Japanese woman abducted by North Korea died of drug overdose in 1994: report

New findings have revealed that a Japanese national abducted by North Korean agents decades ago as a schoolgirl died from an overdose of medication in 1994 and was buried in a pit with other corpses, a South Korean newspaper said on Friday. Megumi Yokota, who has been an iconic symbol of Japanese nationals abducted by the North and Tokyo’s efforts to ascertain their fate, died after an overdose of sedatives and sleeping pills in a psychiatric ward, South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said.

At the time of the patient’s death, there were blue marks all over her body, an indication that poison or excessive medication was taken or injected.

A member of hospital staff in North Korea who testified in Pyongyang’s probe into Yokota’s death

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration eased some sanctions on North Korea in July in return for Pyongyang’s reopening of a probe into the fate of Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens to help train spies, and five abductees and their families later returned to Japan. Japan wants to know about the fate of the remaining eight, whom Pyongyang has said have died, and others that Tokyo believes were also kidnapped.

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