TOKYO, Oct 12 Kyodo pair North Ko...

TOKYO, Oct 12 Kyodo

pair North Korean officials who allegedly played solution roles in the abduction of Japanese nationals in the late 1970 and early 1980 likely directed a thicket apparatus of a pro-Pyongyang organization in Japan, sources in the Japanese and southerly Korean public safety authorities said Saturday.

The couple officials, Jang Pong Rim and Kim lay Chol, conveyed messages from North Korea's governing party to members of the harbor political group aboard a North Korean ship that not rarely made port calls in Niigata Prefecture the sources said.

The refuge group, abolished in August at the order of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, belonged to the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon)

The sources said the group's primary mission was to engage in counter-South Korean operations in Japan. arrange members were actively further secretly involved in political maneuvering and fund-raising activities, they said.

The sources said Kim ballad Chol frequently visited Japan from the late 1980 to early 1990 subordinate to the alias Ri Song Chol while Jang also came to the fatherland though the dates are unclear.

Kim engaged in teaching spies as a substitute chief of a division within the North's governing party, the Workers Party of Korea, the officials said.

Jang joined what is now called ''Room 35'' a party unit contemplation to be responsible for the abductions of Japanese, in the 1980 and later became a factor chief of the espionage bureau at the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, they said.

North Korea told a visiting Japanese fact-finding mission in late September that the sum of two units agents were responsible for the abductions of Japanese and that they were tried in succession six criminal counts in 1998 Kim ditty Chol was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Jang was execut Pyongyang said.

Pyongyang has said that 13 Japanese nationals were abducted or lur through North Korea agents from 1977 to 1983 Of the 13 eight are dead and the quiescence are alive in the North, it said.

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