This month marks 40 years since Japanese national Tadaaki Hara was abducted by North Korea.
The government has demanded that North Korea hand over Shin Kwang Soo, a North Korean spy suspected of being responsible for the abduction and currently wanted internationally on suspicion of kidnapping for transportation out of a country. However, Pyongyang has shown no intention of responding to the demand, and people searching for Hara worry the incident will be forgotten.
"People with few relatives easily became a target [for abduction], and Hara was a typical case of that," said Kazuhiro Araki, who represents a support group named the Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea, which conducted investigations about three years ago on the beach in Miyazaki where Hara is believed to have been abducted.
"There is a high possibility that abductions from the Pacific side were carried out in order to avoid the eyes of [Japanese] authorities," Araki, 63, said.
Hara, a Nagasaki Prefecture native, was working as a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Osaka. In June 1980, the owner of the restaurant, who was a member of a group affiliated with the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), lured Hara out by saying, "I can introduce you to a new job." Hara was then abducted by a spy ship.
Hara, then 43, was living alone and estranged from his family, so it is thought that no one noticed he was missing, Araki said.
Five years later in 1985, South Korean authorities arrested Shin when he entered South Korea with a passport bearing Hara's name. Shin told the South Korean authorities that in Pyongyang, he was instructed by former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il -- who was party secretary at the time -- to "abduct a single Japanese national, impersonate him and spy on South Korea" about four months before Hara was abducted.
Shin was sentenced to death, but released under amnesty in 1999 and sent back to North Korea the following year.
In April 2006, Japanese police obtained an arrest warrant for Shin in connection with Hara's abduction and put him on an international wanted list. Shin is also wanted internationally for abducting Yasushi Chimura, 65, and his wife Fukie, 65, and the Japanese government has demanded North Korea hand him over.
According to the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, Hara had an older brother who lived in his home prefecture of Nagasaki but died about 10 years ago. While he was still alive, the brother was a member of the Association of Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea. An official of the association said: "His earnest desire to save his own family was the same as the other family members. We must not let the case fade away."
-- Spy still alive?
"Since he has been a political contributor, it is unlikely that [North Korea] would ever let him be investigated by foreign authorities," a North Korean defector, who was once a senior official of the North Korean government, told The Yomiuri Shimbun about Shin when asked about the Japanese government seeking his extradition.
Shin, now 90, is said to have been treated as a "hero" in North Korea when he was repatriated from South Korea in September 2000.
He expressed his loyalty to Kim Jong Il during a 2002 event. In 2005 and 2008, he appeared on Korean Central TV, which broadcasts formal events, and in July 2016, he was identified in a broadcast from the same TV station sitting in the general seats at a commemorative ceremony in Pyongyang. It is possible that Shin has continued to be treated well under current leader Kim Jong Un's regime.
Shin is old and his current situation is unknown, but the defector said, "He has not been reported to have died, and there is a good chance he is still alive."
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