Tokyo police seek arrest warrant for ex-N. Korean agent.
TOKYO, Sept. 29 KyodoTokyo police are set to obtain an arrest warrant for a former senior official of North Korea's intelligence agency and place him on the international wanted list for his alleged leading role in the abduction of a Japanese man in 1980, investigative sources said Thursday.
The move would make Kang Hae Ryong, former vice director of what was known as the foreign information research department of North Korea's Workers' Party of Korea, the highest-ranking agent wanted by Japan over a series of kidnappings of its citizens decades ago. Eleven others have already been placed on the Interpol notice.
Kang, believed to have been a close aide of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, allegedly instructed agent Sin Gwang Su to abduct a male Japanese national, the sources said.
The warrant is sought on a charge of abduction with the intent of transferring the abductee abroad. Once obtained, Japan plans to demand Kang's extradition through diplomatic channels with North Korea.
Sin is on the Interpol wanted list on suspicion of kidnapping Tadaaki Hara, then a 43-year-old employee of a Chinese restaurant in Osaka, from the coast of Miyazaki Prefecture using a spy boat in June 1980. He allegedly used Hara's identity to obtain a passport for himself and entered Japan repeatedly for espionage activities.
North Korea has said Hara married another kidnapped Japanese in 1984 in the North and died two years later of chronic liver disease, but has not provided convincing evidence to back up the claim.
In relation to Hara's abduction, a former principal of a North Korean school in Japan, Kim Gil Uk, has also been put on the wanted list.
The unresolved abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea remain a major obstacle preventing the two countries from normalizing relations. Five of the 17 victims identified by the Japanese government returned home in 2002, while Tokyo continued to press Pyongyang for the whereabouts of the others.
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| Publication: | Japan Policy & Politics |
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| Geographic Code: | 9NORT |
| Date: | Oct 3, 2011 |
| Words: | 323 |
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