Novice directors Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan and 1994 Oscar winner Jane Campion (Best Screenplay—The Piano) created a touching if slender piece of work in their new documentary about the mysterious abduction of a young Japanese girl in 1977. Megumi Yokota was returning home after a completely normal day of school in her completely normal neighborhood and she disappeared, never to return. Her parents’ subsequent search lasted for decades and precipitated an astonishing and scary story of systematic abductions in Japan.
In the tormented days after Megumi’s disappearance, friends relayed stories of similar disappearances in the region. The Southwestern prefectures of Japan are relatively close to Korea, but nobody put together the pieces of the puzzle that eventually came to light.
Apparently a turned North Korean intelligence officer spilled the first of the real story years afterwards. Telling a story stranger than fiction, he had seen Megumi and said he knew the person who had taken her. Her abductor was also a member of North Korean intelligence and was acting on orders directly from ruling despot Kim Jong-il.
Megumi Yokota, and many others, had been taken from the streets of Japan to become top secret trainers for North Korean intelligence operatives. Other Japanese citizens were kidnapped while on European tours and a result of airplane hijackings.
After the initial story broke, friends and relatives of the disappeared put serious pressure on the Japanese government to demand an investigation into North Korean intelligence operations. Of course, for anyone to demand an investigation into the intelligence operations of the most secretive and totalitarian countries in the world is asking a lot. Especially when the Socialist party of Japan maintained close ties with North Korea and held considerable power in Japan.
This was compounded by the fact that Japan, with no military, is immediately exposed to Korean missiles and, now, nuclear weapons. We will never know what part the USA played in all this, but we can be sure American intelligence was involved as well, attempting to normalize relations with a totalitarian regime dedicated to developing weapons of mass destruction and fueling anti-western sentiment around the world.
In spite of this horrendous diplomatic environment, Kim Jong-il was eventually pressured into not only admitting the abductions occurred, but setting the number at 13 Japanese. He reported eight were dead, including Megumi Yokota and eventually allowed the remaining five to return to Japan to “visit their families.”
In the strangest twist to date, he was outraged when the five abductees who returned to Japan declined to go back to North Korea. He cites Japanese war crimes during WWII as a justification for the kidnappings and also states that Japan kidnapped Koreans for their own use in intelligence training.
We may never know the truth about the claims of Japanese kidnappings. Since then, cremated remains have also been returned to Japan, supposedly those of Yokota and others, although the claims have not been supported by DNA studies and currently the DNA studies themselves are under attack.
North Korea also admitted abducting persons of other nationalities including hundreds or thousands of South Koreans. Widening the lens a little, is it beyond possibility that many western nations, including the US, did the same thing at some time in the past?
Having said all of the above, this may be one of those films that has bitten off more than it can chew.
The Megumi Yokota story and related abductions, themselves, are intriguing and bizarre, to say the least. But the facts presented in this film just scratch the surface of the international implications of abductions and related brainwashing that has been alleged throughout the 19th century. Who does these things, and if the victims are subjected to even moderate “reprogramming” while in isolation with their captors for decades, how are we ever to know?
Apparently the number one story in Japan at this time, we can only hope these atrocities reverberate to the point where all nations get the message.
Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
Opens New York City only: January 12, 2007. MPAA: Unrated
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