Former North Korean spy meets family of abducted Japanese woman
A former North Korean agent who confessed to bombing a passenger jet in 1987 met Wednesday with relatives of a Japanese woman abducted to the Communist North in an encounter that shed little new light on the fate of the missing woman but was expected to anger North Korea.
The meeting, sponsored by the Japanese and South Korean governments amid rising tensions with the North, was the first public appearance of Kim Hyon Hui, the former North Korean agent, in almost 20 years, and was intensely covered by both Japanese and South Korean media.
In Tokyo, the government of Prime Minister Taro Aso hoped that Kim might provide fresh information about the kidnapped Japanese woman, Yaeko Taguchi, that could be used to press the North Korean government on other abduction cases. In Seoul, the conservative government of President Lee Myung Bak was investigating charges that the liberal administration that preceded him had pressured Kim to deny that she was a North Korean spy.
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The meeting, sponsored by the Japanese and South Korean governments amid rising tensions with the North, was the first public appearance of Kim Hyon Hui, the former North Korean agent, in almost 20 years, and was intensely covered by both Japanese and South Korean media.
In Tokyo, the government of Prime Minister Taro Aso hoped that Kim might provide fresh information about the kidnapped Japanese woman, Yaeko Taguchi, that could be used to press the North Korean government on other abduction cases. In Seoul, the conservative government of President Lee Myung Bak was investigating charges that the liberal administration that preceded him had pressured Kim to deny that she was a North Korean spy.