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BEIJING - In a bizarre public relations foray, North Korea on Tuesday paraded a woman who had allegedly been kidnapped and taken to Japan but returned home after she went half-mad with longing for her children.
The woman, identified as 57-year-old To Chu-Ji, appeared at a press conference in North Korea's Beijing embassy, attended by dozens of reporters who mostly had expected the briefing to deal with the nation's nuclear programme.
"I'm a citizen of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, who was forcefully abducted to Japan," To said, referring to North Korea by its official name.
In October 2003, she was "cheated by some bad people and crossed the Tumen river unintentionally" from North Korea into China, said To, a slight, bespectacled woman with her hair tied in a knot at the back of her head.
She was taken to the Japanese consulate general in the northeast Chinese city of Shenyang, where she spent two weeks before heading for Japan, she said.
A similar route is believed to have been taken by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of North Koreans in recent years, feeling starvation and oppression at home.
It was unclear why North Korea called the press conference at a time when the world's focus was on Tuesday's return of United Nations nuclear inspectors to the reclusive country.
However, it seemed to form part of a rhetorical tit-for-tat against Japan, where anger remains over North Korea having abducted several Japanese citizens to help provide language training for the regime's spies.
From November 2003 until June this year, To lived in the Japanese city of Matsudo, but became "almost crazy with longing" for her five children, she said.
"Whenever I exchanged letters and telephone calls with my children, it started and ended with tears. When I was in my room alone I made my pillow wet with tears from longing for my children," she said.
"I spent almost every night with sleeping drugs and alcohol, almost like a hypochondriac and psychopath."
She finally decided to go home after she was informed that her second son-in-law had served in the army and gone to Communist Party school.
There were no explanations for how To left Japan unhindered or how she contacted relatives by mail and phone while supposedly being held captive, giving rise to suspicions she was a refugee.
To said she had been born in Japan, apparently to ethnic Korean parents, but moved back to North Korea in 1960.
"When I was there in my childhood, they took care of each other, but at present I think Japan is in general cool, almost like ice," she said, speaking through an interpreter.
To finished the press conference by singing a traditional North Korean song in a trembling voice, flanked by unsmiling officials.
The North Korean officials refused to answer questions on the nuclear issue. - AFP/ir
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