North Korea announced on Friday that it launched “the special investigation committee” to look into the fate of Japanese abductees and other missing people in the North decades ago.

Masked in mystery, one man became the immediate focus of the Japanese intelligence community. That is So Tae Ha, chairman of the special investigation committee. Experts are now trying to figure out his true identity.

So’s official titles, announced by Pyongyang, are counselor for security at the National Defense Commission (NDC) and vice-minister of the Ministry of State Security (MSS).

The NDC is North Korea’s highest authority and supreme decision-making body.