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SEOUL : A man who disappeared from South Korea nearly 30 years denied ever being kidnapped by North Korea and said he was living happily there in the "bosom" of the North's ruling communist party.
"My entry into North Korea - which was neither in abduction nor in defection - was an unexpected event that occurred by chance in the era of (inter-Korean) confrontation," Kim Young-Nam, 45, told a news conference in North Korea.
Kim was a 16-year-old schoolboy when he disappeared from a beach in South Korea in 1978. He said he had been playing in a tiny wooden boat that unexpectedly drifted out to sea where he was rescued by a North Korean ship.
Once in North Korea, he received an elite education and was engaged in "a job related to the reunification" of the two Koreas, he said.
"I am leading a really happy life in the bosom of the (communist) party," he said.
Later he married Yokota Megumi, a Japanese woman whom North Korea has admitted to kidnapping in 1977.
He claimed she killed herself in a mental hospital in 1994 following the birth of their daughter, denying speculation in Japan that she was still alive.
"This is an insult to Megumi and me, her husband, and an unbearable abuse of human rights," he was quoted as saying in a pool report.
Earlier this month North Korea admitted for the first time that Kim was alive inside the Stalinist state and said he would be allowed to meet his ailing 82-year-old mother, who had begged to see her son before she died.
On Wednesday, Kim was reunited with his mother Choi Gye-Wol and his elder sister, who travelled from South Korea to the North's scenic resort of Mount Kumgang for the meeting.
Kim's sister said her brother had eased their fears during Wednesday's reunion. He told his family that after he arrived in North Korea, he was well educated and was co-opted as a top cadre in the country's spy apparatus.
North Korea denies kidnapping South Koreans but Seoul says some 500 South Korean civilians, mostly fishermen who were operating near the inter-Korean sea border, have been kidnapped by the North since 1953.
South Korean officials had played down expectations that Kim would reveal the truth about his kidnapping or about his Japanese first wife.
"North Korea would never have approved a press conference unless they were absolutely sure he would say exactly what he has been told to say," a South Korean official said earlier.
Although North Korea denies abducting South Koreans, it has admitted snatching 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s including Yokota, who disappeared when she was a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 1977.
Following a 2002 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Pyongyang handed back five of those who had been kidnapped and said that the rest, including Kim's wife, were dead.
But the Japanese believe that Yokota and other kidnap victims may still be alive and skepticism grew after what Pyongyang described as Yokota's ashes failed a DNA test in Tokyo.
In Tokyo, Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, challenged the credibility of Kim's remarks.
"People cannot freely state their views in North Korea. It should be noted that his remarks were made in such an environment," Abe said.
"We will continue seeking talks on the premise that the kidnap victims are all alive."
Yokota's father, Shigeru Yokota, urged the Tokyo government to consider imposing economic sanctions and other forms of pressure on North Korea.
Kim, however, accused Japan of making "clumsy" claims and said his former wife was sent to a hospital "because she could not carry out her work as a wife and mother."
"She had tried to commit suicide on several occasions. I cannot disclose details but she killed herself after all in hospital," he said.
At Wednesday's reunion, his North Korean family included a 19-year-old daughter, whose mother is believed to be Yokota. Pyongyang said Kim later remarried a North Korean woman. - AFP/de
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