A Case that Government Ignores Victims
Megumi Yokota was taken away from a seaside town on the Sea of Japan at one evening in 1977 when she was coming back home from a junior high school. She was 13 years old at the time. North Korea agents seems to have encountered her by chance and taken her to a spy ship that secretly sailed across the Sea of Japan to North Korea.
For 20 years, the truth of the incident, namely abduction by North Korean agents, was not revealed to the Yokota family.
It happened to be revealed in 1996 by a Japanese journalist who had interviewed some officials of the South Korean Government for a different issue. The South Korean officials got information about Megumi Yokota from a certain North Korean defector. But it was in 1997 that the parents of Megumi were notified of the fact that their daughter had been kidnapped by North Korean secret agents. They were informed by a secretary of a parliamentary member of the Japanese Communist Party who had some linkage with the journalist but not by the Japanese Government or by lawmakers of a major ruling party, the LDP, that had been in power since 1955.
However, at least in 1980s, the Japanese Government knew that North Korea secretly sent secret agents to Japan to abduct Japanese. But, the Government never made it public, though in the parliament some lawmakers asked related situations of some ministers in question session only to get non-detailed answers. Nonetheless, the Japanese Government must have judged that Megumi Yokota was abducted by North Korea at least in 1980s. Or even CIA must have informed, at least in 1980s, the Japanese Government of such covert activities in Japan by North Korea. But both the Japanese Government and the US Government did not announce it to the general public.
So, the Yokota family did not even dream of such a possibility that Megumi might have been abducted by North Korean secret agents for 20 years. It is because the Japanese Government did not give any clue about the fate of their daughter Megumi to the Yokotas.
This is one of the most weird incidents in Japan since the end of WWII.
Before the end of WWII, the Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan. After WWII, a million or more Koreans stayed in Japan. Some became naturalized Japanese, but others continued to be South or North Koreans with a right of permanent residency in Japan.
They have been discriminated almost openly in the Japanese society till recently. They could not become public officials, and major Japanese businesses would not employ them. So, some of them engaged in the gambling business, mostly pachinko, a pinball gamble. However, the pachinko gamble became so popular in Japan. Accordingly, some Korean residents in Japan got big money. And, Japanese politicians who needed big money for election came to have a strong tie with these Korean business men.
Especially, the LDP, a major conservative party that has been a ruling party since 1955 except a short period of time, has had many politicians who have been supported financially by those rich Korean residents in Japan. Even today, it is thought that there are many lawmakers of both the ruling parties and the opposite parties who are financially supported by rich South and North Koreans living in Japan who are engaged in the gambling business.
So, the background of the strange attitude of the Japanese Government to the abduction of Megumi Yokota is very complicated, since some rich North Korean business men living in Japan had a strong tie with Japanese lawmakers and these North Koreans had of course a strong tie with North Korea.
For example, former Prime Minister of Japan Naoto Kan who was prime minister when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident occurred in 2011 is believed to have some linkage with such Koreans living in Japan, though he is not a lawmaker of the LDP.
Today, Prime Minsiter Shinzo Abe, also a lawmaker of the LDP, is strongly supporting the Yokota family as well as other Japanese families whose sons or daughters were abducted by North Korea.
However, there have been no official apology and announcement from the Japanese Government that they knew that North Korea had abducted Megumi Yokota far before 1997 but did not inform the Yokota family of it for 20 years or so.
This is one of the cases that a government ignores victims, though there are many such cases in the world, including North Korea and the US.
(For more information, refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese_citizens)
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Mat 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Mat 3:8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
Mat 3:9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.