One night in June 1980, Radio Pyongyang broadcast an apparently random five-digit number -- 29627.
As it turned out, the number was a coded message to a North Korean agent. Denoting June 27, 1929, the birthday of North Korean agent Sin Guang Su, it was a code to execute an abduction order. The next day, Tadaaki Hara, was taken at the age of 43 to a North Korean spy ship from Aoshima, Miyazaki Prefecture, never to return.
Sin, now 73, was arrested in South Korea in 1985 on espionage charges and later sentenced to death. In 2000, he was granted amnesty by the South Korean government and sent back to North Korea.
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