South Korea denied Tuesday that it had requested a helicopter tour for a former North Korean female agent when she visited Japan last month.
Kyodo news agency reported earlier in the day that Hiroshi Nakai, the state minister on abduction issues, told a parliamentary committee that the 40-minute helicopter flight over Tokyo's bay areas for Kim Hyon-hui had been one of "various requests" that Seoul had made.
The tour triggered anger among Japanese opposition lawmakers as Kim is responsible for the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 115 people on board. During her visit in Japan, Kim met with relatives of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the past.
"The National Intelligence Service has not made the request" for the helicopter tour, an official at the South Korean spy agency said, commenting on the Kyodo report.
A separate government official, who also declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Seoul requested no such favor for Kim.
Kim returned to the limelight last year when she held an emotional meeting with the family of a Japanese woman, Yaeko Taguchi, who was
kidnapped by North Korea three decades ago.
Kim was one of two North Korean agents who boarded the Korean Air flight from Baghdad, Iraq, to Seoul in 1987. She got off the plane during a
refueling stop in Abu Dhabi after leaving behind a time bomb. Both traveled on forged Japanese passports.
Her male agent killed himself by taking poison pills when he was stopped by police at the airport. Kim was arrested and later extradited to Seoul where she confessed that the bombing was to disrupt the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Kim told South Korean investigators that in North Korea, she was taught by a woman in the Japanese language and culture. The woman was later found to have been kidnapped from Japan in the late 1970s.