For Sakie Yokota, whose daughter, Megumi, was abducted to North Korea in the 1970s at age 13, her "miraculous" meeting a decade ago with Megumi's own daughter in Mongolia was a delight but also a painful reminder of the separation that continues to this day.
Although the 88-year-old Yokota and her late husband, Shigeru, cherished the rare opportunity to meet Kim Eun Gyong, now 36 and "looking so much like Megumi," and her family in Ulaanbaatar in March 2014, their daughter, whom they wished to see most, was absent. Kim, who lives in North Korea, was emotional at the meeting but insisted that, as Pyongyang says, Megumi is dead.
"I was thinking, we came all this way and still cannot meet (Megumi). I was imagining perhaps we were not allowed to meet her but that she was quietly watching us from somewhere in the building" of the Mongolian State Guesthouse, Yokota said in a recent interview on the 10th anniversary of the Mongolia trip from March 10-14, 2014.