The country's intelligence chief has confirmed that five South Korean high school students who were abducted by North Korean agents in the late1970s are still alive in the communist state.

National Intelligence Service Chairman Kim Seung-kyu made the comments while briefing a parliamentary intelligence committee Thursday on the case of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota.

Seoul is trying to verify Japanese DNA test results that indicate Yokota's husband is South Korean abductee Kim Young-nam.

One of the five students who disappeared between 1977 and 1978 from beaches on the west coast is also named Kim Young-nam, but the NIS director did not verify whether the two are the same person.

Kim Seung-kyu said that the five abductees were employed as trainers for North Korean spies and three of them are still doing the job.

Some committee legislators are known to have rebuked the government for not officially broaching the matter at inter-Korean ministerial talks in Pyongyang last weekend.

The intelligence agency says it will cautiously persuade the North to repatriate the victims and not pursue actions that may provoke the North's ire.