North Korea

An independent UN human rights expert has called on the DPRK to initiate a serious investigation into its abduction of Japanese citizens in the late-1970s and early-1980s. Of the 17 people officially listed as seized by North Korea, five have returned to Japan, and the DPRK states that of the remaining 12, eight have died and four never entered the country. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK stressed that DPRK authorities must find the surviving Japanese citizens it snatched from Niigata, a coastal Japanese prefecture facing the DPRK, and return them to their homeland. (UN News Service)