The wife of one of nine Japanese fugitives wanted in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines jetliner to Pyongyang in 1970 has admitted arranging for a Japanese university student to go to North Korea in 1980 but denies the action constituted an abduction.
"In 1980, I went to Europe with a male university student in his 20s so that he could go to North Korea, and introduced him to North Koreans," Tamiko Uomoto, now living in North Korea, recently said in a telephone interview.
Uomoto, 50, is the wife of Kimihiko Uomoto, 55, who is on an international wanted list on charges that include involvement in the abduction of a Japanese woman from Europe to North Korea in 1983.