Japan police raid N.Korea-linked group over kidnap
25 Apr 2007 05:53:10 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds reaction, paragraphs 9-10) TOKYO, April 25 (Reuters) - Japanese police on Wednesday raided the offices of a group linked to North Korea and the home of a woman suspected of abducting two children to the reclusive communist state more than three decades ago. Tokyo and Pyongyang are locked in a simmering dispute over Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s -- a major stumbling block to forging diplomatic ties between the World War Two foes. Tokyo police searched the premises of three facilities linked to the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) in Tokyo and the house of a 55-year-old woman, sources close to the investigation said. Police believe the woman played a key role in the abduction in 1974 of two children of a Japanese woman married to a pro-Pyongyang Korean resident in Japan, the sources said. The woman whose house was searched is suspected of having conspired with a 59-year-old North Korean agent to kidnap the children, aged 3 and 6 at the time, the sources said. They said they believed that the North Korean agent had left Japan in 1979 and had lived in North Korea ever since. The two children are not on a government list of Japanese nationals Tokyo believes were abducted to North Korea. Tokyo police were seeking to question three top officials of Chongryon in connection with the alleged abduction case, the sources said. TOUCHY ISSUE Chongryon condemned the raids as state-sponsored "outrage". "The raids are an act of planned political oppression against Chongryon by the Japanese authorities that try to use the abduction issue politically ahead of Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe's visit to the United States," it said in a statement. Abe, who made his name by taking a tough stance on North Korea, has said he will discuss the abduction issue with U.S. President George W. Bush at Camp David later this week. North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese. Five of them were repatriated that year, but Pyongyang says the other eight are dead. Tokyo wants more information about the eight and four others it says were also kidnapped, and wants any survivors sent home. The issue of the abductees, spirited away from their homeland in the 1970s and 1980s to help train North Korean spies in Japanese language and culture, is an emotive one in Japan. Japan says it will not give full-scale economic assistance to North Korea or establish diplomatic ties unless the abduction issue is resolved. Japan and North Korea held talks in Hanoi last month on establishing relations as part of a six-country deal in February to halt Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme in exchange for aid and diplomatic recognition. But the talks stalled over historical differences as well as the abduction issue. Failure to improve ties could hinder a six-party agreement because Tokyo is reluctant to give large-scale aid to Pyongyang in return for abandoning its nuclear ambitions. Under a Feb. 13 six-party deal, North Korea would receive energy aid in exchange for "disabling" its nuclear facilities. But Japan has refused to pitch in. About 600,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, many of them descended from the 2 million Koreans brought to Japan as forced labour during Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula. Of those, about 80,000 are pro-North, while 220,000 support South Korea and the rest are neutral, Korea experts say.
