TOKYO, March 2 (UPI) -- Three South Koreans, who were abducted by North Korea and spent 30 years in the Stalinist nation, arrived in Tokyo Monday to testify about their experiences.
The three were fishermen who were captured in their boats between 1967 and 1973, and taken to North Korea, the Japan Times reported. They remained there for nearly 30 years before managing to escape across the border into China.
They were in Tokyo to address a subcommittee of the Japanese Diet's Foreign Affairs Committee, which handles North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens.
Yukio Hatoyama, who leads an abduction issue panel within the Democratic Party of Japan, met the elderly Koreans at the airport.
The South Korean government says the North has abducted 486 of its citizens, most of them fishermen taken near the maritime border of the two Koreas. Pyongyang has not admitted to the allegations.
North Korea did admit in September 2002 it had abducted 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. Five of them were repatriated to Japan the following month, but the North said the other eight had died.
