Families Want N. Korea Summit to Lead to Return of Japanese Abductees

June 12, 2018

Tokyo- The families of Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang decades ago on Monday expressed hopes that a U.S.-North Korea summit slated for Tuesday will lead to an early return home of the victims.

"Please return my sweet child. That's it," Sakie Yokota, 82, the mother of Megumi, who was abducted in 1977 at the age of 13, told a press conference in Tokyo.

"I feel that we finally came this far," Sakie said of the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "If Kim Jong Un understands parents' feeling, changes his mind and returns abductees, everyone in the world will be happy."

"We have long been cheated by North Korea," said Shigeo Iizuka, 80, head of a group of abductee families and the elder brother of Yaeko Taguchi, who was kidnapped in 1978 at the age of 22.

Iizuka said he wants Trump to make Kim pledge a solution to the abduction issue at the summit. "I feel pressure from the passage of time," he said. "If I miss this opportunity, I will have to be prepared to give up forever her returning home."

In a speech in Yonago in the western Japan prefecture of Tottori, Hajime Matsumoto, 71, the elder brother of Kyoko, who was kidnapped in 1977 at the age of 29, expressed hopes that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold talks with Kim to resolve the abduction issue. Jiji Press