The abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents decades ago is a national tragedy. It is designated by the Abe administration as the “Most Important Issue,” yet it remains unresolved. This is because North Korea is the subject of international criticism and pressure for an issue other than the abductions: its continued […]
Megumi Yokota, left is sitting with her mother Sakie who is holding Megumi’s twin brothers in her hand on the Children’s Day Hello, Megumi. It’s Children’s Day in Japan right now. Remember what a fun day this was for our family? Remember how we played and had sushi and baked a cake? We […]
The Japanese Mission to the European Union (EU) on Wednesday night, May 3, held a screening of the animé Megumi in the Belgian capital of Brussels. The animé details the abduction of 13-year-old Megumi Yokota (now 53 years old) and her family’s efforts to secure her safe return to Japan. It highlights North […]
This week, in the wake of increasingly shrill North Korean threats, Vice President Mike Pence is in East Asia, rallying the US-South Korea-Japan alliance around the Trump Doctrine of peace through strength. Vice President Pence told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the United States was prepared to use force to bring lasting peace […]
The Sankei Shimbun has begun publishing the series “Letters to Megumi,” written by parents Shigeru and Sakie Yokota to their daughter who is held captive in North Korea. “Mom was so terribly lonely. She tried to shake her loneliness by immersing herself in efforts to bring the abductees home,” Megumi’s parents write in their […]
Megumi, hello. Spring has come round again. It is the season of graduations and matriculations. In the springtime forty years ago, Dad took a picture of you in your middle school uniform standing under the cherry trees. Those cherry trees were especially beautiful. The picture was taken after you had fallen ill and been unable […]
March 2017 marks twenty years since the families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea formed a group to represent their concerns. On the eve of this anniversary, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat down for an exclusive interview with Yukan Fuji—the Sankei Shimbun’s evening newspaper—in which he said that solving the abduction issue, a stark […]
This article originally appeared in the Sankei Shimbun morning edition, September 4, 2012. A suspected case of an abduction carried out by North Korea was confirmed as fact at a summit between the leaders of Japan and North Korea in 2002. Sankei Shimbun had already reported the case 23 years earlier. On January […]
This article originally appeared in the Sankei Shimbun morning edition, September 3, 2012. All ages and dates are counted from that date. At a Japan-North Korea summit, then-Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il admitted to abducting Japanese people and asserted that five abductees were still alive. Of those, the Japanese side had been unsuccessfully tracking the […]
North Korea chose the moment of the U.S.-Japan summit meeting to launch intermediate-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, and soon after assassinated Kim Jong-nam, the elder half-brother of Korean Workers’ Party chairman Kim Jong-un. Both instances are grim reminders of the violent and unpredictable nature of the government across the Sea of Japan. […]
This article originally appeared in the Sankei Shimbun morning edition, September 2, 2012. All ages and dates are counted from that date. In 2004, North Korea handed over what it claimed were the remains of Megumi Yokota. By that time, nearly two years had passed since then-Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il had admitted that Megumi […]
This article originally appeared in the Sankei Shimbun morning edition, September 1, 2012. All ages and dates are counted from that date. Megumi Yokota, who was abducted by North Korean agents as she was coming home after middle school badminton practice, is representative of North Korea’s abduction victims. If her case is brought to […]
