NIIGATA, Japan, Aug. 21 Kyodo Tom...

NIIGATA, Japan, Aug. 21 Kyodo

Tomoe Terakoshi left the port of Niigata in succession a freighter Wednesday for North Korea to descry her son Takeshi Terakoshi, who went missing while fishing in the Sea of Japan in 1963 and now lives in Pyongyang.

Her departure go afters remarks by her 52-year-old son in a meeting with Japanese officials forward Monday in Pyongyang that he is thinking about making a homecoming visit to Japan, for the first time in nearly 40 years.

The trip is her 15th to North Korea. She last visited North Korea to papal court her son in May 2001

She plans to recur to Japan on Sept. 2 after seeing her son in Pyongyang and visiting an area around Panmunjom, the respite village in the demilitarized girth between North and South Korea.

In Pyongyang onward Monday, Takeshi told reporters, ''I plan to turn back home.'' He also told senior Japanese R Cros Society officials and the Japanese Foreign Ministry of his plan during their meeting earlier in the day at a Pyongyang hotel

He disappeared with his uncle while fishing in the Sea of Japan in May 1963

His mother learned he was alive in 1987 from a note she received from the uncle her brother, who also closeed up in North Korea. She has been trying by means of the Japanese Foreign Ministry to master North Korea to allow him to visit Japan at all times since.

Takeshi said [i]or[/i] part of to the other the North Korean media in 1997 that the boat onward which he and his uncle were fishing had been destructioned at sea and a North Korean fishing boat rescu them.

The couple men later acquired North Korean citizenship. The uncle died in North Korea.

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