Yasuhiro Maeda / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

SEOUL--South Korean police have arrested a 51-year-old woman on suspicion of forging a passport after she was deported from Japan for staying illegally, having slipped into the country using special tape on her fingers to alter her fingerprints, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Wednesday.

The U.S. government, which employs the same state-of-the-art biometric fingerprint scanner at immigration checkpoints as Japan, also is interested in how she sneaked through the system, informally asking the South Korean government for information collected by the police.

According to the police, the woman was arrested Tuesday in South Korea on suspicion of conspiring with a broker to make a fake passport by providing her photo to the agent.

The woman illegally entered Japan through Aomori Airport in April last year. The Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau spotted her in Nagano in August and deported her to South Korea.

The woman told The Yomiuri Shimbun in a city in southern South Korea last month: "I cheated the fingerprint scanner at immigration by attaching pieces of special tape to both my index fingers."

She said a man calling himself "Mr. Lee" had provided her the special tape.

When the South Korean police showed photos of several men, whom the police suspected might be "Mr. Lee," the woman singled out one, saying the person looked like him, according to the police.

The whereabouts of the man are unknown and the police are searching for him.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government contacted South Korean officials in the middle of this month to seek information on the incident.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department, which is in charge of antiterrorism efforts, is to launch an investigation into the tape, according to sources.

The United States introduced a fingerprint-matching system at airports and other immigration control locations in January 2004 in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The United States is believed to be increasingly concerned that such a method might be used to evade immigration security checks and facilitate illegal entry to the country.

(Jan. 22, 2009)


http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20 ... Y07307.htm