A DPRK woman flew home yesterday after accusing Japan of abducting her in 2003, an apparent gambit to turn the tables on Tokyo, which has pressed Pyongyang to resolve the emotive issue of kidnapped Japanese.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said Tokyo would refuse economic aid to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) unless it saw progress in a dispute over Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago to help train DPRK spies in language and culture.

To Chu-ji arrived in Pyongyang from Beijing by plane, the DPRK news agency KCNA said in a terse report.

Earlier yesterday, To told a news conference at the DPRK Embassy in Beijing that she had been "abducted by bad people" while she was in the DPRK in October 2003.

After crossing a river separating the DPRK and China, To said she had been taken in a jeep to the Japanese consulate in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. She flew to Japan two weeks later after negotiations between Beijing and Tokyo.

After living in Japan for more than three years, To said she had decided to return to the DPRK and left Japan on June 21.

Japan denied that the woman had been abducted.

"This is not a case of abduction," Noriyuki Shikata, a deputy spokesman at Japan's Foreign Ministry, told reporters.

"We are assuming that the person who held the press conference is someone who we have identified. That lady fled from North Korea (DPRK) in November 2003."

Shikata said the woman had been in the care of a support group while she was in Japan, but the government was unaware of when and how she had left the country.

"As for the allegation of abduction, there is no such basis whatsoever."

To was born in Japan in 1949 and returned to the DPRK in 1960 with her Korean father and Japanese mother.

She said Japan today was different from what she knew as a child, adding that people now did not care about each other or communicate.

In Japan, "elderly people do not know when and how they die... their bodies are discovered months later", To, 57, said through an interpreter.

She likened living in Japan to "living in a prison without bars" and said she could not continue staying there.

Agencies

(China Daily 06/27/2007 page8)