BEIJING (AP) ― Officials from Japan and North Korea held their first government-to-government talks in four years Wednesday, amid hopes that new leader Kim Jong Un will adopt a less confrontational approach to relations between his isolated, impoverished communist state and the outside world.

The talks are being held in China, the North’s closest ally and biggest aid source. They are being described as preliminary discussions to pave the way for full-fledged talks in the future covering a broader agenda.

Discussions between Tokyo and Pyongyang have been frozen since August 2008 because of animosity over past frictions and disputes over the North’s nuclear program and its kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

Japan is pushing to have the highly emotional issue included in the agenda for future talks, chief Japanese government spokesman Osamu Fujimura said. North Korea has admitted abducting 13 Japanese nationals and using them to train spies. It pledged in the 2008 talks to reinvestigate the abductions, but has not done so.