Yaeko Taguchi

Who is Yaeko Taguchi?

Yaeko Taguchi is a Japanese citizen, one of several kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

She worked as a bar hostess in Tokyo to raise her two children, a one year old son and three year old daughter, after divorcing her husband. She went missing in June 1978, at the age of 22, after dropping her children off at day care.

She was forced to help train North Korean spy Kim Hyon Hui, the surviving bomber of Korean Air Flight 858. In 2002, North Korea admitted that she and others had been abducted, but claimed that she had died on July 30, 1986. Kim Hyon Hui testified Taguchi was given the Korean name Lee Un Hae in North Korea. Kim said Taguchi often wept when telling her how much she missed her children.

Her children were raised by her siblings in Japan. Her son Koichiro was raised by her brother Shigeo Izuka and his wife, while her daughter was adopted by her older sister after her ex-husband was banned from visiting. When they were adults, Shigeo told them that they were in fact Taguchi's children. Her son, an engineer at an information technology company in Tokyo, went public in 2004 claiming that claims of her death were "nonsense", and he wanted her returned. Shigeo became Chair of the Association of NARKN along with the Yokota family.