Four years after the disappearance of Chiang Mai native Anocha Panjoy, a Japanese company lured four other Thai women then working in Tokyo's Ginza into a service job in Pyongyang in 1982, according to Shunkan Bunshun magazine.

The magazine, on news-stands this week, said in an article entitled "Kim Jong Il: business hostess" that the now defunct Japanese trading company had sent the women to work at Pyongyang International Club, which is an entertainment place for North Korean elite.

They were forced to service and entertain leaders of the communist ruled state including top leader Kim Jong Il, it said. The magazine quoted one of the four women who is now in Japan as saying that their passports were confiscated once they arrived in Pyongyang.

The company whose owner has a close connection with Kim Jong Il has a trading business as a front for trafficking women to the secretive state. The company was dissolved in 1985. Some women returned home while some settled in Japan - it was unclear whether any of them did not return.

Thai authorities are now working to locate Anocha who is believed to have been kidnapped from Macau by North Korean secret agents in 1978.

US army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins unveiled Anocha's story in his Japanese language book "Kokuhaku" (To Tell the Truth) which says she is still alive and living in North Korea.

Anocha is believed to have been kidnapped to teach Thai language and culture to North Korean diplomats who would be posted to Thailand in the 1970s.

Pyongyang officially dismissed Jenkins' information saying there is no proof Anocha was missing in North Korea.