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At a press conference 28 years after he disappeared off the coast of Sunyu Island in North Jeolla Province in August 1978, Kim Young-nam told reporters Thursday he was not kidnapped by the North but sort of accidentally drifted out to sea. During a trip to the island, he says, he took a wooden raft to get away from the ribbing of his friends but fell asleep. ¡°When I woke up, I found myself out in open waters. I was rescued by a North Korean vessel and went to North Korea.¡± He liked it there and stayed, he said.
His life in the bosom of the Workers Party was happy. As for his first wife, the Japanese abduction victim Megumi Yokota, she committed suicide. The purported remains the North handed over to Japan were authentic, Kim said, and Japanese DNA test results showing them to be those of two other people were lies.
Kim had no choice. The culprits are those who concocted this hair-raising story behind the scenes. Who would believe that a wooden raft drifted hundreds of nautical miles out to sea into Northern waters? Or if Kim found himself in waters near the island, a North Korean ship must have infiltrated deep into South Korean waters. And who would believe that a man leading such a happy life in the North did not once in nearly 30 years write to his family in the South, apparently insensible that his mother must be out of her mind with anxiety? Apparently, the press conference felt like a clumsy monodrama that embarrassed both the performer and his audience.
The government was there. What will it do? Will it nod sagely, say, ¡°I see, that¡¯s what happened,¡± and turn its back again?
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