TOKYO - A JAPANESE man who mysteriously returned home after being held for five years in North Korea has said he was dealing drugs as part of Japan's criminal underworld.
The man, identified as Yoshiaki Sawada, told reporters on his return to Tokyo late on Wednesday that he was associated with an unnamed syndicate of Japan's 'yakuza' organised crime groups.
Pyongyang's official media said he had been held since October 2003 for attempting to smuggle drugs into Japan aboard the Mangyongbong, the only North Korean ferry shuttling between the two countries.
'I tried to bring home drugs aboard the Mangyongbong after people over there said they got them and wanted to make a deal,' Sawada told reporters at Tokyo's Narita airport. 'I went there to check whether the drugs were real stuff.'
The North's state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Sawada was a former department chief at a Japanese firm named Enterprise Co. and that he was freed in 'a humanitarian measure.'
Asked why he was released, Sawada said: 'I don't know. They sent me back all of a sudden.' Police were reportedly seeking to question him.
KCNA said a Japanese 'plot-breeding organisation' had used Sawada to implicate the ship in drug trafficking and to 'seriously damage the prestige' of the North and of pro-North Korean residents in Japan.
Japan's relations with North Korea are tense due to Pyongyang agents' kidnappings of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies in Japanese culture.
In 2002, Pyongyang returned five of the kidnap victims and declared others dead. Tokyo demands the return of many others whom it believes have been kept under wraps in the North.
The United States and Japan have accused economically crippled North Korea of engaging in drug smuggling.
In 2006, Japan's national police chief Iwao Uruma said that North Korea 'as a state' had been involved in a large drug smuggling operation into Japan in 2002.
Japan has banned port calls by the ferry since July 2006 in retaliation for missile tests by North Korea. The boat was also accused of trafficking missile parts and counterfeit cash for economically crippled Pyongyang.
Sawada's release comes as Pyongyang's ties with Washington and other capitals are at a low due to a stalemate in a six-nation denuclearisation deal. -- AFP
