TOKYO—Officials from the Red Cross associations of Japan and North Korea will hold talks in China next Monday for the first time since late 2012, the Japanese Red Cross Society said Thursday.

The primary topic of the meeting in Shenyang is expected to be the repatriation of the remains of Japanese who died in Korea at the end of World War II. But attention will likely focus on whether the talks will open the path for Tokyo and Pyongyang to discuss other issues that have stood in the way of normalizing diplomatic relations.

A spokesman for Japan's Red Cross said four of their officials will be attending the talks. Foreign ministry officials from both nations will also be present, a Japanese foreign ministry official said, raising the possibility of unofficial government-to-government talks taking place on the sidelines.

The talks between the two Red Cross associations will be the first since August 2012, when the two sides met for the first time in a decade to arrange the repatriation of Japanese remains. The talks were soon followed by the first official meetings between the two nations in four years, but official talks have stalled since November 2012.

The two countries have never had formal diplomatic ties, and relations have been severely strained over the years by North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the North's firing of ballistic missiles over Japan and its nuclear program.