Missing in Action

In late 1999, two months after an operation for colon cancer, Presbyterian Rev. Kim Dong Sik moved from South Korea to China’s northeast to help children who have fled from North Korea. Passionate about his work, Kim set up a small mission house and nursery school for orphaned and handicapped refugees that he called “The School of Love.” Despite his severe health problems, the pastor helped a group of North Korean defectors make their way from China to South Korea. On the afternoon of Jan. 16, 2000, he went to a Korean-barbecue restaurant in the Chinese town of Yanji to meet two defectors. Then he disappeared.

Friends and family members have long insisted that he was kidnapped by North Korea, but couldn’t prove their claims. South Korean prosecutors may have solved the mysteryand also created a diplomatic headache for Seoul. Earlier this month, they indicted a suspected North Korean agent for alleged involvement in a kidnapping ring that is suspected of seizing at least 16 people in China, including Rev. Kim. According to a copy of the indictment obtained by TIME, the suspected abductors operated under instructions from a senior North Korean state-security official tasked with “kidnapping defectors and others working against the interest of the North Korean state and the Party.”

According to prosecutors, the captured agent told how he and five other men were waiting for Kim when he left the restaurant after lunch. When the pastor got in the front seat of a taxi, two of them allegedly jumped in the back and forced the cabbie to drive off. “Who are you guys? Where are you taking me?” the pastor demanded to know. That night, they are believed to have taken him to North Korea.

These allegations are a major embarrassment for Seoul, which has downplayed human-rights concerns in the interest of improving relations with Pyongyang. North Korea engineered a spree of abductions in the 1970s and ’80s, seizing South Koreans, Japanese and a handful of other foreign nationals. In 2002, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Il apologized to Japan for kidnapping 13 of its citizens and later released five surviving abductees.

Last week, under pressure from opposition lawmakers, Seoul asked Beijing to reopen Rev. Kim’s case. Kim Mun Soo, a lawmaker from the opposition Grand National Party who visited Yanji earlier this month, says China has information about the pastor’s disappearance that it hasn’t shared with South Korea. Kim said Seoul should also get tough with Pyongyang, which still holds an estimated 468 kidnapped South Koreans. Says Kim: “It is the fundamental duty of a state to protect its citizens. South Korea has been terrible at this.” Friends of Rev. Kim are losing hope that he is still alive after five years. “He may have become a martyr,” says his brother-in-law, Chung Se Gook. “But the government should officially confirm whether he’s dead or not.” Either way, the evidence strongly suggests that Pyongyang hasn’t kicked its kidnapping habit.