A Message to Kim Jong Un From Mother of Japanese Girl Abducted by North Korea in 1977

If that fateful day hadn't come, Yokota Shigeru and Sakie would have lived a run-of-the-mill family life, just like any other. 

But 46 years ago, on the evening of November 15, 1977, their 13-year-old daughter Megumi suddenly disappeared on her way home from junior high school in Niigata City, which is about 250 kilometers north of Tokyo.

So began the anguish of the Yokota family. Their desperate effort to search for their daughter is said to have been the largest in the history of Niigata Prefecture’s police department.

Sakie, now 87, told me that while she was living in Niigata after her daughter’s disappearance, the local police would called her to confirm whether dead bodies found in the snow were Megumi or not. She said she fell into a state of neurosis.

On January 1997, 20 years after their daughter vanished, the family was shocked to learn that North Korean agents had abducted Megumi. 

The Yokotas, including Megumi’s twin younger brothers, Takuya and Tetsuya, 55, have since become Japan's most famous crusaders for Japanese abduction victims. Yokota Megumi remains a tragic heroine for the Japanese abductees and for the whole nation. 

North Korea claims that Megumi died in 1994, but her family believes that is a lie. She would be 59 years old if she is still alive.

On November 7, ahead of the 46th anniversary of Megumi’s abduction, Sakie held a press conference at her condominium in Kawasaki City, adjoining Tokyo. She called on Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to hold a summit with North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un to bring back Megumi and other Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents.

“There's not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Megumi-chan. Every morning when I wake up, I ask her how she’s doing on my own, and I talk to her father’s photo,” Sakie said. (“Chan” is a Japanese honorific added to children’s names to convey affection.)