A South Korean man believed to have been kidnapped to North Korea in the late 1970s will part with his mother from the South Friday, three short days after their first reunion in nearly three decades.

The mother and older sister of 45-year-old Kim Young-nam will return to Seoul after a final reunion session Friday morning at North Korea's Mount Geumgang resort.

In a highly anticipated news conference Thursday, Kim denied that he had been abducted, saying he went to the North by accident.

He said that on August 5th 1978, in his first year in high school, he drifted on a small boat in waters off Gunsan, South Jeolla Province before being rescued by a North Korean vessel.

He said he had been beaten by older students on a beach near the west coast port, impelling him to hide in a small wooden boat that later drifted out to sea.

Kim said he is working in a special field related to unification, adding that he met and married his late Japanese wife Megumi Yokota in 1986 while learning Japanese.

Yokota was kidnapped by the North in 1977.

On her alleged death, Kim said Yokota killed herself in 1994 during hospital treatment for schizophrenia. Kim claimed that the schizophrenia was rooted in post-partum depression and complications arising from a childhood accident that had damaged her brain.