Megumi Yokota

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Niigata Prefecture (POLICE)

Missing From:

Niigata, Japan

Summary:

Megumi Yokota, born October 5, 1964, was abducted by North Korean agents on November 15, 1977, when she was a 13-year-old junior high school student walking home from school in Niigata Prefecture. The North Korean government has admitted to kidnapping Yokota, but has said that she died in captivity. Yokota's parents and others in Japan have publicly expressed the belief that she is still alive in North Korea and have waged a public campaign seeking her return to Japan.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

On the morning of November 15, 1977, Megumi had breakfast with her father, mother, and her twin younger brothers and then went off to her junior high school. That evening, Megumi didn't come home at her usual time, although she was supposed to come home after finishing badminton practice, which was the club she belonged to at school. It was a seven-minute walk from the badminton courts where she had spent the afternoon, but Megumi never made it to the house. Her family was worried and desperately searched for her. The police also conducted a search and an investigation assuming a variety of scenarios, such as a kidnapping, accident, runaway, or suicide. However, they found no eyewitnesses nor any items left behind. According to testimony heard much later, during that time when Megumi's father and mother were desperately searching to find her, she had been kidnapped by North Korean agents and was confined in the pitch-dark and cold hold of a boat heading to North Korea.

Additional Details:

It would be two agonising decades before her family found out what had happened. In 1997, a Japanese government official rang the Yokotas to inform them that their daughter had been kidnapped by North Korean agents. It was not until January 1997 that this girl was identified as Yokota Megumi. 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. Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō's Pyongyang visit on September 17, 2002, completely changed this situation. Kim Jong Il acknowledged North Korea's involvement in the abductions and apologized. In 2002, it released five captives and said eight others, including Megumi Yokota, had died. Her cremated remains were returned. Japanese officials say DNA testing showed the remains were not Yokota. North Korean officials claimed she married a Zainichi Korean operative named Kim Jong-nam in 1986, bore a daughter in 1987, suffered mental health issues, and died by suicide in April 1994 at age 29 by jumping from an apartment building in Chungjin. She is now 49, and has a daughter of her own, Kim Eun-gyong, by another abductee – from South Korea, from whom she is now divorced. The Yokota family, husband Shigeru (November 14, 1932 – June 5, 2020) and wife Sakie (born February 4, 1936) along with their twin sons Takuya and Tetsuya founded the Japanese National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea in 1997.

Case Last Updated:

Aug 29, 2026