The mother of a girl who has come to symbolize Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea urged the government Wednesday to intensify efforts to return her daughter, as she voiced frustration at the lack of progress four decades after the teenager was kidnapped. „Although she is in a country close…
The mother of a girl who has come to symbolize Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea urged the government Wednesday to intensify efforts to return her daughter, as she voiced frustration at the lack of progress four decades after the teenager was kidnapped.
„Although she is in a country close to us, why can we not rescue her for such a long time?“ Sakie Yokota, the 81-year-old mother of Megumi, who was forcibly taken at age 13, told a press conference on the 40th anniversary of her disappearance.
With dialogue on the abduction issue between Tokyo and Pyongyang stalled, Yokota voiced impatience.
„We believed the government had been thinking hard, but the families (of the abduction victims) now wonder if it was the right decision to trust it,“ she said when asked about the government having failed to resolve the issue. Sakie said she has taken all possible actions to demand the government get the abductees back.
Megumi’s father Shigeru, 85, joined Sakie in attending the press conference held at their apartment in Kawasaki, southwest of Tokyo. It was a rare appearance by him as he currently spends half the week in a day-care facility for the elderly.
Shigeru made brief comments at the end of the press conference but it was hard to catch them even for his wife sitting next to him.
Their daughter was snatched by North Korean agents on Nov 15,1977, when she was on her way home from school in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast.
