LEAD: Female agent among abductors, says repatriated abductee Soga

NIIGATA, Japan, Jan. 6 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDS DETAILS OF POLICE INVESTIGATION IN 12TH, 13TH GRAFS)

One of five repatriated abductees has told Japanese police that a female North Korean agent was among a group of kidnappers who forcibly took her to North Korea in 1978, police sources said Friday.

Hitomi Soga, 46, who was repatriated to her homeland in October 2002 together with four other victims of abduction by North Korea, gave the testimony to police investigators, the sources said. Soga is the wife of former U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins, 65, who came to Japan via Indonesia in 2004 with their two daughters to be reunited with Soga.

The Japanese police are investigating Soga's abduction as a violation of the Penal Code's Article 226, which carries a penalty of imprisonment for at least two years.

Soga, then a 19-year-old nurse, was seized along with her mother Miyoshi near her home on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan on Aug. 12, 1978, and taken to North Korea. The Japanese government has recognized Miyoshi, then 46, as an abduction victim, but the North has denied any responsibility for her disappearance.

During support rallies for abductees and their relatives, Soga said she was followed and abducted by a group of three men and then heard the voice of a woman speaking Japanese on a boat bound for North Korea.

Soga has named North Korean agent Sin Guang Su, 76, as the culprit in the 1977 abduction of Megumi Yokota, then a 13-year-old junior high school girl.

Sin has been on an international wanted list for the 1980 abduction of a 43-year-old Japanese man. Sin is also suspected of abducting in 1978 two of the five repatriated abductees -- Yasushi Chimura, 50, and his wife Fukie, 50.

Meanwhile, the remaining two repatriated abductees -- Kaoru Hasuike, 48, and his wife Yukiko, 49 -- have said that a man North Korea says was Yokota's husband might be a South Korean, according to sources close to the abductees.

While they were living at a guesthouse in North Korea, the man, whose name is Kim Chol Jun, told the Hasuikes that his relatives live in the South, the sources said.

A group of relatives of South Korean victims of abduction earlier said that Kim might have been abducted from the South, citing testimony from a North Korean official.

North Korea has so far told the Japanese government that Yokota married Kim in 1986 and gave birth in 1987 to a daughter, known as Kim Hye Gyong, 18.

The National Police Agency on Friday told the Metropolitan Police Department and Fukui prefectural police to collaborate in investigating the Chimura abduction case as they were both abducted in Obama city, Fukui Prefecture.

The agency also told the Tokyo police and Niigata prefectural police to work together on the case of the Hasuike couple who were abducted in Kashiwazaki city, Niigata Prefecture.

Of the 16 abductees that the Japanese government recognizes as victims of North Korean abduction, Soga, the Chimuras and Hasuikes returned to Japan in October 2002, a month after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The remaining 11 have yet to be repatriated. North Korea, saying most of them have died while denying any knowledge of the others, is insisting the abduction issue has already been settled.

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