Misa Morimoto spoke to no one for 18 years about her identical twin sister who vanished when they were 20, not even to her own children. On the rare occasions when asked, she lied and said her sister was studying overseas.
But slowly the pain of uncertainty about her sister's fate was replaced by suspicion of the unthinkable — that her twin, Miho, an energetic girl who liked hiking with her and striking silly poses for the camera, was abducted by North Korea.
"It was the late 90s when news drifted out that people from Japan had perhaps been taken to North Korea. I'd watch this on TV with my parents and wonder if there was a connection to what had happened with Miho," Morimoto, now 50, said.