Japan mum lashes out at Tokyo’s failure to free daughter abducted by North Korea in 1977: ‘I’m exhausted’

The mother of the most high-profile Japanese national abducted by North Korean agents has expressed her anger and frustration at the lack of progress on her daughter’s case in a press conference to mark the 46th anniversary of her disappearance.

Sakie Yokota, 87, also said she was “utterly exhausted” by nearly half a century of struggling to find out what happened to Megumi, who was 13 when she was snatched in 1977 on her way home from school in Niigata Prefecture.

Yet, despite the death of her husband Shigeru in June 2020, Yokota insisted she still has sufficient energy to continue her campaign. “I’m angry, or rather, I’m utterly exhausted,” she said at a press conference in Kawasaki City ahead of Wednesday’s anniversary of her daughter’s abduction.

She called out Japanese leaders for failing to do enough to win the release of Megumi and others abducted by North Korea to train their agents.

“I have not only asked [Prime Minister Fumio] Kishida, but also [former Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe and each of the previous prime ministers to the point that I am disgusted,” she said. “I have been frustrated for decades and I’m tired of it.”

Megumi was seized by North Korea agents on November 15, 1977, bundled into a small boat pulled up on a nearby beach and taken to North Korea. She taught spies who were to be infiltrated into Japan the language and customs and reportedly married a South Korean abductee.

It was not until January 1997 that her parents received word that North Korea had abducted Megumi. Pyongyang finally admitted that Megumi and around a dozen other Japanese had been seized, but it claimed she had taken her life in 1994. The North later returned what it claimed were her cremated remains, although tests in Japan proved inconclusive.

Her parents and their supporters remain convinced that she is alive and have called on the Japanese government to act to bring the abductees home.

Officially, Tokyo recognises 17 of its nationals as having been abducted by Pyongyang agents, and in 2002, North Korea permitted five to return to Japan. The others, including Megumi, had died of illness, suicide or in accidents, it claimed.

And while successive Japanese governments have reiterated that they remain committed to bringing the victims home, it is difficult to bring pressure to bear on the North.

In May, Kishida expressed willingness to take part in “high-level talks” with the North, but with regional tensions once again worsening, it appears unlikely that Pyongyang is willing to engage with Tokyo on an issue it has repeatedly insisted is closed.

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Ken Kato, director of Human Rights in Asia, shares Yokota’s anger at the lack of progress, but insists Japan does have leverage.

“The reason for the lack of progress is simple; successive Japanese governments have not done anything, quite possibly because some of the senior members of the Liberal Democratic Party have long-standing ties with Chongryun,” he said, naming the organisation that represents pro-North Korean residents of Japan and is tasked with raising funds here to support the regime in Pyongyang.

“I have previously suggested that Chongryun is the North’s weak spot and that pressure should be brought to bear on the organisation, its companies and the property that is their de facto embassy in Japan,” he said.

“Japan should also put Kim Jong-un on its list for sanctions, with those two moves impossible for the North to ignore,” he said. “They would have to negotiate to ease the pressure and the freedom of the abductees should be the cost of that.”

And Kato is confident that the Japanese public and the international community would support new pressure being brought to bear on the North.

“North Korea wants money from Japan, but people are angry. And that anger is not going away. If they want something from us, then they need to return what is ours,” he said.

Others, however, are less optimistic that the Japanese government will act decisively.

“Unfortunately, I have little hope that the abductees will be able to return, mostly because there are politicians here who feel it is more important to have good diplomatic relations with North Korea and China than to solve this problem,” said Yuki Yakabe, a director of The Investigating Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea.

The organisation has documented many more apparent abductions than the North Koreans have ever admitted to and presently has more than 200 open cases, Yakabe said.

“Personally, I believe that Megumi is still alive,” she added. “She was a smart girl who was quick to learn and adapt, and I think it is likely that she has got close to the Kim family in order to protect herself and stay alive.

“But I also think that means it is unlikely they will ever let her go,” she said. “She knows too much and they do not want her revealing even more dark sides of the North to the international community.”