Photo/Illutration Sakie Yokota, 85, steps up her call for the government to work for the return of her daughter Megumi, who was abducted by North Korea more than 40 years ago, at a news conference on Nov. 9. (Pool)

Sakie Yokota, whose daughter Megumi was abducted by North Korea when she was a teen, expressed agony over having spent more than 40 years pleading with the government to work for her return to no avail.

“It really is unbearable that every day I have to keep saying, ‘Please bring my child back,’” Yokota, now 85, said at a news conference held on Nov. 9 in Kawasaki, where she lives.

The news conference was held ahead of the 44th year since Megumi’s abduction, on Nov. 15.

Yokota said she was outraged that no progress had been made over the years despite her and other families of victims stepping up calls for the resolution of the abduction issue.

“There was no breakthrough, although the government must persevere to solve it,” she said.

Megumi is a symbolic figure in Japan’s fight to resolve the cases of a number of nationals it accuses North Korea of abducting.

She was a 13-year-old junior high school student in Niigata when North Korean agents abducted her in 1977. She disappeared while on her way from school.

At the news conference, her mother showed the first piece of calligraphy Megumi wrote to mark the new year when she was a sixth-grader.

Yokata said her daughter worked strenuously to come up with a work of calligraphy that she was satisfied with.

“When each year-end approaches, I remember how hard she worked on it,” she said.

Yokota also said Megumi liked making goods by hand, showing a pendant she had made.

“I wonder what kind of job she would have taken up if she had lived in Japan,” she said.

Megumi, if she is still alive, would have turned 57 in October.

For decades, Yokota and her husband, Shigeru, spearheaded efforts over to press the government to pressure North Korea into returning Megumi and other abductees, alongside families of other victims.

But Shigeru died last year at age 87.

Yokota said that in recent years she has come to feel strongly that she doesn’t have much longer to live, adding that she is losing her appetite and tires easily.

On Nov. 13, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to work to resolve the abduction issue when he attended a gathering in Tokyo of families and supporters of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea.

“I must solve the problem under my leadership,” he said.

Yokota, in a speech she delivered at the gathering, said that she was extremely sorry that she was only able to raise Megumi for 13 years.

Choking back tears, she pleaded with attendees for their assistance, saying, “I am beyond all sense of shame now to get the abduction issue finally solved.”

Megumi is one of 17 Japanese nationals that the government has recognized as victims abducted by North Korea. Five returned to Japan in 2002, but the whereabouts of Megumi and 11 others remain unknown.

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