N. Korea releases Japanese drug suspect held for five years

(ATTN: UPDATES lead, throughout, analyst view)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Jan. 13 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Tuesday released a Japanese drug
smuggling suspect after five years in captivity due to his health condition,
Pyongyang's news agency said, in what appeared to be a move in consideration of
the communist country's damaged relations with Tokyo.

Yoshiaki Sawada, a former department director of Enterprise Co., Ltd, of Japan
who was arrested in North Korea in October 2003, was sent home "thanks to a
humanitarian measure," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Amid its diplomatic drive to start afresh with the new U.S. administration, North
Korea appeared to be signaling that it does not want to further fray its already
tense relations with Japan. Pyongyang took "his wish to go back home and health
condition and so on into consideration," KCNA said.
Shortly after the man's arrest, North Korea released preliminary investigation
results saying he tried to lure North Koreans into buying drugs in a third
country and ship the drugs to Japan on a North Korean ferry running between North
Korea's western Wonsan port and Japan's eastern Nigata port.
Japan's news media then said Sawada was likely a member of a major Japanese
Yakuza gang.
Tokyo dispatched a foreign ministry delegation to Pyongyang in January 2004, but
talks for Sawada's release broke down.
Tuesday's report did not elaborate on details of Sawada's crime and who was
behind it, except to say the investigation "clearly proved the truth behind a
despicable plot hatched by a Japanese plot-breeding organization."
Sawada "frankly admitted his crime," and Pyongyang investigators "treated him in
a humanitarian manner," KCNA said.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul,
said North Korea is concerned about the aftermath if anything goes wrong with the
suspect's health. Pyongyang wants to prevent a possible uproar in Japan and shed
its "axis of evil" and "rogue nation" image, as branded by U.S. President George
W. Bush, and start fresh with the new U.S. administration, he said.
"North Korea seems keen to prevent possible misunderstandings that Mr. Sawada's
case may cause to the international community if anything bad happens on him,"
Yang said. "This conveys North Korea's willingness to become a normal country."
North Korea also may be trying to apply pressure on Japan to lift economic
sanctions by freshly raising the smuggling case by a Japanese citizen, other
analysts said.
Japan imposed broad trade sanctions against North Korea in 2006 over a dispute on
Japanese citizens abducted by the North in the 1970s and 80s. In a summit with
his Japanese counterpart Junichiro Koizumi in 2002, North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il admitted to the kidnapping and apologized. Kim also said he had punished
those responsible.
But the revelation stoked more anger in Japan, which claims more Japanese
citizens were abducted than Pyongyang has admitted.
Amid the frozen relations, Japan extended its North Korea sanctions for the third
time in October.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)