Customer Reviews

North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter

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4 star:		(1)
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Until you read it, you cannot understand that abduction is harder than death for a family.
Until you read it, you don't know what's really going on in East Asia.
By reading this book, you will find the world through the eyes of a mother.
Then you will find, the mother, a very ordinary mother changed a country, because of her love for her daughter.
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Child abduction is one of the most traumatic experiences for a family. In 1977, middle school student Megumi Yokota disappeared on her way home from school in the coastal city of Niigata, Japan. Despite massive efforts on the part of the community and the local police, Megumi's disappearance was never solved. It was years later that Megumi's parents finally received information leading them to believe that she, like several other Japanese citizens known of at the time, had been abducted by North Korean agents. It was not until 2002 that North Korea officially admitted to the abductions, but question remains over whether or not Megumi is still alive, leaving her family without closure.

Written by Megumi's mother, Sakie Yokota, North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter is by no means a highly polished work of nonfiction. As a writer, Yokota tends to dwell too much on details while letting some of the larger questions out of her grasp, and the last few chapters start to feel repetitive as she reaches for an ending that does not exist. What this book definitely is, however, is a stunningly moving story of loss and a life lived in perpetual uncertainty.

Yokota's memories of her daughter contain the kind of intense detail that can only exist when something has been thought through and examined thousands of times over, and it is easy to imagine her determination to hang on to each tiny bit of memory, knowing that there may be no more. Yokota's carefully kind tone toward anyone who has ever been involved in Megumi's case is both moving and somehow painful, as is her painstaking effort to thank every person who has ever helped her or sent her hopeful wishes for Megumi's return. Her campaign to retrieve her daughter, unwavering even in the face of government resistance, is truly inspirational. Still, what inspires the deepest heartache and outrage in the reader is the loss of Yokota's own life to a potentially hopeless search. That neither the Japanese government nor anyone else has been able to bring about the return of Megumi or at least determine some clear resolution regarding her fate is maddening, as is Yokota's powerlessness in the situation.

Regardless of its few shortcomings , North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter is an extremely moving and heartbreaking story. A good read.

This book is the well-written true account by Sakie Yokota, whose 13-year-old beautiful, vivacious daughter Megumi was kidnapped in 1977. Sakie Yokota and her husband did not know what had happened to their child for twenty endless years, only to find out in 1997 that their child had been taken off the streets of the seaside town of Niigata, Japan by North Korean agents and spirited away to North Korea - locked in the holds of a boat, yet! Furthermore, the Yokotas have still not been able to get their daughter back, but they're the kind of decent parents who never stop trying to gain her release.

This story is an outrage unlike any other I've ever encountered. This is one of the sickest crimes I've ever heard of and there is absolutely no justification for it. No country has the right to kidnap citizens of other countries to begin with, especially for "political" reasons, but for them to have stolen the Yokota's child on her way home from school is reprehensible.

Sakie Yokota deserves a medal for writing this book and for exposing the bizarre North Korean practice of kidnapping foreign nationals. Megumi was not the only person kidnapped. She's one of several. It's so outrageous, and such a cowardly act on behalf of the North Korean government, that for once in my life I'm at a loss for words. Suffice it to say the book is worth reading and is an education in itself about a regime whose practices need to be stopped and stopped at once.

I want to add here that it is my hope, and also my prayer, that Megumi Yokota is allowed to return home soon to the parents who still haven't given up on seeing her again.

It has been pointed out that the writing by the mother is extremely basic, tedious and all too frequently dwells on minutiae that is of little concern for the reader. We are not her next door neighbor's, her friends or loved ones- and yet this is the style in which the book is presented. Why then the book gets 5 stars is beyond me. In sum, a horrible, unimaginable crime- where the reader can skip many pages of motherly recollections and inapplicable details and look for the headings that tell the story. Yes, thank God this book has descriptive headings indicating what will be presented. This book took me 3 hours to read and left me unsatisfied, yet horrified that such a thing has happened.

Throughout its split from its southern half, North Korea has not been a country of virtue. "North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter" is the heart wrenching tale of a Japanese mother who lost her thirteen-year-old daughter to Communist North Korea. Sakie Yokota tells her story of her most unusual tragedy, and how she coped with the events . . . A story of anguish and the kindness of others, "North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter" is intriguing and a riveting read of one woman's saga.

On November 15, 1977 thirteen-year-old Megumi Yokota was abducted from her home in Niigata, Japan. She had disappeared without a trace. Police investigations came up with nothing. No one saw her disappear nor had anyone any ideas where she might have gone. The Yokota family did not know if their daughter had run away, committed suicide, or been kidnapped. Neither the police nor the family gave credence to the last possibility since no one had called to demand ransom. It wasn't until twenty years later that the truth finally came out. Megumi's mother, Sakie Yokota tells the story In North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter: A Memoir.

The first part of the book is devoted to the precious memories Yokota has of her daughter. Megumi was an active child and enjoyed physical activities. As a young girl she started ballet lessons and studied dance for many years. At thirteen she decided to focus her skills on badminton, where she showed great promise and was one of two students at her school to be selected for a special training program. It was after a badminton practice that Megumi was abducted on her way home from school.

Near the beginning of the book Yokota reveals the latest news she has of Megumi today: that Megumi married while in North Korea and had a child. We see alleged photos of Megumi, her husband and daughter yet nowhere else in the book does Yokota say anything about them except a few lines in a timeline chart of events at the end. As the end of the book drew nearer I anticipated Yokota would write about attaining some kind of contact with Megumi or with their granddaughter, especially since one of the photos in the book is of the granddaughter holding a photograph of her maternal grandparents, the Yokotas. How did this girl get that picture? How did Yokota acquire alleged photos of her daughter as an adult? Even though Yokota herself can't be sure that the photos are of her own adult daughter, nonetheless she should have explained how her own photo got into the hands of the girl claiming to be her own granddaughter. This part of the story left a football field of unanswered questions.

Twenty years after the abduction, Megumi's father received a phone call that started the process of unravelling the truth. It was confusing how Yokota related the connection between a counterfeiting ring and the kidnappers. By coincidence both were North Korean and they worked for the same people. When the counterfeiters were apprehended, they revealed other illegal activities and miraculously, when the line of questioning turned to abductions, they revealed that they had come across Megumi several times in their undercover activities. It all sounds too conveniently coincidental. If Yokota had elaborated more on this miraculous connection of events, it would have seemed believable. Unfortunately the way Yokota reveals the news how she and her husband found out that their daughter was still alive seems like a primary school magic ending where coincidences converge. Too much information is given in too few pages and one is left to make assumptions about the whole series of events. I reread the entire chapter to make sure I understood everything, but then Yokota retells the whole discovery story later on in a linear style that leaves no uncertainties. Yokota does this often: repeat things that she had only written about barely twenty pages previously.

The sad news is that the Yokotas are never reunited with Megumi, and that for the past 34 years their hearts have been empty without her. Yokota conveys the aching longing and feelings of helplessness without sounding maudlin. I was surprised to read that:

"It may sound strange for me to say that I feel grateful for what we have endured. But I do believe that my sons have learned to be perceptive because they experienced hardships not known to children who have led happy lives growing up in a normal household. I want to believe that there are positive aspects to what has happened, at least in terms of the opportunity that this experience has given them to develop spiritual strength within themselves."

The Yokotas have formed support groups with other Japanese who have lost family members to North Korean kidnappers. They continue to work to petition the government and human rights groups to pressure North Korea into releasing all Japanese citizens still held captive.

I did not know such a thing really happened.
It was very shocking.
The book was very informative.
I have been looking for other information on abduction of North Korea.
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