Kidnapped!

A couple mysteriously vanish after a romantic evening under the stars... A teenager disappears on her way home from school... A university graduate goes missing whilst holidaying in London... From the early 1970s to the mid-80s, scores of ordinary Japanese disappeared without a trace, many of them from beaches and remote villages along the Japan Sea coast, others from Tokyo, London and Madrid. After decades of speculation, it was finally revealed in 2002 that these ordinary Japanese citizens had in fact been abducted by North Korean spies as part of a bizarre and sinister plot of espionage by the hard-line, communist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il. From the last front of the Cold War to the new battle against the 'Axis of Evil', Kidnapped! tells the extraordinary story of the Chimura, Yokota and Arimoto families - some of the unfortunate victims of a terrifying abduction campaign by North Korea... Written by Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee