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No.151 SIM音読用英文

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Alleged South Korean Abductee Backs North Korean Line on 1978
Disappearance
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Kim Young-nam says South Korean authorities have it wrong:

he was not abducted at the age of 16 to North Korea.

Rather, Kim says, he was rescued from drowning at sea

28 years ago by a North Korean ship.

He says the kindness the North Korean sailors showed him completely
changed

his impression of the communist country.

He made his comments

in an unprecedented news conference Thursday

at the North Korean resort

where the day before, he was reunited with his mother

for the first time since his disappearance.

During the news conference,

held under strict supervision by North Korean authorities,

Kim also said his Japanese wife, Megumi Yokota, had committed suicide
in 1994.

He said

Yokota, who is among 13 Japanese

the North Koreans admit to having abducted during the Cold War,

was suffering from mental illness.

Kim disappeared from a beach on the South Korean island of Seonyu,

approximately 350 kilometers south

of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

For decades, South Korean authorities and Kim's family insisted

he was one of about 500 South Korean civilians
kidnapped by North Korean agents

since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The North Koreans say

any South Koreans in the country are there of their own free will.

Kim said Wednesday he has stayed in North Korea voluntarily.

He says because his family in the South was in such a difficult
economic situation,

he resolved to remain in the North until finishing university.

Time went by, he says, and he simply began to build a life in the North.

Kim's statements precisely echo

North Korea's official explanations

of his disappearance and Yokota's fate

- a fact being received with virtually no surprise here in South Korea.

No dissent from government opinion or statements is tolerated

in the rigidly controlled North,

and it is assumed

that Kim and his family could face severe punishment

if he tried to say otherwise.

While officials in Seoul have not formally responded to Kim's
statements,

abductee advocacy groups are dismissing them out of hand.

In Tokyo, Megumi Yokota's father, Shigeru Yokota, told reporters

he did not believe Kim's statements.

Kim's case first drew international attention in April,

when Japanese investigators said

DNA evidence showed that he and Yokota had had a child together.
               
    
Kurt Achin, VOA News, Seoul.
(Material is provided courtesy of voanews.com.)
by danueno | 2006-07-05 17:07 | SIM音読用英文


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