South Korea handed hundreds of millions of yen to the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in 1973 to help arrange a breakthrough in the diplomatic standoff between the two countries over the kidnapping of Kim Dae Jung, Tanaka's former aide said in a recent issue of a Japanese monthly.

Hiroyasu Kimura, 72, told the latest edition of Bungei Shunju, which went on sale Wednesday, that Lee Pyong Hui, then a South Korean minister without a portfolio, visited Tanaka's residence in Tokyo in late October 1973 and handed Tanaka "at least 400 million yen in cash in two paper bags."

Kim, then a South Korean dissident leader and now the country's president, was abducted from a Tokyo hotel on Aug. 8, 1973, and forcibly returned to his home in Seoul five days later.

Japan concluded that South Korean agents were involved in the abduction and urged Seoul to return Kim, who had been placed under house arrest in Seoul, back to Japan, claiming the incident infringed upon Japan's sovereignty.

In fall 1973, Lee approached Kimura, who was at that time a member of the Niigata Prefectural Assembly, seeking a chance to meet with Tanaka to settle the standoff, the magazine quoted Kimura as saying.

Tanaka, who was elected to the Diet from Niigata Prefecture, served as prime minister from July 1972 to December 1974.

Kimura and Lee had known each other through the activities of a Japan-South Korea friendship association based in the prefecture, Kimura told Bungei Shunju.

Around Oct. 19, the two met with Tanaka at his residence in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward. He saw Lee hand the bags to Tanaka and say: "These are presents. One of them is for your wife," Kimura said, adding that only the three of them were present.

Lee also gave Tanaka a letter, telling him it was from then President Park Chung Hee. Tanaka then asked Lee how Park was doing.

Kimura did not confirm if the blocks wrapped in newspapers inside the bags were indeed bank notes, but said he still believes they contained at least 400 million yen in cash, judging by size and weight.

After Lee left the room, Tanaka said, "I should give one of them to (the late Prime Minister Masayoshi) Ohira," who, as the foreign minister at the time, was working to settle the dispute with South Korea.

The moment Tanaka said this, Kimura said, he realized that Lee meant one of the bags was for Ohira, and had referred to him as the "wife" in an allusion to the foreign minister being the prime minister's close partner.

The Tokyo-Seoul standoff was settled "politically" the following month, with the South Korean prime minister visiting Japan and offering an apology to Tanaka.

Kimura stopped short of presuming a direct relationship between the Oct. 26, 1973, release of Kim from house arrest and the money from Park, who was assassinated in 1979.

Tanaka, who continued to wield strong political influence until the mid-1980s despite his conviction in the Lockheed bribery scandal, died in 1993. Lee died in 1997.

Kimura told Bungei Shunju that Tanaka's "quick decision" broke the stalemate in Tokyo-Seoul ties, adding that he decided to go public with the story because "I've gotten old and I feared a historic issue would be passed over in silence" if he remained silent.