Five Kidnapped S.Koreans Confirmed Alive in North A Sorry Tale of Silence and Neglect Kim Young-nam's Abductor Now Free in S.Korea Megumi Yokota's Father Arrives in Korea Parents of Abduction Victims in Emotional First Meeting Abduction Victim Reunited With Mother After 28 Years A Child of North Korea’s Abductions Kim Young-nam Denies Abduction by N.Korea A Melancholy Performance Seoul Believes Kim Young-nam Was Abducted by North Megumi Yokota Remains ‘May Have Been Mixed Up’ Families Demand Return of Kidnap Victims from N.Korea Abducted S. Korean 'Wavers on Brink of Freedom' Tokyo ‘Hiding Knowledge of Megumi Yokota’s Death’ Kim Young-nam ‘Never Asked’ if Wife Was Kidnapped

It took the Japanese government four years to confirm the fact. During his North Korea visit in 2002, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was told by its leader Kim Jong-il that Yokota, who went missing from Niigata Prefecture in 1977, was kidnapped by the North and died in 1994 after marrying the man and having a daughter with him. Based on that information, Tokyo obtained DNA samples from the couple’s daughter in September 2002. It later took DNA samples from the parents and siblings of five South Korean abductees and found that one of them matched the DNA of Yokota's daughter.

It is a moment of shame for South Korea that the Japanese government had to do what would have been our government’s job: confirm the fate of one of our own who was abducted by North Korea.

Urging North Korea to resolve the issue of Japanese abductees with promised rewards of rapprochement and economic aid, Japan eventually won an admission from Pyongyang that it abducted 13 Japanese people. After the Koizumi visit, Japan brought back five of them and their families. That is the way a state should look after its citizens.

But all our government has done for those of our citizens taken to the North by force is announce that there were 468 of them. It has not discovered whether they are still alive, and in talks with the North it does not dare use the term “kidnap” to describe what happened to them. It barely transmits one-way notification when someone has died or somebody's whereabouts are unknown.

Kim Young-nam’s 82-year-old mother has not even had the benefit of that kind of unreliable message, living for 28 long years anxious for any news of her last son. Kim is apparently still living in the North. Our government promised to raise the abduction issue at the inter-Korean ministerial conference slated for April 21-24. The people will not stand for another failure in that duty.