Japan has tense relations with North Korea in part due to an emotionally charged row over Pyongyang's past abductions of Japanese nationals.

"If North Korea wants to grow economically, raise the living standards of its people or at least get out of its state of being one of the world's poorest nations, it would be better off joining hands with us," Aso said.

"I hope Pyongyang will soon come to its senses and be a member of Asia," he told a Tokyo seminar of the New York-based Asia Society.

Aso said that in the past few decades, "Asian countries that maintained close relations with Japan have taken off" as successful economies.

"True, China has become an economic power. But even with three nations -- China, Russia, South Korea -- combined, Japan still has a larger economy," he said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has imposed sweeping sanctions on North Korea since its nuclear and missile tests last year and threatened to impose further economic punishment unless it shuts its nuclear reactor.

Abe has also refused to fund a February deal -- negotiated with China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States -- under which North Korea agreed to shut the reactor in return for energy aid.