Japan denies kidnapping North Korean national

TOKYO, Dec 22 (Reuters) Japan fended off today a claim by North Korea that Tokyo abducted one of its nationals who went missing in 1991 while working in Russia, Kyodo news agency said.

Pyongyang called on Tokyo last week to investigate the case of a man named Kim Thae-yong, who disappeared while teaching Korean in Sakhalin, Russia, but later wrote to the North Korean education commission in 1992 saying that he was in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

North Korea said Japan had been insincere in trying to trace Kim and it presumed Tokyo had abducted him.

''Our country is a democratic country that makes it a principle to respect freedom and basic human rights,'' Kyodo quoted a Japanese government statement as saying. ''The Japanese government cannot possibly abduct a foreign national.'' North Korea and Japan have been at odds over Japanese citizens abducted by the communist state in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies in Japanese language and customs.

North Korea admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese, sent five of them back and said the other eight were dead.

Japan has been demanding more information about the eight reported dead and four others it says were kidnapped and remain officially unaccounted for.

Reuters SP DB1830