Taken!

North Korea is kidnapping citizens of foreign countries and holding them incommunicado, this report alleges. According to the report the North is holding residents of a number of European and Asian countries. There may be hundreds of abductees inside North Korea who are not known to be there. The regime undertakes to abduct its victims in absolute secrecy, and detains them indefinitely in closely monitored circumstances which do not permit them to come in contact with many people even inside North Korea. The opportunities the outside world has to learn of them are obviously extremely limited, and this is by design. Those on the outside of North Korea must accordingly be very careful about drawing conclusions about the abductees. We should not, for example, conclude that Kim Jong-il terminated North Korea's practice of abductions because he admitted that abductions had occurred in the past. His admission was not the whole truth, his government has provided false and unsubstantiated assertions since the admission, and demands for thorough bilateral investigations have repeatedly been denied by North Korea. It is difficult to conclude that the regime has anything more to hide on this issue, because it continues to hide the facts.