North Korea announces arrest of foreign spies

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BEIJING, Sept 5 (AFP): North Korea announced Wednesday the arrest of "several" foreign spies who had allegedly conducted espionage on the Stalinist nation's military, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
A spokesman for North Korea's national security service told reporters in Pyongyang that the spies used digital cameras and video cameras to collect information on the nation's military installations, Xinhua said.
Several North Korean nationals were also arrested for helping the alleged spies, Xinhua cited the unnamed spokesman as saying.
The spokesman said the spies worked for a foreign intelligence service, but neither their identities nor the country involved were revealed.
China is North Korea's closest political and military ally, and one of the few nations allowed to have journalists based in Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, Japan and North Korea held talks Wednesday for the first time in six months in a bid to repair tense ties amid rare, albeit cautious, signs of optimism between the arch-foes.
The meeting in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator is part of a working group set up by six-nation talks designed to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes.
The two-day talks will focus on Japan's demands for a resolution to North Korea's past kidnappings of Japanese nationals, while Pyongyang will press for a settlement over Tokyo's 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
"If they want to first talk about the settlement of the unfortunate past, we are prepared to do that," the Japanese envoy, Yoshiki Mine, told reporters before the talks opened, according to footage on public broadcaster NHK.
North Korean negotiator Song Il Ho was quoted as saying that he was "happy to see Ambassador Mine," who was recently put in charge of the talks, and hoped for "serious achievements as the ambassador takes on this important duty."
The previous round of the same Japan-North Korea working group meeting took place six months ago in Hanoi, only to fall apart in acrimony with no tangible result.