Megumi Yokota was abducted on 15 November 1977 at the age of thirteen while walking home from school in her seaside village in
Niigata Prefecture. It's believed that she was abducted because she happened to witness activities of North Korean agents in Japan and so the agents wanted to silence her. North Korean agents reportedly dragged her into a boat and took her straight to North Korea to a facility, where she was taught the Korean language. She was eventually assigned to a university where North Korean spies were taught foreign languages, customs and practices. Here she taught Japanese to would-be spies, who were being trained to infiltrate Japan. Also at the earlier facility were two South Korean high school students, aged 18 and 16, who had been abducted from South Korea in August 1977 and in August the next year, three more 16-year-old South Korean students were abducted and taken to the same facility. These included , who would reportedly later marry Yokota. After many years of speculation and no new leads, 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 on 13 March 1994, and returned what it said were her cremated remains. Japan stated that a
DNA test showed they could not have been her remains (although it was later discovered that a junior faculty member with no previous analysis of cremated specimens had tested the remains and may have accidentally contaminated them), and her family does not believe that she would have committed suicide. She is believed to have been abducted by
Sin Gwang-su. In the North in 1986, Yokota married a
South Korean national, Kim Young-nam (), 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 was reading a script". In June 2012, Choi Sung-ryong, head of a support group for relatives of South Koreans abducted to the North, claimed that he had obtained North Korean government documents which stated that Yokota had died from "depression" on 14 December 2004. However, his claim has been dismissed by many as he refused to release the documents to the public. 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. While early reports did not publicly identify the child’s father, multiple accounts noted that Kim’s husband accompanied her to the meeting, though his personal history wasn't disclosed at the time. Sakie Yokota later said she couldn't discuss Kim in detail, but emphasized that they promised to meet again if Megumi and the other abductees ever return to Japan. .
Thae Yong-ho's revelations Thae Yong-ho, North Korea's former Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom who defected to the South, claimed in his book
Passcode to the Third Floor Secretariat that the controversy regarding the return of Yokota's remains was unexpected by
Kim Jong Il and caused significant infighting between the ministry and Kim Jong Il's staff, leading Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs
Kang Sok-ju to demand an explanation. The Japanese Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry internally published a report: Thae believed that Kim Jong Il, desperately wanting normalization of relations and economic aid, had not deliberately sent fake remains and was genuinely surprised by the resultant outrage from the Japanese press and the Koizumi government. When the Japanese offer of normalization was rescinded, contingent on further progress over the abductions issue, Kim allegedly told Kang, "As expected, the Japs can't be trusted. The American bastards are better." ==DNA controversy==