Tokyo Station commuters dart past video ads featuring the family of North Korean abductee Megumi Yokota, Aug. 21, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
TOKYO — The mother of a 13-year-old Japanese girl kidnapped by North Korean agents 47 years ago expressed hope Wednesday that President Donald Trump will help return all Japanese abductees.
Sakie Yokota, 88, the mother of Megumi Yokota, said she hopes Trump will discuss the abductions with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if they meet, and move the issue toward resolution.
“I wish him to convey our feelings. Even just a word,” she told Stars and Stripes in a phone interview.
Trump said he raised the issue when he met Kim in Singapore in 2018 during his first term. It was the first time the U.S. and North Korean leaders met. Trump was sworn into office for a second term on Monday.
“We were surprised when we heard that he talked directly about the abduction issue (with Kim),” Sakie said.
Trump in his first term met with families of the Japanese abductees in 2017 and in 2019 expressed his support in solving the issue, according to an NHK report Tuesday.
Sakie said Trump seemed to be able to speak frankly with Kim.
“We hope he will show interest in the matter and relay the message” to Kim, she said. “We are getting old. We’ve been waiting for 47 years, and it has not been solved.”
Japanese authorities believe Yokota was taken by the North while walking home from her junior high school in Niigata, a port city on the Sea of Japan, on Nov. 11, 1977.
She is one of a dozen abductees identified by the Japanese government who remain unaccounted for.
In 2002, North Korea admitted to abducting Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, and apologized during a summit with Tokyo, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry. Five abductees were returned to Japan that October.
After a second summit meeting in 2004 in Pyongyang, the abductees’ family members were permitted to rejoin them in Japan. North Korea has since claimed that all the abductees were returned to Japan and that the matter is settled.
Japan continues to investigate more than 800 people who may have been abducted, according to the Cabinet Office.
North Korea may have carried out the abductions to teach their spies the Japanese language and to use their identities to enter South Korea, according to the National Police Agency website.
Japan is seeking a meeting with Kim to bring other abductees home as quickly as possible. However, Pyongyang says all living abductees have been returned.
Sakie asked for people’s support in solving the issue.
“People are being abducted in many ways. This is not just Japan’s issue but is a worldwide issue,” she said. “It could happen to anyone at any time.”
