Taken! - US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

Yoshi YamamotoPrincipal ResearcherFor over a decade, Yoshi Yamamoto has been an essential element in advancingAmerican understanding of the abduction issue. While he was an undergraduatestudent, his aunt Keiko in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, was one of the earliest volunteersworking with the Yokota family, and he was inspired to do everything he couldto bring international attention to the victims’ plight. His opportunity to do sooccurred when he pursued a Master’s Degree in Georgetown University’s SecurityStudies Program in Washington, D. C. He sought an opportunity to be involvedon North Korean human rights issues, and became a co-founder and SteeringCommittee Member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition formed by SuzanneScholte in 2003. He used his ability to communicate easily with the abductees’families organization to bring their concerns and hopes to policy makers inWashington, serving as a go-between for human rights groups in Washington andJapan. He set up and took part in most of the meetings that brought members of theabductees’ families to Washington. For example, his behind-the-scenes service wasessential to the inclusion of significant portions of the North Korea Human RightsAct, the historic 2006 hearing on abduction issues in the House of Representatives’International Relations Committee (Subcommittee on Asian Affairs), as well as thehistoric meeting between President George W. Bush and the family members at theOval Office. He also suggested and organized the meeting between HRNK Boardmember Roberta Cohen and Japanese Diet member Jin Matsubara that started theprocess of formulating recommendations included in this report’s final chapter.For his part, Mr. Yamamoto dedicates this report to the courage of the localvolunteers in Niigata who continue to provide persistent attention and service inhopes of returning those taken from their homes.TAKEN!North Korea’s Criminal Abductionof Citizens of Other CountriesIntroductionReaders of this report have a distinct advantage over those who tried to makesense of North Korean abductions prior to 2002. That is because North Korea’sSupreme Leader admitted the practice on September 17, 2002, when Prime MinisterJunichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang to talk about this and other matters. KimJong-il “acknowledged that these [abductions] were the work of persons affiliatedwith North Korea in the past and offered his apologies, expressing his regret.” 1 Thereason given for these actions was particularly implacable. North Korean leaderKim Jong-il stated that the abductions were committed for the following reason: “toenable Japanese language training in special agencies and for agents to obtain falseidentities to infiltrate [other countries]…” 2Prior to September 2002, the North Korean regime had denied any rolein the disappearances of people, saying that people believed to have been seen inNorth Korea had never entered the country. In official talks between Japan andNorth Korea, North Korean diplomats literally slammed the negotiating table withtheir fists and walked out at the very mention of abductees. On November 7, 1992when the Japanese government raised the name of abductee Yaeko Taguchi duringthe 8th round of Japan-DPRK Bilateral Talks and requested an investigation, theNorth Korean delegation first threatened to cancel the talks and later did so; it haltedsubsequent talks for 8 years.Meanwhile, on a more personal level, the family members who believedtheir missing loved ones had been abducted to North Korea were subjected todisbelief and sometimes ridicule. Yet the evidence of North Korea’s involvement inabductions abroad continued to mount, even though the North Korean governmentcontinued to categorically deny it. It was not until the meeting with Prime MinisterKoizumi that North Korea’s Supreme Leader finally admitted that foreign citizenshad indeed been taken by North Korean operatives and were living in North Korea.But Kim Jong-il’s admission did not tell the whole story and also leftmisleading impressions, both of which this report seeks to correct.The impression deliberately left by Kim Jong-il was that the number of1Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFA), “Opening Statement by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi atthe Press Conference on the Outcome of His Visit to North Korea,” September 17, 2002. Available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/pmv0209/press.html.2Headquarters for the Abduction Issue, Government of Japan. The Abduction of Japanese Citizens by NorthKorea: Background. http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/abduction/background.html#how. (Accessed 28 April2011)8 9