Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

HotDocs: Abduction

May 01, 2006, 1:50 am

Came back this weekend to attend a hotdoc, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival. There were two films in particular that I wanted to see this weekend, but due to lack of interest by other people, only caught one on Saturday. As with most outings to TO, Saturday consisted of a lot of food. We went to this Korean dumpling and noodle place on Yonge by Finch subway station, and even though I chose it cause it sounded lighter for “lunch”, we still got too much food. The problem was that the photos on the menu did not reflect the actual size of the dish. The dumplings were more than double the size of “regular” dumplings, the bowl for the noodles were family soup bowl size, and the egg “pizza” was not dinner plate size like we thought, but more like the size of a medium pan pizza. We followed that by chilling at Tea Shop 168. I prefer TenRen’s selection, but wanted to give this a try first. Dinner was downtown on Bloor, we went to a Himalayan Indian place, and ended the evening at a pub by St. George Station. I swear, TO is all about the eating!

So yes, the documentary. Let me mention that I wanted to see ”A Lion in the House”, but alas, nobody wanted to watch a 4 hour film on cancer kids. Geez, why not?? It’s a mini-series, which explains the length. I guess it’ll eventually be broadcasted on tv if I’m really interested.

So on Saturday, we watched ”Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story”, a story spanning 30 years about a Japanese parents’ search for their abducted 13-year-old daughter, who they eventually learned was one of the people the North Korean kidnapped in the 70’s to teach their spy’s Japanese and Japanese culture. The story was a very captivating one, and managed to mix international politics with family tragedy very well, and managed to slip in light humour right after a heartbreaking scene. And even after all this, we still don’t really know what happened to the girl.

Actually, I first thought that I shouldn’t “spoil” the story by describing it here, but I realize that 1) I don’t think anybody that read this will be watching it any time soon, and 2), it’s a real story, and not some fictional piece that people watch for entertainment. But I’ll give this warning nonetheless, read on if you want to hear the whole story.

Spoilers Warning

Basically, around 2000 or so, we learned that North Korea did admit to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizen off the beach and shipping them away, most of them were couples in their 20’s who were taken while on a date, except for the 13-year-old girl, Megumi, who was taken on her way back from school. They said that they didn’t realize how old she was until they got back to Korea, but I guess at that point, they can’t send her back. Basically the revelations came about by the protests of abductee families who first learned of this story from Korean ex-spies, and after rallying and picketing, finally got their prime minister to pressure the North Korean leader to admit to these crimes (And wow, he really does look like how Team America depicted him).

It was really saddening to see how the parents just holds on to their memory of their child at the age they were taken, even though nearly 30 years have passed. One parent said he left his son’s room exactly the same as before, and continued to pay for his health insurance all this time. Megumi’s parents, in their video to her, told her how Japan now has a Disneyworld.

Then they were told the news of how only some of the abductees were alive. This was one of the most gripping part of the film, when the filmmakers basically showed a picture of the abductee, followed by a caption of status, dead or alive, and if dead, how they died. They went through each one, and of course, saving Megumi for last. The abductees died of things like gas poisoning (which I think means they were killed early on for not cooperating), car accidents, illness, and heart attack. And so we get to Megumi’s photo, they flashed photo of her grown up, and then said she died, of suicide! The surviving abductees were returned to Japan (for a 2 week trip as the Koreans believed, but really!), and the fact that she killed herself like that, when if only she waited a few years, she would be returned to her family, is pretty bad.

The thing about this film is that it focuses on Megumi’s parents, who for most of the film, are in their 60’s or 70’s. And they are those humble, polite and quiet people that you stereotypically expect elderly Japanese people to be, and so as your watch their struggles and grief, you really can’t help feeling really really sad for them. Life is just so unfair. Every time they get their hopes up, from getting news that North Korea finally admitted to the act, to trying to get a brother of one of the abductee elected to office so he can have more influence on the political relations with Korea, each time they were cruelly disappointed at the outcome.

And they still cannot rest and move on, because despite what the Koreans told him about Megumi, the facts they gave were inconsistent. They were not able to prove that Megumi indeed killed herself, the documents of her stay at a mental hospital was incomplete, they had to later change the year of her actual death, they even send back a urn with her ashes for DNA test, though could they even do DNA tests on ashes? They did tell them that Megumi did marry and had a daughter, but of course her grandparents were not allowed to meet her in person. And so it goes on and on for her poor parents. They can not rest until they know for 100% what happened to their daughter, and they’ve even gone to talk to Bush about it.

I guess that’s the other thing that amazes me: that this story is still ongoing. Here, right now, at our current day and age, her parents are still looking for her. This is not a story that happened years ago, and we read about it at school for our history lessons. It’s still happening right now. Which means that this documentary can have more impact than we though. A dangerous impact, in my opinion. Won’t such international knowledge and recognition of this event put Megumi in danger. Her parents continue to cling to the hope that she is still alive, and if such pressure is placed on the North Korean government, won’t it be easier for them to just kill her if she really is alive, and be done with it? Then that’ll give them all the proof they need right?

I dunno, I’ll be keeping my eyes out for any updates on this story.