Japan has taken a hard line against North Korea -- often putting Tokyo at odds with Washington -- demanding the communist state give a fuller account of Japanese civilians it kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.

Outgoing US ambassador Thomas Schieffer, who has often voiced sympathy for Japan's position, said he would advise the Obama administration to take the issue "very seriously".

"I am confident that when he thinks about it, President Obama will understand the issue," Schieffer told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

North Korea in 2002 admitted to the kidnappings and let five victims return to Japan. But it said others were dead including the best-known victim, Megumi Yokota, who was 13 when agents snatched her on a seashore in 1977.

"You are looking at a new president who has young daughters and you cannot hear (Megumi's) story without thinking about your own children and what you would feel if someone took away your child from your home," Schieffer said.

His remarks were echoed by Kyoko Nakayama, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso's special assistant on the abduction issue, during a visit to Washington.

"I was briefed that the next administration will be fully aware of the importance of the abduction issue and continue making efforts toward its resolution," Nakayama told reporters after talks with Christopher Hill, the US chief negotiator with North Korea.

Hill "told me there is no doubt about it", she said.

Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, brokered the 2007 deal under which North Korea agreed to end its nuclear drive in exchange for security guarantees and badly needed fuel aid.

Japan refused to provide any aid to North Korea due to the abductions, locking horns with the other nations in the six-way deal that also includes China, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States.

But the United States announced last month that all countries were suspending fuel shipments after talks broke down on how to verify disarmament by North Korea, which tested an atom bomb in 2006.

Japan's Kyodo News agency, quoting an unnamed source in Washington, said Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton had asked former Harvard professor Kurt Campbell to succeed Hill as assistant secretary for Asia.

Campbell is well liked by many policymakers in Japan, with which he negotiated on military cooperation during Bill Clinton's presidency.

But Kyodo said the Obama administration was also looking to create a new post as special envoy on North Korea and that Hill could stay on.

Campbell, writing on a New York Times blog in 2007, faulted George W. Bush's administration for not engaging enough with Asia.

"The Bush administration may indeed have decided to take the risk of focusing almost exclusively on Iraq, but there are growing anxieties not only of failure there but of mounting problems elsewhere where the United States has chosen to scale back its engagement, notably in Asia," Campbell wrote.