In a joint press announcement after their talks in Tokyo, Abe said, "I received strong support from Prime Minister Khurelsukh to resolve the abduction issue."
The Abe administration has made it one of its top priorities to bring back all Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.
The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of fully implementing U.N. Security Council resolutions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile development programs to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Tokyo expects Ulan Bator to play an intermediary role with Pyongyang. Shortly after a historic U.S.-North Korean summit in June in Singapore, Japanese and North Korean officials met on the sidelines of a security forum in Mongolia.
A top Japanese intelligence official close to Abe secretly made contact with North Korean officials in early October in Mongolia, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Abe and Khurelsukh also agreed to deepen bilateral defense cooperation, with the Japanese Defense Ministry continuing to provide support to the Mongolian armed forces to enhance their capacity building, according to a joint statement released after the meeting.
On the economic front, they agreed on the need to strengthen business relations based on a bilateral free trade agreement that came into force in 2016.
In the press announcement, Khurelsukh promised to launch operations of the new Ulan Bator airport as early as possible, which is being built with Japanese official development assistance.
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