A South Korean man allegedly abducted decades ago by the North met his mother yesterday in a reunion at a North Korean resort that could shed light on the fate of a Japanese also kidnapped by the communist state.
Kim Young-nam disappeared from a beach on South Korea's southwest coast in 1978 when he was 16 and was long believed to have been abducted by North Korean agents. He met his mother Choi Gye-wol, 78, at the North's Diamond Mountain resort amid other reunions of Koreans divided between the North and South, according to pool reports.
The meeting with Kim, proposed by North Korea, is drawing scrutiny attention in South Korea and Japan as it could shed light on the issue of whether Megumi Yokota, a Japanese abductee Kim Young-nam is dead, as claimed by the North.
PHOTO: AP
"I am very happy to see you are so healthy," Kim told his mother sitting in a wheel chair as the two hugged each other crying, according to television footage. "Stop crying, why do you cry on such a happy day?"
The mother responded, saying "You look so much like how you were."
Accompanying Kim was his daughter, Kim Hae Kyong, 18, whom he is believed to have fathered with the Japanese abductee, Megumi Yokota. Also present were Kim's new wife and their seven-year-old son.
Kim didn't say anything about his ex-wife, Yokota, or how he ended up in North Korea. YTN said he is scheduled to hold a press conference today.
In 2002, North Korea admitted abducting 13 Japanese citizens over the years to help train spies in Japanese language and culture, and allowed five to return home. Pyongyang said the other eight, including Yokota, were dead.
But Many Japanese believe Yokota is still alive, and the abductee issue continues to complicate relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang.
North Korea has claimed that Megumi's husband is a North Korean man, named Kim Chol-jun. But that claim was discredited, as South Korean and Japanese DNA tests showed that there is a high possibility that Yokota's daughter and Kim's mother in South Korea have a blood relationship.
Japanese officials took the samples from the daughter during a visit to North Korea in 2002 and later gave them to the South.
In a surprising announcement early this month, the North said it had found Kim and would allow him to meet South Korean relatives during reunions of families separated between the Koreas at Diamond Mountain. Pyongyang didn't elaborate on how Kim got to the North.
Kim is among nearly 500 South Korean civilians believed to have been kidnapped by the communist state and still held there. North Korea claims they voluntarily defected.
Besides the civilian abductees, South Korea also estimates 542 soldiers from the 1950-1953 Korean War are still alive in North Korea. The North denies holding any prisoners of war.
Thousands of relatives divided by the heavily fortified inter-Korean border have been allowed to hold brief reunions since 2000, when the two Koreas held the first-and-only summit of their leaders and embarked on reconciliation efforts.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.