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Former Korean president Kim Dae-jung on Wednesday rejected allegations that he helped hush up the abduction of Japanese citizens by a prisoner who was repatriated to North Korea during his presidency. Kim said nobody reported to him that Shin Gwang-su, now 76, who along with 62 other long-term prisoners that resisted ideological conversion was repatriated to the North by South Korea on Sept. 2, 2000, had been involved in the abductions of Japanese people to North Korea.
The former president, who is visiting Japan, told the Wednesday edition of the country¡¯s Asahi Shimbun daily he would have acted differently had he received a report. Shin was arrested in South Korea, where he was sent as a North Korean agent in 1985. In the course of his trial, it came to light that he had kidnapped Tadaaki Hara, a chef from Osaka, in 1980, and that Japanese authorities had made him an internationally wanted man.
Ahead of the planned repatriation of the reprobate North Koreans, Japanese investigators had come to Korea and requested an interview with Shin, but Korean authorities told them they needed permission from Shin himself, leading at the time to serious controversy between Seoul and Tokyo.
The National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, led by Katsumi Kato, had said in a statement when Kim arrived in Japan on Sunday, "Shin Gwang-su, who kidnapped Japanese people, is being treated like a hero in North Korea and even had a stamp with his face on it published... We ask that officials of Tokyo University, which invited former president Kim, and Japanese reporters ask him why he collaborated in concealing the crime by repatriating the kidnapper to North Korea."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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