Japan will continue to take a hard stance against North Korea over the abduction issue until every single case involving a Japanese citizen is resolved, the Cabinet minister handling the matter said Monday.
Keiji Furuya said North Korea must conduct full investigations not into only the 17 kidnapped people that the Japanese government officially recognizes as abductees, but also another 860 who are suspected of being kidnapped and taken to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
"The ball is now in North Korea's court. . . . We are saying that there could be as many as 860 abductees. The government's policy is to retrieve every single abductee," Furuya told reporters in Tokyo at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.