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.

"Today, we were able to engage in thorough discussions," Japanese envoy Yoshiki Mine told reporters after the first of two days of talks.

"It was a meaningful exchange of views in order to deepen mutual understanding."

The talks focused Wednesday on Pyongyang's demands for a settlement over Japan's 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.

The two sides were due Thursday to discuss Japan's demand for a resolution to the issue of its citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said the meeting had a "smooth start."

"Today the topic was the settlement of the past, which was of interest for the other side," Machimura said in Sydney, where he is attending an Asia-Pacific meeting. "I heard that the meeting will discuss the abductions tomorrow."

The North Korean side was also unusually conciliatory. North Korean negotiator Song Il Ho said 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," according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

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 over the abduction dispute.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rose to political prominence through his hard line on North Korea. He has broken ranks with the United States by refusing to fund February's disarmament-for-aid deal with Pyongyang.

North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping 13 Japanese to train its spies. It returned five victims and their families and says -- to the Abe government's scepticism -- that the rest are dead.

Abe, however, has been severely weakened by domestic scandals and an election defeat. Some members of his own party have voiced fears that his hard-line stance has isolated Japan from the United States, its main ally.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said China, South Korea and the United States had all privately pressed for progress between Japan and North Korea. Russia is the other nation in the six-party talks.

The outcome of the Mongolia talks will be reported to the next session of the six-way talks due later this month.

"The general atmosphere of the six-party talks has become positive, so (North Korea) and Japan have to move forward along with it," Jiji Press quoted Song as saying Tuesday in Beijing on his way to Mongolia.

Chief US negotiator Christopher Hill was upbeat after a weekend meeting with his North Korean counterpart in Geneva, saying that North Korea had agreed to fully declare and disable its nuclear facilities by the end of this year.

"I think there appears to be a sort of progressive momentum in the six-party talks. In this environment, I hope that the Japan-North Korea talks will go as well as they can," said Machimura, the Japanese foreign minister.

North Korea has already shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon under a six-nation agreement reached on February 13.

Under the deal, North Korea agreed to make a full declaration of all its nuclear programmes and to disable them in return for aid, security and diplomatic guarantees, notably normalisation of ties with Washington.

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