North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter Review

It was in November 1977 that the 13 year old Megumi Yokota disappeared off the face of the planet on her way home from a badminton practice in her school in Niigata, Japan. An intense search and campaign followed but the circumstances of Megumi’s disappearance would remain a mystery for almost 20 years. Then in 1997 it was finally revealed that she and a large number of other Japanese nationals had been kidnapped by North Korean secret agents and brought back to their country.

“North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter” is a memoir written by the mother of Megumi, Sakie Yokota that deals with her disappearance and the many years of almost unimaginable suffering that followed in the years after. Sakie writes in a somewhat unpolished manner which makes it apparent that she is not a professional, however it lends a kind of honesty to her story giving it more of a feeling that it came straight from the heart. What this book shows is how it is not only the person who is kidnapped’s life that is changed forever but those who are left behind as well, with Sakie losing her life to the search for Megumi.

Sakie recalls in great detail Megumi’s childhood revealing what kind of person Megumi really was, which shows Sakie as being desperate to hold onto any memory of he daughter knowing that she may never get to see her again. Despite the adversities that Sakie faces the fact that she never gives up on her daughter even after 20 years proves inspirational and makes the reader question whether he/she would be able to stand so strong.

When the book was originally published in Japan in 1999 it was still unknown whether Megumi was alive in Korea or not, however when it was translated into English by Vertical recently it was updated with all the new information that has came in the intervening period such as the admission of the kidnappings by the North Korean government and that Megumi had a husband and daughter in North Korea all of which is conveyed in a timeline and new photographs of Megumi and her family. What this lacks however is Sakie’s opinions and experiences when discovering that her daughter was alive and had a family leaving it feeling a bit empty and tacked onto the end.

One of the other problems is that near the end the narrative begins to lose course and meander however this seems not to be due to the fault of Sakie herself but rather because at the time in 1999 there was no ending to her story, which only adds to the already high emotional impact of the story.

This really has to be one of the hardest hitting books I’ve read in my life with the progression of events really making you wish you could do something to help her. It can make you slightly depressed at times with all the terrible things that the Yokota family went through but it is really a story that really should be heard.