On November 15, 1977, 13 year-old Megumi Yokota disappeared without a trace while on her way home from school. Twenty years later a newspaper revealed she was abducted by North Korean operatives and was still in North Korea. Megumi and at least 13 others were taken from coastal cities in Japan during the 1970s and 80s, shoved into holding cells on spy vessels, and shipped off to North Korea to train agents in Japanese culture and customs. The perpetrators of the Korean Air Flight 858 bombing in 1987 posed as Japanese nationals thanks to such training.
North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter is Sakie Yokota’s memoir of the last 30 years without her daughter. Her resounding faith is inspirational as is her unfaltering determination to repatriate Megumi. Mrs. Yokota vividly recounts the horrifying panic when Megumi went missing and the entire ordeal of her daughter’s absence.
In 2002, North Korea released five of the victims, claiming the other eight were dead; however, it refused to provide legitimate evidence to support these claims. After four years of deliberations in Japan, Sakie Yokota attended the first U.S. Congressional hearing on the abductions and asked America for help.
If alive, Megumi is now 44 years old. Her mother and father have aged, her twin brothers have families of their own, and while they know where Megumi was taken to, she still has not been returned. Mrs. Yokota is strongly opposed to any “de-listing” of North Korea barring the return of the remaining abductees.
