JAPAN / FILE: Abductee kin expresses hope and gratitude before meeting ex-Pyongyang spy

Record ID: 465116

  • Title: JAPAN / FILE: Abductee kin expresses hope and gratitude before meeting ex-Pyongyang spy
  • Date: 11th March 2009
  • Summary: PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA (FILE - 2002) (REUTERS) NORTH KOREAN FLAG KIM JONG IL'S STATUE PEOPLE WALKING ON PYONGYANG STREET WIDE VIEW OF PYONGYANG STREET
  • Embargoed: 26th March 2009 12:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA3448TH4H69D5RW21N94WOXH6L
  • Story Text: The family of a Japanese woman believed to have been abducted to North Korea expressed hope and gratitude on Tuesday (March 10) ahead of their meeting with a former Pyongyang agent who has given a crucial testimony about her whereabouts.
    ''I hope this visit will shed a light of hope to the families of abductees who are not only in Japan but also in South Korea," Koichiro Iizuka, a 32-year-old son of Yaeko Taguchi, told a news conference in Narita, east of Tokyo, before leaving for South Korea. Iizuka was one year old when his mother suddenly disappeared.
    Iizuka and his family members are to meet Kim Hyon Hui, a former North Korean spy who says she had been taught the Japanese language by Taguchi in North Korea before the agent, posing as a Japanese passenger, left a bomb on a South Korean airliner in 1987, killing more than 100.
    Kim, who was later arrested and sentenced to death, now lives in South Korea after getting a presidential amnesty.
    Taguchi's family members are clinging to the hope that Kim could still provide some leads to finding her and bringing her back to Japan.

    "We have come to learn that Yaeko Taguchi was alive thanks to Kim Hyon Hui's brave testimony," said Shigeo Iizuka, 70, Taguchi's father. He added that he would like to thank her in person when they meet on Wednesday (March 11) in the South Korean port town of Busan.
    The plight of abductees, snatched from their homeland in the 1970s and 1980s to help train North Korean spies, has grabbed huge media attention in Japan ever since North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese.
    Five abductees returned to Japan on October 15, 2002, but Tokyo is demanding information about the other eight Pyongyang confessed to kidnapping and a further four Japan suspects were also victims.
    Despite the North's removal from a U.S. list of terrorist states, Japan says it will uphold a ban on economic aid to North Korea until progress is made over the long-simmering feud.
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