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TOKYO -- Fired up by the falsified remains of a Japanese national abducted to the North in the 1970s and recently repatriated in the form of bone and ash - which DNA tests have since confirmed as belonging to several other people - local lawmakers are resolving to slap sanctions on North Korea.
A group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers adopted a resolution Friday calling for sanctions to be placed on North Korea should Pyongyang fail to explain itself within a fixed period of time.
The Japanese House of Representatives' special committee handling the kidnapping issue called in Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, who said Japan would defer its commitment to send the second half of a shipment of food and medical aid to the famine-struck enclave for the time being.
During Friday morning's cabinet meeting, Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, Education Minister Nakayama Nariaki and others called for a tougher line on North Korea, saying, "Through sanctions, we must make things difficult for North Korea."
The Japanese press balanced this by relaying a more cautious view, quoting Administrative Reform Minister Murakami Seiichiro's decision to refrain from stirring debate on the issue. "As economic sanctions are a high political decision, I cannot comment," he said.
North Korea has claimed that Yokota Megumi, the abductee who was allegedly returned last month after committing suicide in the 1990s, taught Japanese at a facility for abductees in Taeyang-ni, Pyongyang from 1981 to 1986.
A group composed of the families of kidnap victims later denounced the explanation as incredible. They claim to have reason to believe that Yokota moved to Taeyang-ni in 1986.
The group said the figure known as "Lee Eun-hye," who taught Japanese to North Korean agent Kim Hyun-hee [who participated in the bombing of a Korean air in 1987] was a Japanese woman named Taguchi Yaeko.
Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported that the claim, made by another kidnapped Japanese national upon her return home, was the first testimony made on the relationship between "Lee Eun-hye" and North Korean agent Kim.
According to the testimony of Chimura Fukie, who returned to Japan in October 2003 and claimed to have temporarily shared living quarters with Taguchi, the latter told her compatriot that she was teaching Japanese to an agent called "Okka."
"Okka" is the Japanese pronunciation for the Korean word "Ok-hwa" - the assumed name of bomber Kim Hyun-hee. The pseudonym "Kim Ok-hwa" was written on her forged passport, which was later seized by South Korean authorities following her apprehension.
This undermines North Korea's former claim that it was not involved in the terrorist bombing in 1987 (a denial that has already been largely exploded by Kim's confession), based on the rationale that Taguchi's Korean name was "Ko Hye-ok," so could not have been the "Lee Eun-hye" who is believed to have taught Kim Hyun-hee.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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