North Korea Blamed for Missing Japanese

June 10 -- Akihiro and Kayoko Arimoto are an elderly Japanese couple in the twilight of their lives, who say they have one wish before they pass away: They want to see their daughter again.

The Arimotos have not seen their daughter Keiko for almost two decades, since she disappeared at the age of 23 while studying in Europe. And they have been pleading with their government for just as long to do something about their loss.

But the story of the Arimotos, and up to 70 other families of missing persons, is a little different.

That's because these families believe their loved ones were abducted by Japan's reclusive neighbor North Korea, as part of the totalitarian state's espionage program.

They believe North Korea took their loved ones to steal their identities for international travel, to help train its spies in Japanese customs, or to be brainwashed and become spies themselves.

And because Japan gave more than 1.1 million tons of food aid to famine-stricken North Korea between 1995 and 2000, they believe their government already has the leverage it needs to find out exactly what happened. Japan ended food aid in 2001, but the families say it can also impose sanctions.

Kayoko Arimoto, 76, told reporters in March that every day is difficult, and that she thinks about her daughter every day.

She also appealed to Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, speaking for herself, and her 73-year-old husband: "We are getting old, so I want my daughter back before it's too late."

Megumi Yao Speaks

The Arimotos and a number of other families have been struggling for years to convince their government to put pressure on Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, but only recently has their cause gained national attention.

Read about the missing and how they disappeared.

The most recent event was the testimony of Megumi Yao, the former wife of a hijacker for the leftist Japanese Red Army faction, who helped force a Japan Air Lines jet to Pyongyang in 1970.

In a Tokyo court, Yao testified that Takamaro Tamiya, the leader of the hijacking, instructed her and other hijackers' wives to trick Japanese in Europe and lure them to North Korea, where they were to take part in the Japanese Red Army faction's attempted resurgence in Japan.