Abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government took place during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983. Although only 17 Japanese (eight men and nine women) are officially recognized by the Japanese government as having been abducted, there may have been hundreds of others. The North Korean government has officially admitted to abducting 13 Japanese citizens.
There are testimonies that many non-Japanese citizens, including eight citizens from European countries and one from the Middle East, have been abducted by North Korea.
Background
In the 1970s, a number of Japanese citizens disappeared from coastal areas in Japan. The people who had disappeared were average Japanese people who were opportunistically abducted by operatives lying in wait. Although North Korean agents were suspected, the opinion that North Korea had nothing to do with the disappearances was widely held. Most of the missing were in their 20s; the youngest, Megumi Yokota, was 13 when she disappeared in November 1977, from the Japanese west coast city of Niigata.
Some of the victims were abducted to teach Japanese language and culture at North Korean spy schools. Older victims were also abducted for the purpose of obtaining their identities. It is speculated that Japanese women were abducted to have them become wives to a group of North Korea–based Japanese terrorists belonging to the Yodo-go terrorist group after a 1970 Japan Airlines hijacking and that some may have been abducted because they happened to witness activities of North Korean agents in Japan, which may explain Yokota's abduction at such a young age.
For a long time, these abductions were denied by North Korea and its sympathizers (including Chongryon and the Japan Socialist Party) and were often considered a conspiracy theory. Despite pressure from Japanese parent groups, the Japanese government took no action.
There are claims that this issue has been used by Japanese nationalists, including former Japanese Prime Ministers Yoshihide Suga and the late Shinzō Abe, to "further militarize", push for revision of the Constitution to reduce constitutional limits on the army, revise the Basic Education Law, and pursue other political goals. Such claims have been criticized by Kyoko Nakayama, the special adviser in Tokyo to the Japanese prime minister on the abduction issue, who said "This is about rescuing our citizens [from ongoing abduction]... They deserve all possible support to regain their freedom and dignity. It is our duty to retrieve them." (See Norimitsu Onishi.)
Talks between North Korea and Japan in 2002 and aftermath
On September 17, 2002, then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited North Korea to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for the First Japan–North Korea Summit, which eventually resulted in the Japan–North Korea Pyongyang Declaration. To facilitate normalization of relations with Japan, Kim admitted North Korea had abducted at least 13 Japanese citizens and issued an oral apology:
During the meeting, North Korea also provided death certificates for eight people whom the North claimed were dead, but admitted in 2004 that these certificates had been hastily drafted shortly beforehand. For several reasons, the Japanese government and NGOs question whether or not those eight people are actually dead.
According to Russian scholar Andrei Lankov, the North Korean disclosure was a strategic mistake. What was intended to be a gesture of honesty was met with outrage within both the Japanese government and the general public, as the allegations that were previously thought of as conspiracy theories had proved to be true. Japan retaliated by trying to isolate North Korea by cutting trade and other exchanges. In Lankov's view, the North Korean government will "probably think twice" before making similar confessions in the future. The ordeal was also unnecessary because North Korea had ample supply of willing Japanese speakers through Chongryon.