- North Korea has been engaged for the past twenty years
in a world-wide abduction program of young women - who are used to produce
"sleeper agents."
-
- As many as 60 girls have been kidnapped from Europe by
intelligence officers working for North Korea's repressive regime.
-
- The staggering story of the program was revealed this
week in a Japanese court.
-
- A senior Japanese intelligence officer has said the
program
was designed to produce "sleeper agents" - who would then be
used to spy on their own people. Or, when old enough, would be encouraged
to go abroad.
-
- America and Britain were named as two of the countries
where they could be operating.
-
- The story emerged when one of the former North Korean
agents, Megumi Yao, gave evidence about her role in the kidnapping in 1983
from London, England, of a twenty-three-year-old au pair girl, Keiko
Arimoto.
-
- She was abducted while a student at a language school
in the city's prestigious Marble Arch area.
-
- "My job was to target young women. They had to be
without family ties or a boyfriend," said Yao.
-
- The pretty young student -- who worked as an au pair
looking after the children of a marketing executive, was persuaded by Yao
to come with her to the Danish city of Copenhagen.
-
- "Waiting there were other agents of North
Korea,"
Yao told the court.
-
- Using what she admitted were "brainwashing
techniques"
derived from
-
- CIA's long-disgraced MK-ULTRA program, Yao said that
Keiko Arimoto was "turned" inside twenty-four hours by a
combination
of drugs and other "mind control techniques."
-
- She was then flown on a North Korean airlines flight
to Pyongyang from Copenhagen.
-
- There she was sent, according to Yao, to a "special
breeding center."
-
- The girl was artificially impregnated and gave birth
to a child in 1988.
-
- "The child was immediately taken from her,"
the Korean intelligence officer said. She is now in hiding in Japan.
-
- If still alive, the child - his sex is not known - would
now be fifteen years.
-
- Japanese intelligence sources have told Globe-Intel that
they are urgently tracking a gang working for the North Korean who
specializes
in the traffic of humans.
-
- "Incredible though it seems, these children will
have been bred to spy," said the source.
-
- The details emerged in a Kobe court dealing with a
passport
forgery case.
-
- "But the prospect that there are real-life
Manchurian
candidates out there who may have been programmed to kill is absolutely
frightening," said a Japanese intelligence source.
- ___
-
- Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number
of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain;
Welt am Sonntag, Germany). His work is also syndicated internationally
by World Wide Syndication. Any use of the above must carry a clear
attribution
to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to
Globe-Intel,
an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters.
-
- Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack
on America, published by Dandelion Books, is available in all bookstores,
at www.dandelion-books.com, www.dandelionbooks.net, www.gordonthomas.ie,
www.newsmax.com, and for the trade through Biblio Distribution, Ingram,
Baker & Taylor and other major wholesalers ($25.95).
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