North Korea gives Japan details of abductions

North Korea has informed a Japanese fact-finding mission investigating the kidnapping of more than a dozen people decades ago that one of them, a woman North Korea's spies abducted when she was just 13, committed suicide at a mental hospital in 1993, a Japanese official said today.

The announcement offered grisly details to an already bizarre chapter of Asia’s Cold War history that has been unfolding since Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il met for an unprecedented summit on September 17.

The most chilling was the fate of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted in November 1977 by North Korean agents when she was returning home from badminton practice at her junior high school.

According to the North, she killed herself at the mental hospital in Pyongyang where she was being treated for depression, Deputy Cabinet spokesman Shinzo Abe said, announcing the results of the fact-finding mission.

The mission returned from the North yesterday.

Abe said the North was co-operative and provided information that confirmed the identities of the abductees.

He also said the North told the mission that two people were tried for their role in the abductions – one was executed and the other sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Questions had been raised about why two of the abductees died on the same day, but Abe said the North explained that they had died in a car accident.

But Abe added that the graves of the eight people who died after being kidnapped were washed away in a flood, and that several abductees who are still alive may be reluctant to return because of their work or because their children do not speak Japanese.

Abe announced the mission’s findings after a representative met with relatives of the 13 abductees.

The team was dispatched to Pyongyang last week for a four-day stay following the surprise admission by Kim that ”elements in the military” had abducted at least 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 80s.

Of the 13, five are said to be alive.

Abe said the team met directly with some of the survivors, and were able to confirm their identities.

He said North Korea was co-operative and agreed to continue efforts to provide information on the abductions.

In a summit with Koizumi, Kim confessed that the abductees, ranging in age from 13 to 52, were kidnapped and taken to the communist nation to teach spies the Japanese language and culture.

At the summit, both countries agreed to reopen talks toward establishing diplomatic relations.