![]() “You have to understand that my parents are in ill health,” he explained. Kaoru, seeing that confrontation wasn’t getting any response, tried evoking sympathy. “You must return me to Japan immediately!” His abductor watched his tirade calmly. “This is a violation of human rights and international law!” he shouted. The overnight train from Chongjin to Pyongyang was bumpy, and by the time Kaoru arrived the next morning he was furious. She and Kaoru had been dating for a year, and he planned to propose to her once he finished his law degree. Yukiko, twenty-two, the daughter of a local rice farmer, was a beautician for Kanebo, one of Japan’s leading cosmetics companies. Still, like much of his generation in Japan, he wasn’t interested in politics, and knew almost nothing about Korea, North or South. Cocky and intelligent, he was studying at Tokyo’s prestigious Chuo University. Kaoru, who was twenty, had fashionably shaggy hair and a ready smile. ![]() Yukiko was nowhere in sight, and Kaoru’s captors told him that she had been left behind in Japan. Two nights later, he arrived in Chongjin, North Korea. Peering through the sack’s netting, Kaoru saw the warm, bright lights of Kashiwazaki City fading into the background.Īn hour later, he was transferred to a ship idling offshore and forced to swallow several pills: antibiotics to prevent his injuries from becoming infected, a sedative to put him to sleep, and medicine to relieve seasickness. Kaoru and Yukiko were thrown into separate sacks and loaded onto an inflatable raft. “Keep quiet and we won’t hurt you,” one of the assailants said. As he reached into his pocket, the men attacked, gagging the couple, binding their hands and legs. ![]() ![]() Cigarette in hand, one of them asked him for a light. As the first plumes rose in the sky, Kaoru noticed four men approaching. Then they parked their bikes and made their way past a crowd of spectators to a remote stretch of sand. They whisked down the winding lanes of their coastal farming village, a hundred and forty miles north of Tokyo. On the evening of July 31, 1978, Kaoru Hasuike and his girlfriend, Yukiko Okudo, rode bikes to the summer fireworks festival at the Kashiwazaki town beach. ![]()
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