Tokyo police obtained an arrest warrant Thursday for a North Korean agent who is suspected of acquiring a Japanese passport by pretending to be an Osaka man he abducted and spirited away to North Korea in 1980, police sources said.

The Metropolitan Police Department believes the agent, Sin Guang Ju, 73, was involved in the disappearance of Tadaaki Hara, an Osaka restaurant employee who vanished at age 43 from the shores of Miyazaki Prefecture during a trip to Kyushu in June 1980. Sin's whereabouts are unknown.

Hara is one of 11 Japanese whom the government believes were abducted to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.