She's alive, insist parents of girl kidnapped by Koreans

Like the parents of Milly Dowler, Shigeru and Sakie Yokota learnt last week that their missing 13-year-old daughter was dead. But the Japanese couple had to wait nearly 25 years to discover the worst, because Megumi Yokota became the victim of international power politics.

Megumi's disappearance on the way home from badminton class in November 1977 set off the largest-ever missing persons search in her home prefecture of Niigata, in northern Japan. More than 3,000 police took part, but found nothing.

Shigeru Yokota, who said his daughter was "bright and full of life" and loved to sing around the house, recalled last week the agony of uncertainty that afflicted her family. "We were at the end of our tether," he said. "We began to think she had been the victim of a sex crime or something." Days became weeks, then months and years with no word of their daughter.

While Megumi's twin brothers grew up and left home, her parents clung to the hope that she might one day turn up. Then, in 1997, two decades after she vanished, a Japanese magazine carried an interview with a North Korean government agent who said he knew what happened.

Walking along a road overlooking the Sea of Japan on the way home, Megumi had witnessed North Korean spies attempting to slip out of the country in secret, he said. She was snatched and brought back to Pyongyang, where she still lived. "The article had a ring of truth, because it mentioned in detail the badminton racket she carried the day she disappeared," said her father.

For years there had been extraordinary rumours that North Korea kidnapped Japanese and took them back to the capital to tutor spies. Last week leader Kim Jong-il finally acknowledged they were true. At a summit meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, he confirmed that "renegade" agents had indeed snatched her and 12 other Japanese nationals over the years. Some were still alive, living and working in the reclusive state, but eight were dead, including Megumi.

"Pyongyang gave details of the missing people to the foreign ministry, and we were called into a meeting with an official," said Mrs Yokota. "We knew when we saw his face that it was bad news. He said 'I'm sorry to tell you your daughter is dead,' and then he began crying." After 25 years living in hope, it was a bitter blow, but there was worse to come. "He told us Megumi had married in North Korea and had a daughter who is still alive.

"I began asking him questions. Who did my daughter marry? What age is my grandchild? Where is she now? But the official just kept saying 'I don't know, I don't know.' The longer the meeting went on, the angrier I became."

By the time the Yokotas returned home to see the story on television, they were furious. "I just don't believe Megumi is dead," said her father. "I won't believe it until I see proof. How can the foreign ministry just read off a list given to them by North Korea without checking for evidence? There is so much wrong with what they said. How did these eight people die, and why did some of them die on the same date?"

The greatest worry the family has is that as Japan and North Korea strive to establish normal diplomatic relations, these questions will simply be swept aside. On a cabinet in the Yokotas' modest apartment sits a photograph of a pretty thirty-something woman. "An artist friend made it up for us," said her mother. "That's what Megumi looks like today. She's still alive, I know it."