Japan has been informed that a former principal of a North Korean school in Japan, wanted for the suspected abduction of Japanese national Tadaaki Hara to North Korea in 1980, died a few years ago in South Korea, investigative sources said Tuesday.
Kim Kil Uk was among the 11 people Japan had issued international arrest warrants for concerning North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals.
South Korea passed on the information on Kim about a year ago, and Japanese police are making arrangements to ask the country to provide documents supporting the claim, according to the sources.
If the information is verified, Kim would be the first among the 11 alleged abductors to be confirmed dead. He would be 95 if still alive.
Japan officially lists 17 nationals as having been abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s but suspects Pyongyang's involvement in many other disappearances.
"Police are currently in the process of collecting related information," said Yoshifumi Matsumura, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission.
Kim and former North Korean agent Shin Kwang Soo, 94, are suspected of luring Hara, then 43, from Osaka to Miyazaki Prefecture and abducting him to North Korea in June 1980. Shin is believed to have later illegally acquired a passport purporting to be Hara and entered Japan numerous times for espionage.
Kim was later arrested in 1985 for suspected spy activities in South Korea, where he is said to have admitted to Hara's abduction. He lived in South Korea after he was released from prison in May 2000.
The public security bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department sought an arrest warrant for Shin and Kim in April 2006, before obtaining an international warrant for the two men through the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol.
But Japan and South Korea had made no headway in extradition negotiations.
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