The National Police Agency and the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency were handed lists Wednesday of about 200 Japanese who vanished under mysterious circumstances and are suspected of having been abducted by North Korea.
The lists were submitted by the recently formed Investigative Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea. The group, which urged the NPA to reopen investigations into the disappearances, delivered the same list to the Japan Coast Guard and the Cabinet Office later in the day.
It includes information on 84 missing Japanese whose identities were earlier disclosed by the group, as well as about 120 whose identities had not been made public at the behest of relatives.
The entire list covers disappearances between 1953 and 1997.
A petition submitted along with the list calls for government agencies to work along with the group in investigating the disappearances, to swiftly declare any abduction cases if decisive evidence is found and to establish a new investigative team to look into the cases.
The group, a spinoff of the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, said it is asking the agencies to reply by the end of the month.