Japan frustrated over slow pace of N Korea abduction probe

TOKYO: Tokyo voiced its frustration on Friday a year after North Korea said it had started re-investigating the fate of Japanese kidnapped by Pyongyang’s spies decades ago, with no new leads in sight.
“It is extremely regrettable that no abduction victims returned home although it’s been a year since the investigation started,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a parliamentary session.
“Pyongyang have told us that they have been conducting a comprehensive probe into all disappearances of Japanese nationals sincerely but that it would take a bit more time” to conclude, he said.
North Korea admitted in 2002 that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and customs.
Five of the abductees were allowed to return to Japan, but Pyongyang has insisted, without producing solid evidence, that the eight others are dead.