Gov't protests weekly's report on 'abduction attempt'

The government protested Monday at a report by the major weekly Shukan Gendai that said Kaoru Hasuike, one of the Japanese who were abducted by North Korea in 1978, had secretly come back to Japan and tried in 1986 to take a school teacher to North Korea. "The report was totally groundless and is utterly deplorable," the government's special task force on the abduction issue said in a statement addressed to the weekly's publisher Kodansha Ltd.

Hasuike denied the allegations and sent a statement of protest, saying the article was a "preposterous and fabricated story." The article in the weekly's latest edition, which hit the stands Monday, was based on an interview with a former school teacher in Aichi Prefecture who said that a man resembling Hasuike appeared on the school premises on March 18, 1986, and tried to persuade him to go to North Korea.