TOKYO (AFP) — The parents of a Japanese schoolgirl who was snatched by North Korean agents in 1977 Wednesday dismissed Pyongyang's move to reopen investigations into the case and urged Tokyo to maintain pressure on the regime.
Megumi Yokota, then 13, was walking home from school in coastal Japan when North Korean agents hauled her into a waiting boat. She has since become a symbol of the abductees whose plight rouses deep emotion in Japan.
Citing the abduction row, Japan had opposed a US decision last week to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in return for progress in a six-nation deal to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive.
But Megumi's parents played down the US decision, while urging Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to do more.
"The practical consequences of the US delisting would be economically limited as North Korea would still need Japanese aid to develop," Shigeru Yokota, Megumi's ailing father, told a news conference next to his wife.
"We're not asking the US to solve it. We just want them to give the same kind of support that they have given us until now," he told the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.
Japan has refused aid to North Korea, including fuel promised under the denuclearisation deal, due to the abduction row.
But Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, seen as a moderate, relaxed some sanctions last month after North Korea, under US pressure, agreed to reinvestigate the fate of the abductees.
"For us the reopening of the investigation isn't progress," Yokota said.
"The Japanese government should not lift any sanctions until North Korea conducts the reinvestigation which makes the Japanese content and leads them to return the abductees," he said.
The Yokotas and other relatives of abductees later visited the US embassy for talks.
US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer told them that the United States has promised that "we would never forget the abductees and we would do everything we could to help resolve this issue."
The Yokotas and most Japanese are convinced that Megumi, who would now be 43, is alive and being kept under wraps in North Korea.
North Korea says that she married a local man and committed suicide as a depressed adult.
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