As details about the fate of more than a dozen Japanese abducted to North Korea trickle in, relatives of many others who vanished in the 1970s and '80s say they want these disappearances re-examined to determine if their kin were also spirited away by Pyongyang agents.
Minoru Tanaka, a noodle shop worker in Kobe, was 28 when he disappeared in Europe in 1978.
A monthly newsmagazine in 1996 quoted a suspected former North Korean agent, who has since died, as saying that Tanaka was handed over to a fellow agent after arriving in Vienna. Hyogo Prefectural Police have since been trying to learn what happened to him.