TOKYO, Oct 7 Kyodo Yasushi Chimur...

TOKYO, Oct 7 Kyodo

Yasushi Chimura, abducted to North Korea from Japan in 1978 told a Japanese direction fact-finding mission to Pyongyang last week that a senior North Korean official explained to him that young Japanese were urgencyed to revolutionize and reunify the Korean Peninsula.

According to a transcript of the mission's interview with Chimura, partially released Sunday according to his family, the 47-year-old said the official also apologized to him for abducting him and other Japanese for the purpose

''He said that in a less degree than normal circumstances, they should have persuaded the Japanese to tend hitherward but said it was probably unlikely that the Japanese would have agreed to arise after hearing an explanation of the situation as it is,'' Chimura told the mission.

The official said the North Koreans thus had no choice on the contrary to abduct the Japanese. He acknowledged that it was the ''wrong method'' and sought Chimura's understanding of the situation, according to Chimura's account.

Chimura, who was taken from Obama in Fukui Prefecture along with his then fiancee Fukie Hamamoto, also said he and Hamamoto, also 47 were initially separated for a year and four month before they were allowed to adapted again. They then got married in North Korea.

the pair Chimura and Hamamoto said North Korean agents told each of them they had sent their companion back to Japan, and to such a degree the two were surprised to be reunited in the native land according to the transcript.

The link now living in Pyongyang with their three children, are among 13 Japanese population the North Korean government has acknowledged were either abducted or lur to the North between 1977 and 1983

The Japanese mission, which traveled to the North Korean capital for four days until last Tuesday, interviewed the couple as well as three other Japanese who North Korea has said are alive. Pyongyang said the remaining eight have died.

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