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4TH LD: Bush promises Yokota to press N. Korea to return abductees+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)WASHINGTON, April 28_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: RECASTING WITH UPDATED INFO) U.S. President George W. Bush promised Friday to press North Korea to return abductees and respect human rights as he met the mother of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota and North Korean defectors at the White House. "We strongly will work for freedom so that the people of North Korea can raise their children in a world that's free and hopeful, and so that moms will never again have to worry about an abducted daughter," Bush told reporters, speaking along with the participants at the Oval Office after the meeting. Bush met with the 70-year-old mother, Sakie, Megumi's younger brother, Takuya, 37, and four North Korean defectors -- former military officer Kim Sung Min and a family -- a couple and their 6-year-old daughter -- who defected to South Korea via a Japanese consulate in Shenyang, China, in May 2002. "I really felt President Bush's stance that he will absolutely not forgive evils," Yokota said in a press conference held after the meeting, the first by Bush with a relative of a Japanese abductee. North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents abducted 13 Japanese nationals, including Megumi, in the late 1970s and 1980s, reportedly for using their identities, teaching language and culture to spies. Megumi, who was abducted at the age of 13 in 1977, has become a symbol of the abductee issue in Japan. "I have just had one of the most moving meetings since I've been the president," Bush said. "It is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction. It's hard for Americans to imagine that a leader of any country would encourage the abduction of a young child. It's a heartless country that would separate loved ones." he said. "And yet, that's exactly what happened to this mom as a result of the actions of North Korea," Bush said. "If North Korea expects to be respected in the world, that country must respect human rights and human dignity and must allow this mother to hug her child again," Bush said. Acknowledging the hardships of the North Korean defectors, Bush explained that the family "did not want to have their child grow up in a society that was brutal, a social that did not respect the human condition." The family -- Kan Guan Chol, 31, his wife Li Son Hee, 31, and Kim Han Mi -- made headlines while seeking asylum, due especially to video footage of a fearful Li and a tearful Han Mi struggling with Chinese police at the gate of the Japanese consulate in May 2002. "I assure you that the United States of American strongly respects human rights," Bush said. Yokota handed a letter as well as messages, including those by Takuya and other Japanese abductees' relatives visiting with her. The messages were written below photographs of the abductees before they were taken to North Korea. Bush browsed through the messages, and he also put a panel of Megumi's picture on a table to make it seem like she was also present at the meeting and as a sign of pressure to North Korea, Takuya Yokota said at the press conference. In the letter, the mother explained that Megumi was kidnapped while walking home from her junior high school, and she "was held in a small dark chamber in the bottom of a special intelligence ship where she scraped the walls with her fingers while crying out desperately, 'Mother, help me, save me,' as he was carried across the dark sea." "Please forgive me for not rescuing you yet," Yokota wrote. "We cannot recover the lost years for our children, but we can rescue the victims that were abducted from many countries of the world and allow them to spend the rest of their life in the lands of freedom," she wrote. The other relatives are Teruaki Masumoto, 50, whose older sister Rumiko was abducted in 1978 at age 24, Kenichi Ichikawa, 61, whose younger brother Shuichi vanished in 1978 at age 22, and Shigeo Iizuka, 67, whose younger sister Yaeko Taguchi was kidnapped in 1978 when she was 22. The three are also among the 13 abductions admitted by North Korea, which returned five of them. But it maintains that the other eight, including Megumi and the three, had died -- a claim disputed by the Japanese government and the relatives of the eight. The Japanese government has officially recognized 16 Japanese, including the 13, as having been abducted by North Korea. Summing up their visit that culminated with the Bush meeting, the relatives said they gained a "strong message" from the president and the trip opened a "new phase" of their activities, especially toward seeking international cooperation. White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that Bush "believes the entire international community should be paying attention" to North Korea's human rights abuses. "This has been a high priority...This is something that the president brings up every time he meets with world leaders, or virtually every time he meets with world leaders." On Thursday, Yokota testified at a congressional hearing, during which U.S. lawmakers and senior administration officials expressed their intention to prioritize the abduction issue at the Group of Eight summit in July in St. Petersburg, Russia, to press for the return of the abductees. In her testimony, Yokota called for U.S. help and international economic sanctions against North Korea to force it to return Japanese and other abducted nationals, becoming the first relative of a Japanese abductee to speak at a U.S. congressional hearing. Yokota and the other relatives also visited the U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday, and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in his capacity as acting secretary promised to continue to support them. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was out of Washington due to his visit to Iraq. |