Shigeru Yokota
Campaigner for the return of Japanese people – his daughter among them – taken by North Korea
SHIGERU YOKOTA, who has died aged 87, spent half a lifetime – together with his wife Sakie – campaigning for the return of Japanese citizens abducted into North Korea, after their own daughter was snatched in 1977.
The couple’s role in establishing the Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea turned Megumi Yokota, who was 13 when she was taken, into a symbolic figure across Japan. This came at a time when evidence of North Korea’s egregious Cold War activities was beginning to mount.
During the 1970s and 1980s, around 100 citizens are thought to have fallen into the hands of the rogue state’s secret service. Forced to train as spies, they were considered potent tools in North Korea’s battle for political advantage over its neighbours. Many, Megumi Yokota included, were never seen again.
As abductees were not generally ordinary citizens (they tended to be people of Korean origin who had defected from North Korea or voiced open criticism of the North Korean regime), there was doubt in certain circles as to whether the Yokotas’ story was genuine. Such doubts came to an end in 2002, when North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il admitted to the practice of abductions. Though a few survivors were handed over, the ruling elite in Pyongyang maintained that Megumi Yokota could not return, having taken her own life in 1994.
Her family rejected this version of events, while the North Korean authorities kept up their campaign of obfuscation. Human remains surrendered to Japan were found to belong to a different person following DNA tests.
Until worsening health sent him into hospital in 2018, Shigeru Yokota continued to attend events held by the association he had helped to found. The family’s petition, demanding justice for Megumi and others like her, had more than 13 million signatories at the time of his death.
Shigeru Yokota was born in the Tokushima prefecture on the Japanese island of Shikoku on November 14 1932. He met his future wife through his work with the Bank of Japan in Nagoya, and they had Megumi in 1964. The family moved to Niigata, a port city on Honshu, Japan’s main island, when Shigeru was assigned there by the bank.
On the evening of November 15 1977, Megumi bid goodbye to two fellow students of Yorii Junior High School as she headed home from badminton practice. It was the last confirmed sighting of the teenager. As years went by, Shigeru would inspect the nearby shore every morning for clues as to his daughter’s whereabouts.
Both parents gave televised interviews highlighting their plight. However, it was not until 1997 – by which time the Yokotas had moved to Tokyo – that the emerging testimony of defectors from North Korea offered hard evidence of Megumi’s fate.
Since then her story has been the subject of several documentaries, an animated film and a two-volume comic book. In 2014 Shigeru and Sakie Yokota were able to meet their granddaughter Kim Eun Gyong, Megumi having married a South Korean abductee at some point during her time in North Korea.
Shigeru Yokota is survived by his wife and by their twin sons.
Shigeru Yokota, born November 14 1932, died May 5 2020