two countries will normalise relations, but history will not change. The two things are different issues."

North Korean teens are taught in school about Japan's colonisation, while a Pyongyang history museum displays documents and pictures showing details of Japan's outrageous acts of the time, she said.

Kim Chol, a professor at Pyongyang's foreign language university, said negative feelings towards Japan were prevalent among students "even those majoring in the Japanese language.... It is not easy to achieve true mutual understanding."

Local people also said their anti-Japanese sentiment had grown as a result of Koizumi's repeated visit to Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine.

Koizumi made his annual pilgrimage on New Year's Day this year, provoking an outcry from North Korea, China and other nations who suffered from Japan's war-time aggression.

Honouring 2.5 million Japanese war dead, Yasukuni is widely seen as a symbol of Japan's former militarism, particularly since 1978 when it enshrined 14 Class-A war criminals including wartime prime minister General Hideki Tojo.

Koizumi is only the third prime minister since 1978 to visit the shrine.

Japan has never had diplomatic ties with North Korea since the Korean peninsula was divided into the capitalist South and communist North in 1945.

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