A Blog of Weird, Bizarre and Creepy Things

The story of Megumi Yokota is fascinating for several reasons. It begins with the disappearance of a young girl from Japan in 1977, and develops into a story of international espionage. It was a November day in 1977, when Sachi Yokota said goodbye to her daughter as she left for school and never returned. In the years following, both Sachi and her husband searched tirelessly for clues as to the whereabouts of their daughter, but uncovered absolutely nothing. A couple of years after the disappearance, Sachi and her husband Shigeru learned that Japanese residents had begun disappearing off the coast facing North Korea, and the Koreans were the prime suspects in the abductions. However, it took until 1997 for a North Korean defector to give the Yokota’s the information they had been searching for. The defector stated that Megumi had, in fact, been taken by abductors working for the North Korean government, and taken across the seas to aid in the training of North Korean spies intent on being able to blend in with the Japanese culture. However, Megumi had been taken by mistake, her real age not being realized until she was already long gone.

The story would seem like the work of someone with a very overactive imagination if it were not for the fact that North Korea admitted, in 2002, to the abduction of 12 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s, Megumi being one of them. They stated that she had committed suicide at the age of 29, and returned what they said were her ashes to Japan, where DNA testing was claimed to prove the remains were not Megumi’s

The missing girl would now be in her 40s and the Yokotas continue to search for the truth of what happened to their daughter, clinging on to the belief that she is still alive, somewhere.