US envoy to the UN vows support for families of Japanese who were abducted and taken to North Korea

TOKYO – America stands with Japan till all the Japanese abducted by North Korea a long time in the past go back house to finish their painful separation, United States ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield mentioned Thursday in Tokyo.

Japan says North Korea abducted a minimum of 17 Japanese voters, perhaps many extra, to educate them as brokers all over the Seventies and Eighties. Twelve stay lacking. They come with teenage scholars and others dwelling alongside Japan’s coasts, and many were bundled into small boats and taken throughout the sea to North Korea.

Thomas-Greenfield started her Japan talk over with through assembly with families of the ones abducted.

“The United Stats stands with all the families, with all of Japan and with the international community in pressing for a resolution that will allow all families separated by the regime’s policies to be reunited,” she mentioned at the outset of her assembly with 5 kin of the abductees and a consultant from their support workforce at the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I’m all too familiar with the pain and the loss and the suffering that you family members here are experiencing,” she mentioned. “I know how painful it is for you, and then how long you have had to endure this pain.”

Thomas-Greenfield famous she has labored with North Korea-related problems all through her profession.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is committed to elevating the abduction factor “at every opportunity and calling for the return of abducted Japanese citizens to their family,” the ambassador mentioned, including that America sticks to that coverage regardless of the management.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly stated his determination and effort towards conserving a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to succeed in the go back of the abductees.

Experts say Kim desires stepped forward ties with Japan to force a wedge between the United States and its allies, whilst Kishida, stung by a major corruption scandal of his governing celebration, desires to use conceivable development in the abduction factor to flip round his dwindling support scores at house. They say a summit, then again, can be tough as a result of Japan can not settle for the preconditions set by Pyongyang so as to unravel the abduction problems.

Sakie Yokota, 88, whose then-13-year-old daughter, Megumi, was once abducted in 1977 from Japan’s northern coast on her means house from faculty, informed Thomas-Greenfield that she, her husband and Megumi’s brothers searched for her for twenty years till they came upon she was once abducted. They are nonetheless ready, she mentioned.

“All I want is to see her, while I’m still well,” Yokota mentioned, beseeching the ambassador for persevered support towards resolving the drawback.

Thomas-Greenfield arrived in Tokyo after her previous talk over with to Seoul, the place she and South Korean officers mentioned a brand new mechanism for monitoring North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Russia and China have thwarted U.S.-led efforts to step up U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile trying out since 2022, underscoring a deepening divide between everlasting Security Council contributors over Russia’s battle on Ukraine.

The United States, South Korea and Japan had been deepening safety ties amid rising tensions in the area from North Korea and China. The 3 nations have expanded their blended army workout routines and their deterrence methods constructed round U.S. strategic belongings.

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Associated Press author Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this file.