Japan has been informed that a suspect in North Korea's abduction of Japanese national Tadaaki Hara in 1980 died in 2018, police said Wednesday.
The suspect Kim Kil Uk, a former principal of a North Korean school in Japan, was among the 11 people Japan had issued international arrest warrants for concerning past kidnappings of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang.
Kim died on March 13, 2018, the Japanese police said, citing information provided by South Korean police via Interpol. Investigative sources have said he died in South Korea and was 90 years old.
If the information is verified, Kim would be the first among the 11 alleged abductors to be confirmed dead.
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.
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 purposes.
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