Mother of Abducted Japanese Schoolgirl Urges Sanctions on N. Korea
WASHINGTON (AP) - The mother of a girl who has become the symbol of anger over Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea told Congress Thursday that time is running out to save her daughter and other victims she believes are still alive.
In sometimes tearful testimony, Sakie Yokota, whose daughter Megumi was 13 when she was kidnapped on her way home from school in 1977, spoke of the profound pain, fatigue and helplessness she has felt trying to find her daughter.
Yokota, who was scheduled to meet with President Bush on Friday, urged the world to impose sanctions on North Korea if the victims are not returned immediately.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"My daughter Megumi and other abductees must be alive somewhere in North Korea," Yokota said through a translator. "They are waiting for our help, even now."
Her voice faltered as she told a joint hearing of House International Relations subcommittees that she learned from a North Korean agent that Megumi's kidnappers had kept her in a small, dark chamber in the bottom of an intelligence ship. Megumi was said to have scraped the walls with her fingers while crying, "Mother, help me," Yokota said.
At one point, she showed lawmakers a picture of her daughter taken in North Korea after the kidnapping, pointing out how lonesome Megumi looks: "When I saw it, I couldn't resist caressing her picture and saying, 'Oh, Megumi, you were here, in this kind of place; how frightened you must have been. Please forgive me for not rescuing you yet.'"
Lawmakers expressed outrage. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the global human rights subcommittee, said the North uses abductees to work as spies and to train North Korean agents in language and culture.
"Thousands of South Koreans and hundreds of Japanese have suffered and died as pawns of this twisted regime," Smith said.
Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, testified that Bush also cares deeply about the missing.
"Until the North Korean government is accountable, honestly, for the whereabouts of every one of the abductees, not only in Japan but in several other countries as well, it will not have any international legitimacy," Lefkowitz said.
In 2002, the North said it had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s. Pyongyang allowed five of them to return home but said the other eight
