Japan should not send food aid to North Korea unless Japanese citizens allegedly abducted by the country's agents are freed and a perfect system to monitor the distribution of food to civilians is in place, according to one of Japan's most vocal critics of the communist country.
Katsumi Sato, head of the Modern Korea Institute, a private think tank in Tokyo, said providing food assistance helps sustain the country's oppressive government and in reality is "inhumane" in regards to its ordinary citizens. "People say aid is a humanitarian issue, but isn't it also a humanitarian issue that Japanese citizens have been abducted?" Sato asked in an interview, stressing that the Japanese government should make its own citizens its priority. The institute deals with issues concerning the two Koreas and Korean residents in Japan from "a Japanese standpoint."
The allegation that Megumi Yokota of Niigata Prefecture was abducted at the age of 13 by North Korean agents in November 1977 came to light in the Diet last February. It stemmed from the monthly Modern Korea, published by Sato's think tank, which reported on the Internet testimony claimed to have been taken from a North Korean defector to the South. There was major media coverage after the story.