TOKYO: A 53-year-old Japanese man who lived his life in North Korea since disappearing at sea decades ago returned to his adopted country on Saturday after his first visit to Japan in 39 years, an official said.

“He left Japan on an afternoon flight out of Narita airport,” said an official with a North Korean resident’s organization in Japan, known as Chongryon.

Takeshi Terakoshi’s return, aboard a China Airlines flight to Beijing before transferring to a North Korean plane for Pyongyang, capped a 10-day trip in which he met old classmates and prayed at a family grave.

It also marked a deepening exchange between formerly hostile neighbors Japan and North Korea following a landmark visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to meet the North’s leader Kim Jong-Il last month in Pyongyang.

During his trip, one classmates likened Terakoshi to “Taro Urashima”, the mythical Japanese boy who spent three years in a watery paradise only to find 300 years has passed upon his return, reports said.

Terakoshi also ate persimmons from trees in his former backyard with mother, Tomoe, 71, and a cadre of reporters watching his every move.

Upon arriving, Terakoshi thanked “our great leader Kim” for making the visit possible and spoke only in Korean.

Terakoshi has said the boat he and his uncles had been fishing from was wrecked at sea in 1963 and a North Korean fishing boat rescued them, but a group assisting kidnap victims’ families argues he was one of many abductees.

He got married in North Korea and has three children.—AFP