A Japanese woman applied for political asylum in North Korea while she was on a trip to China, the official North Korean news agency and Japan's foreign ministry officials said yesterday, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
"A Japanese woman, Kazumi Kitagawa, illegally entered the DPRK [North Korea] recently while making a sightseeing tour of a third country and sought asylum," said the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in a dispatch monitored in Tokyo.
"She is now undergoing investigation by the competent organ," it said.
A foreign ministry official in Tokyo told reporters North Korea's embassy in Beijing had informed Tokyo's mission there on Monday that a Japanese woman had entered North Korea and that the "third country" was China.
The official did not identify the woman or give her age other than to say she was a Japanese national, although he said the foreign ministry had been in contact with her family.
Kyodo News agency said the woman was in her 20s.
The foreign ministry has no information on the woman's current whereabouts in North Korea, or whether she has any Korean ancestry, or affiliation to groups sympathetic to North Korea, the official said, stressing that she had broken no Japanese law and her family had not asked for help.
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