Heartbreak over lack of progress in abduction of Megumi Yokota

KAWASAKI–The mother of Japan’s most famous abductee talked about the indescribable emptiness that fills her days as she marked the 45th anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance on Nov. 15.

Megumi Yokota was snatched by North Korean agents in 1977 from a beach area near her home in Niigata facing the Sea of Japan after attending a club activity at her junior high school. She was 13 years old.

“I can’t put into words how empty I feel,” said her 86-year-old mother, Sakie, at a news conference in Kawasaki where she now lives.

Not having heard from her daughter for all these years and not knowing her daughter’s precise whereabouts or even if she will ever return to Japan, Sakie called on the government to immediately arrange summit talks between the leaders of Japan and North Korea and “think wisely about how to make both sides happy.”

“She disappeared like a puff of smoke. No matter how much I looked for her, I could find nothing. I felt an enormous sense of loss,” Sakie said.

Gripped by grief, Sakie took a painting class. She said she sometimes drew her daughter’s portrait while tears flowed freely. She said they were some of her most difficult days but “the paintings helped me.”

At the news conference on Nov. 8, Sakie showed off two of her oil paintings. One, titled “Small fishing port,” features a nearby fishing port. It was painted around 1978, shortly after Megumi vanished.

Given its location, she painted it red as if dusk was falling. “If I had painted a normal blue sea, I would have felt fear and sadness,” she said.

In 2014, Sakie and her husband Shigeru, who died in 2020, visited Mongolia, where they met Megumi’s daughter, Kim Eun Gyong, and her family.

“My husband seemed very happy to see the woman who looked so much like Megumi.” Sakie said. “We were able to have such a good time with (our granddaughter).”

Sakie continued, “I wonder if something mysterious will happen again someday.”

“The victims of the abductions live in despair now, but there will surely come a day when they will be blessed,” she said.

Megumi is one of at least 17 Japanese citizens that the Japanese government says were abducted by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were mainly required to train North Korean spies in Japanese language, culture and customs.

North Korea has admitted to snatching her, but said she died in captivity. Japan has not accepted this explanation.

Little is known about her life in North Korea other than that she reportedly married a South Korean abductee and had a child.