Japan issues arrest warrant for suspected N Korean spy

TOKYO: Japanese police obtained an arrest warrant Thursday for an alleged North Korean agent in connection with the abduction of a 19-year-old Japanese nurse in the 1970s, officials said.   

The female suspect, named as Kim Myon Suk, is accused of helping to kidnap Hitomi Soga, now 47, who was bundled into a boat to North Korea in 1978 in northern Niigata Prefecture, local police said.   

"This is a reflection that our efforts to find the truth have started to bear fruit," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

"We will continue to do more to rescue those who became victims of abduction," he said.   

Japan plans to ask North Korea to handover the suspect, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki.   

"We suspect Kim Myon Suk is in North Korea. Through the foreign ministry, we will ask North Korea for a swift handover," he said.   

In 2002, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il admitted that his country had abducted 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s so they could train his spies, and handed over five victims and their families to Japan in 2002.   

The suspect is now believed to be in her 70s or 80s, according to police, who plan to refer the case to the International Criminal Police Organization.   

The daughter and her mother Miyoshi Soga were snatched from Sado Island in northern Niigata prefecture on August 12, 1978. Her mother is also thought to have been kidnapped but has not been heard of since.   

Hitomi Soga returned to Japan in 2002 with four other Japanese kidnap victims after then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's landmark visit to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.   

She was later joined by her American husband Charles Jenkins, a US military deserter who spent nearly four decades in North Korea, along with their two daughters who moved to Japan from North Korea in 2004.   

Japan has already issued arrest warrants for other alleged North Korean agents suspected of kidnapping Japanese nationals. Tokyo refuses to establish diplomatic relations with the communist state due to a bitter row over the abduction issue which it plans to raise in future rounds of six-party talks on the North's nuclear programmes.   

Japan believes at least eight more of its citizens are alive and kept under wraps because they know secrets. It has repeatedly raised the kidnapping issue in the nuclear disarmament talks, much to the unease of other nations in the negotiations.   

Relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang have sunk to new lows recently after the communist state in July test-fired missiles in Japan's direction that splashed down in the Sea of Japan, followed by its nuclear test on October 9.   

Japan imposed its own severe sanctions on North Korea after its test, halting all imports and transport links. Chief of the National Police Agency said the arrest warrant was a reminder to the Stalinist state that despite international concern over its nuclear tests, the kidnapping issue was also a priority in Japan.   

"This is to send the message that North Korea must not forget about the abduction issue, as it prepares to return to six-party talks (on nuclear disarmament)," chief Iwao Uruma said.   

"Ms Soga has also expressed her wishes that she wanted to know the whereabouts of her mother," he said.