As 'Kim' Flies to China, Seoul Worries About Damage to Pyongyang's Image

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As 'Kim' Flies to China, Seoul Worries About Damage to Pyongyang's Image

BEIJING - A 29-year-old man generally believed to be Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, was deported from Japan to China Friday morning. The man and three companions, two women in their 30s and a four-year-old boy tried to enter the country from Singapore with forged passports.

The group left on an All Nippon Airways flight and arrived in Beijing at around 2 p.m., where officials from the North Korean embassy boarded the aircraft and escorted the group away from curious reporters.

In Seoul, President Kim Dae-jung said, "I do not have any information on the issue," while Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo said he received a message from the Japanese Foreign Ministry that it could not confirm the case.

But government officials in Seoul appear concerned that the incident will reinforce the international image of the North as an unpredictable government. "The incident could enhance the position of hard-liners toward the North and negatively influence North Korea-U.S. relations," one official commented. Chang Kwang-keun, vice-spokesman of the opposition Grand National Party, said, "If true, the incident will be recorded as one in which the North brought international disgrace upon itself."

The group is expected to leave Beijing on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. on a regularly-scheduled Air Koryo flight to Pyongyang, although there was no confirmation of those plans. The DPRK airline flies to Beijing twice weekly.

The group had been held at a Tokyo detention center since Tuesday for using forged Dominican Republic passports, according to the Japanese Kyodo News Agency.

During the ensuing investigation, the man told Japanese authorities he was Kim Jong-nam, the heir-apparent to his father, Kim Jong-il. A government spokesman, Fukuda Yasuo, said Tokyo could not confirm the man's identity because it had no fingerprints of the real Kim Jong-nam. The prime minister's spokesman, Kazuhito Koshikawa, added "The government cannot comment because this case involves an individual's privacy."

Another official said the case was dealt with routinely according to immigration laws. Illegal entrants are usually deported to either the country where the flight originated, to their home country or to a third country where they are allowed entry.

Some analysts said the Japanese government consulted the Chinese government quietly to arrange the deportation and forestall problems that could develop with the group's continued detention. North Korea and Japan have no diplomatic relations; normalization talks stalled last October over North Korean demands for compensation for Japan's colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century.

But observers generally say they believe the incident will not have much impact in the long run on Japan's relations with the North.



by You Sang-chul

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