Japanese Authorities Connect South Koreans to Abductions

The police are revealing new details of how Tadaaki Hara was kidnapped to North Korea, and as it turns out, blood is thicker than politics.  At the center of the plot was the North Korean-controlled Chosen Soren, but several of those involved were or are connected to South Korea:

A North Korean agent wanted for the 1980 abduction of Tadaaki Hara received financial and other assistance necessary to conduct the abduction from at least 16 pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans living in Japan, according to police sources.

Metropolitan Police Department investigators plan to question those suspected of acting as accomplices and providing shelter to Sin Gwang Su, who sneaked into Japan many times between 1973 and 1985, to uncover the true scale of a network of North Korean agents that helped in the abductions of Japanese.

Among the 16 is a 74-year-old former senior official of an organization under the umbrella of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), who owned a Chinese restaurant in Osaka where Hara worked before he disappeared.

According to investigative sources and trial records from Sin’s court hearings in South Korea, Sin, 76, was given the name of a North Korean woman living in Osaka by a superior before he came to Japan and told to persuade her to assist him.

One of the suspects is living comfortably on Cheju-do.  Others who helped (unwittingly, perhaps?) were members of a pro-South Korean association.  So what happens if Japan asks to extradite them?

Thanks to a reader for the tip.