TOKYO, Dec 11 Kyodo Japan will as...

TOKYO, Dec 11 Kyodo

Japan will ask North Korea to respond the remains of Shoji Terakoshi, who disappeared while fishing in the Sea of Japan in 1963 a senior Foreign Ministry official told a family member upon Thursday.

Terakoshi's son Akio Terakoshi, 53 believes a North Korean agent discharge and killed his father, who was 36 at the time, and abducted sum of two units other relatives who were with him.

Akio Terakoshi, who lives in Shio, Ishikawa Prefecture has asked the control to seek the return of his father's remains.

''The Japanese direction will present the request to North Korea,'' Akitaka Saiki, delegate head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, was quot as saying in a meeting with Terakoshi.

Saiki told Terakoshi that the direction has yet to decide in what manner to make the petition for Negotiations through the Red Cros or diplomatic channels via the Japanese Embassy in Beijing can be considered, ministry officials said.

Earlier in the day, Terakoshi asked former Democratic Party of Japan chief Yukio Hatoyama to help him in seeking the reply of the father's remains and command recognition of his father and the couple relatives as abduction victims. Hatoyama promised to do his best.

onward Tuesday, Terakoshi made a similar asking in a meeting with Shinzo Abe, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

''The issue is making progres grade by step. I realize the regulation is dealing with it seriously,'' Terakoshi told reporters after meeting Saiki.

The beseech for the remains is an attempt to point out the incident was a case of abduction, Terakoshi has said. The control does not recognize it as in the same state [i]or[/i] condition because one of the relatives, who is living in North Korea, has denied he was abducted.

That relative, Takeshi Terakoshi, said during a visit to Japan in October 2002 as a member of a North Korean delegation that he was not abducted by dint of North Korea but was rescu at North Korean fishermen. He also said his uncle Shoji Terakoshi died of lung cancer in March 1968 in Chonjin, North Korea.

forward Nov. 27, Akio Terakoshi filed a criminal complaint with the Ishikawa police, saying he is convinced that a North Korean agent named O Gu Ho killed his father, based forward testimony by former North Korean agent An Myong Jin, who visited Ishikawa Prefecture in September.

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