Megumi Yokota

On September 19, 2017, President of the United States Donald Trump, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, included Yokota in a series of accusations against the North Korean government, saying, "We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea's spies." Yokota's mother said, "I was really surprised, but it was great, and I'm thankful to (Trump) for bringing up the issue and putting it into words in front of those representatives from around the world. Every word on the issue is a chance. I believe (Trump's words) had a profound significance to the issue."

Japan's policy seems a desperate effort to make up for what has been a diplomatic failure ... Part of the burden for Japan's political and diplomatic failure is being shifted to a scientist for doing his job—deriving conclusions from experiments and presenting reasonable doubts about them. But the friction between North Korea and Japan will not be decided by a DNA test. Likewise, the interpretation of DNA test results cannot be decided by the government of either country. Dealing with North Korea is no fun, but it doesn't justify breaking the rules of separation between science and politics.

It is widely believed, especially in Japan, that Yokota is still alive. In November 2011 a South Korean magazine, Weekly Chosun, stated that a 2005 directory of Pyongyang residents listed a woman, named Kim Eun-gong, with the same birth date as Yokota. The directory gave Kim's spouse's name as "Kim Yong Nam". Japanese government sources verified on 18 November 2011 that they had reviewed the directory but had yet to draw a conclusion on the identity of the woman listed. Sources later indicated that Kim Eun-gong was actually Yokota's 24-year-old daughter. In 2012, it was reported that North Korean authorities were keeping Kim under strict surveillance. In August 2012, Choi Seong-ryong stated that sources in North Korea had told him that Kim Eun-gong had been placed under the supervision of Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong, and that the North Korean government may be planning on using Yokota's daughter as a "card" in future negotiations with Japan. Reportedly, in 2010 the North Korean government offered to allow Yokota's parents to visit Kim Eun-gyong in a country "other than Japan" but the Japanese government and Yokota's parents were wary about the offer, suspecting it as a ploy by the North Korean government to seek an advantage in ongoing diplomatic negotiations. In March 2014, the parents of Megumi Yokota met their granddaughter Kim Eun-gyong for the first time in Mongolia, along with her own baby daughter, whose father was not identified.

In 2010, the Shinjuku Theater has performed a stage adaptation of Megumi's life called "The Pledge to Megumi" (めぐみへの誓い) The main storyline centers on Megumi Yokota before and during her abduction by North Korea, and with a fictional ending where Megumi is reunited with her parents.

In 2010, British rock singer Peter Frampton recorded two songs about Megumi Yokota after watching the documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story on PBS. Titled "Asleep at the Wheel" and "Suite Liberte", the songs are part of his album, Thank You, Mr. Churchill.

In early 2007, Paul Stookey (of U.S. folk group Peter, Paul and Mary) introduced a song dedicated to Megumi, titled "Song for Megumi". Stookey toured Japan to sing the song in February and attended media interviews with Yokota's parents.

In 2006, Nippon Television (NTV) aired Saikai -Yokota Megumi-san no Negai- (再会 ~横田めぐみさんの願い~ Reunion ~Yokota Megumi's Wish~) a television film about the life of Megumi Yokota. The movie starred Mayuko Fukuda and [Nana Katase] as Yokota during different periods in her life.

An interview in the 3 February 2005 issue of Nature revealed that the DNA analysis on Megumi's remains had been performed by a member of the medical department of Teikyo University, Yoshii Tomio. Yoshii, it later transpired, was a relatively junior faculty member, of lecturer status, in a forensic department that had neither a professor nor even an assistant professor. He said that he had no previous experience in the analysis of cremated specimens, described his tests as inconclusive, and remarked that such samples were very easily contaminated by anyone coming in contact with them, like "stiff sponges that can absorb anything". The five tiny samples he had been given to work on (the largest of them 1.5 grams) had anyway been used up in his laboratory, so independent verification was thereafter impossible.

Documentaries made about Megumi and the other kidnapping cases include: KIDNAPPED! The Japan-North Korea Abduction Cases (2005), Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story (2006), Megumi (2007), and Megumi (2008). In October 2006 a special aired on Japan television titled Reunion ~ Megumi Yokota's Wish (Saikai ~Yokota Megumi-san no Negai~; 再会～横田めぐみさんの願い). It starred Mayuko Fukuda as a young Yokota, and Nana Katase as grown Yokota.

In the North in 1986, Yokota married a South Korean national, Kim Young-nam (Korean: 김영남, Hanja: 金英男), likely also abducted, and the couple had a daughter in 1987, Kim Hye-gyong (김혜경, whose real name was later revealed to be Kim Eun-gyong, 김은경). In June 2006, Kim Young-nam, who has since remarried, was allowed to have his family from the South visit him, and during the reunion he confirmed Yokota had committed suicide in 1994 after suffering from mental illness, and had several attempts at suicide before. He also claimed the remains returned in 2004 are genuine. His comments were however widely dismissed as repeating the official Pyongyang line, with Megumi's father claiming that Young-nam was not allowed to speak freely during his interview in Pyongyang, stating that "he was likely restricted in terms of what he can say" and that "it looked as if he were reading a script". In June 2012, Choi Seong-ryong, head of a support group for relatives of South Koreans abducted to the North, said that he had obtained North Korean government documents which stated that Yokota had died from "depression" on 14 December 2004.

After learning Korean, Yokota was apparently forced to help train North Korean spies to pass as Japanese citizens. In January 1997, information about Megumi's abduction was disclosed to Yokota's parents by Tatsukichi Hyomoto, a secretary to Diet member Atsushi Hashimoto, by a phone call. In 2002, North Korea admitted that she and others had been abducted, but claimed that she had committed suicide and returned what it said were her cremated remains. Japan stated that a DNA test proved they could not have been her remains, and her family does not believe that she would have committed suicide. She is believed to have been abducted by Sin Gwang-su.

Yokota was abducted on 15 November 1977 at the age of thirteen while walking home from school in her seaside village in Niigata Prefecture. North Korean agents reportedly dragged her into a boat and took her straight to North Korea to a facility in which North Korean spies were taught about South Korean customs and practices. There she was taught the Korean language. Also at the facility were two South Korean high school students, aged 18 and 16, who had been abducted from South Korea in August 1977. In August 1978, three more 16-year-old South Korean students were abducted from South Korea and taken to the facility. The three included Kim Young-nam [ja] , who would reportedly later marry Yokota.

Megumi Yokota (横田 めぐみ , Yokota Megumi) (born 5 October 1964) is a possibly deceased Japanese woman who was abducted by a North Korean agent in 1977, when she was a thirteen-year-old junior high school student. She was one of at least 17 Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The North Korean government has admitted to kidnapping Yokota, but has said that she died in captivity. Yokota's parents and others in Japan have publicly expressed the belief that Yokota is still alive in North Korea and have waged a public campaign seeking her return to Japan.