Posted on 04/11/2006 9:18:38 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Tokyo's DNA tests spawn a new dilemma for Seoul
Paternity case highlights plight of abducted Jeolla man in North
April 12, 2006 ¤Ñ Authorities in Tokyo notified their counterparts here yesterday that the husband of an abducted Japanese woman who died in North Korea was almost certainly a South Korean who was also kidnapped and taken to the North. Officials in Seoul said they would begin their own investigation into the Japanese conclusion, which was based on DNA testing of the couple's daughter and her paternal relatives.
The Japanese investigation rejected the assertion by North Korea that Megumi Yokota, a Japanese woman who was abducted in 1977, had married a North Korean named Kim Chol-jun in 1986 and lived with him until his suicide in 1994. Ms. Yokota has one daughter, Kim Hea-kyong, now 15, who lives in North Korea. But the Japanese DNA testing, they said, led them to the conclusion that Hea-kyong's parents are Ms. Yokota and Kim Yong-nam, who disappeared in August 1978 at the age of 16 while he and friends were swimming at a South Jeolla province beach. In 1997, a North Korean defector confirmed that Kim Yong-nam was still living in the North; South Korean intelligence organizations confirmed that assertion and added that two other South Koreans had been abducted four days after Mr. Kim disappeared.
Tokyo has pursued the matter doggedly. In 2002, they obtained DNA samples from Ms. Yokota's daughter in Pyongyang. Ms. Yokota's purported remains were returned to Japan in late 2004, after North Korea admitted abducting Japanese nationals in the 1970s and promised to cooperate in locating survivors. But the DNA testing of the cremated ashes, Tokyo said, showed that the remains were not those of Ms. Yokota. In February, Japanese officials came to Korea to obtain DNA samples from Kim Yong-nam's family members to help them establish whether he was the father of Ms. Yokota's daughter.
Also yesterday, Kenichiro Sasae, the director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, met with Kim Gye-gwan, a North Korean senior official, on the sidelines of a private security conference in Tokyo. He asked Mr. Kim for "sincere efforts" by the North to settle the many issues concerning the kidnapped Japanese.
Japanese newspapers trumpeted the news, but the reaction in Seoul was muted. Officials here said they would look at the DNA test results, conduct their own inquiry and take "appropriate measures" if they concurred with the Japanese findings. If true, Tokyo's finding would put the Roh administration in an even more awkward domestic position; a cornerstone of Seoul's North Korean policy is not to antagonize the North, but family members of kidnapped Koreans and Korean War-era captured soldiers are pressing hard for an accounting and return of any South Koreans still alive in the North.
Ping!
Is there a special human breeding program in N. Korea, along the lines of the one that Hitler had?
Or does he simply steal people, to prove he can?
I understand the taking of military, but not of teenagers.
Thank you for keeping me on your ping list.
They were for immersion program for N. Korean spies. They felt they needed natives to show spy trainees how to blend into their target society.
PROBABLY BOTH Chia pet could kidnap these people to prove that he can
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