(cache) Japan says Kim Dae-Jung case closed after Seoul regret

by Kyoko Hasegawa Tue Oct 30, 11:21 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's prime minister said Tuesday he considered the case on the abduction of Kim Dae-Jung closed, after South Korea voiced regret for snatching the future president from a Tokyo hotel in 1973.

Premier Yasuo Fukuda urged the countries to look to the future, but Kim, now an 81-year-old elder statesman and Nobel Peace laureate, angrily denounced both governments, saying they had failed to protect him.

A South Korean government fact-finding panel last week said Seoul's spies orchestrated the abduction of Kim, who was then in exile leading a campaign against dictator Park Chung-Hee.

The break-in at Kim's hotel room in central Tokyo was assumed for years to be the work of what was then known as the Korea Central Intelligence Agency, although it had never been officially admitted.

Japan, which has uneasy relations with South Korea due to Tokyo's past colonial rule, had quietly dropped the probe into Kim's abduction at the time but since last week demanded an apology.

Fukuda said Japan should no longer raise the issue after South Korea's envoy expressed regret.

"I don't think we need to consider pursuing this matter further," he said.

"Instead, we should seriously consider how to tackle Japan-South Korea relations in what you may call a future-oriented manner."

South Korean agents in 1973 barged into Kim's room, bound him and drugged him. They then took him on a boat and were apparently ready to throw him overboard until the United States intervened to save his life.

South Korea became a democracy 20 years ago and Kim took office as president in 1998, serving a five-year term in which he worked to repair relations with the communist North.

Kim, who was on Tuesday visiting the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, said the South Korean panel report should have pinned the crime more firmly on former dictator Park, who was assassinated in 1979.

He also said the probe should have stated more clearly that the kidnapping was intended to kill him.

"I protest to the governments of Japan and South Korea for ignoring my rights," Kim told reporters in Kyoto.

"For Japan, its sovereignty was violated, but it also infringed on my rights by neglecting in its duty to protect me," he said.

Japan had protested that South Korea infringed on its sovereignty through the kidnapping.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura met Tuesday with South Korean ambassador Yu Myung-Hwan and said the envoy "told me that the Republic of Korea expresses regret over the incident and will never repeat this kind of behaviour."

Komura said he believed that Seoul had met Tokyo's demands for an apology.

"I told him that I planned to describe his expression of regret over violating Japan's sovereignty as an apology. I asked him if he agreed with that and he said he agreed," Komura said.

In 1973, the Japanese government declined to take up the kidnapping as a diplomatic issue. Tokyo and Seoul had just eight years earlier restored relations.

Japanese police at the time found the fingerprints of a South Korean embassy official in Kim's hotel room but gave up the investigation after Seoul would not allow them to question him.

Kim also used his visit to demand that Japan make greater amends for its imperialist past, saying it should take a lesson from Germany.

"Because it doesn't know history as it is, it can't reflect on itself, and because it doesn't reflect on itself, it can't think of making apologies or compensation," Kim said as he received an honorary degree at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University.