Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story

The story of 13-year-old Megumi Yokota, who disappeared in broad daylight off the street in the Japanese coastal city of Niigata one day in 1977, remains shrouded in an enigmatic cloud that may never disperse. That's because young Megumi wound up in North Korea, then as now governed by the most cloistered, secretive and thoroughly untrustworthy regime in the world.

Violent crimes against children are exceptionally rare in Japan, and as Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan's "Abduction" details, the media focused on the case for weeks while police rigorously searched the region. No trace of her was recovered, and everyone except the Yokota family gave up the quest. A couple of years later, Megumi's mother noticed an apparently unrelated news story about a handful of peculiar cases in which people -- mostly young couples on beach dates -- had disappeared from Japan's west coast, which faces the Korean peninsula. The reporter broached an outlandish theory: North Korean spies, for unknown reasons, might be kidnapping Japanese citizens.

It took 20 years before the outlandish story began to seem plausible, and longer than that for the issue to work its way to the forefront of Japanese politics. Kim and Sheridan's film isn't really about Megumi, of course (at the risk of issuing a spoiler, she never appears in person). It's about her parents, who shed the reticent conformity of middle-class Japanese life and become angry activists on behalf of the families of abductees. By the time Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi seeks to normalize diplomatic relations with Kim Jong Il's North Korean regime, in 2002, it's necessary for him to confront the Koreans on the abduction issue.

Kim's government reluctantly admits what North Korean defectors had already confirmed: Unbelievably, North Korean intelligence agents had repeatedly infiltrated Japan by sea and kidnapped ordinary citizens, to serve as language and lifestyle instructors. (North Korea wanted its spies working overseas to look, act and sound like Japanese people.) "Abduction" unfolds as a tightly plotted mystery, and it wouldn't be fair to reveal much more than that. The North Koreans admit to 13 kidnappings between 1977 and 1983 (although there may have been many more), and five surviving Japanese eventually return home, to emotional reunions that were carried live on TV and captivated the entire country.

But Megumi Yokota, who apparently spent 40 hours in a cargo container on her way to Korea, crying, vomiting and literally scratching her fingernails off, is not among the returnees. Where is she and what became of her? There are rumors, suppositions, secondhand reports and official findings, but as the Yokota family understands, there are precious few facts. "Abduction" sheds light onto one of the strangest episodes in recent Asian history, but the murk that hangs over North Korea is still too deep for much light to penetrate.

"Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story" opens Jan. 12 at Cinema Village in New York and Jan. 26 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. It also plays Feb. 3, 4, 10 and 11 at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Ore., with more engagements to follow.