With the resumption of talks with North Korea not in sight, Japan has stepped up diplomacy with the United States and South Korea to push for the resolution of Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tokyo's lobbying of Washington and Seoul to take up the abduction issue during their leaders' planned meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reflects Japan's concern that the issue may get sidelined as the summits appear to be primarily focused on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

But such concern may have eased somewhat after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono indicated he has won support from senior U.S. and South Korean officials he met in Washington, partly because the two countries also fret about North Korea's human rights situation.

Speaking after talks with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Friday, Kono said, "We agreed that Japan and the United States will continue to closely cooperate in resolving the abduction issue."

Including President Donald Trump, who met with families of Japanese abduction victims during his visit to Tokyo last November, U.S. administration officials share a "considerable interest" in the issue, Kono told reporters.

Referring to three U.S. nationals being held in North Korea, Kono said, "The United States has a similar kind of concern, as well."

In his first State of the Union address in January, Trump condemned "the cruel dictatorship" in Pyongyang over its human rights record, including its treatment of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who died last year soon after his release from North Korea in a coma following more than 17 months' imprisonment.

In a meeting Saturday in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Wha told Kono that Seoul will "firmly coordinate" with Tokyo in addressing the abduction issue, according to the Japanese minister.

Japan's push for the issue was bolstered by a call earlier this month by the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korean human rights that any progress in the nuclear issue during a meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae In and Kim in late April and a Trump-Kim summit in May should be accompanied by talks to address the North's alleged human rights violations.

In a report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Tomas Ojea Quintana urged North Korea to free three Americans and six South Koreans in custody.

Ojea Quintana also prodded Pyongyang to promptly investigate "unresolved cases of abductions involving citizens of Japan, the Republic of Korea and other states," referring to South Korea by its formal name.

North Korea has said the abduction issue involving Japanese had been settled, a position Japan does not accept. The issue has prevented the two governments from normalizing diplomatic relations.

Japan officially lists 17 citizens as abduction victims and suspects North Korea's involvement in many more disappearances. While five of the 17 were repatriated in 2002, Pyongyang maintains that eight have died and the other four never entered the country.

In May 2014, North Korea agreed with Japan to reinvestigate the fates of abductees but Pyongyang suspended the probe in February 2016 after being angered by Japan's sanctions against the North in response to the country's nuclear and missile tests.

A Japanese Cabinet Office survey released last December showed 78.3 percent of respondents in Japan cited the abduction issue as a major area of interest in North Korea. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says the issue is one of the policy priorities for his government.

Abe plans to visit the United States in early April for talks with Trump in an effort to ensure close coordination ahead of the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit.

But in a reflection of Japan's wariness that it may be left behind in the flurry of diplomacy over the North, Abe expressed hope during telephone talks Friday with Moon that the back-to-back summits would lead to talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang, according to the South Korean presidential office.

Kono told Pence and Kang that Japan wants to see a comprehensive resolution of the nuclear, missile and abduction issues prior to normalization of ties with North Korea -- a position the Abe government would like reflected in the summits.