Japan and South Korea may cooperate on Yokota case
Apparently, Japan and the ROK are teaming up to try to find out the identity of Megumi Yokota’s husband:
In February, the Japanese government took blood and other samples from the families of five South Korean abduction victims who were cited as possible husbands of Yokota, and had been testing the DNA of the samples.
In response, South Korean officials said that if the possibility of Yokota’s husband being a South Korean abductee arose, it would ask Japan for DNA information from Yokota’s daughter, Kim Hye Gyong, and conduct its own verification of the identity of Yokota’s husband.
Five South Koreans who disappeared in 1977 and 1978 have been citied as possible husbands of Yokota. South Korea has acknowledged that all five were abducted by North Korean agents.
For Yokota’s husband’s sake, let’s hope his affairs are settled more easily than hers have been. The poor woman’s father has been on television so frequently over the last few years that a lot of us news watchers know him by sight now. The reason, of course, is that the DPRK keeps playing games about releasing her remains–who knows whether Pyongyang even knows where they are by this point? Some abductees have returned to more (Hitomi Soga, wife of US Army deserter Charles Jenkins) or less (several others who have returned to quiet lives in the provinces) publicity, but Yokota’s case has become a symbol of North Korea’s inability just to do something…anything…forthright.