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, and who are now unwittingly caught up in the eye of a political storm. The story of these families' dramatic 25-year struggle in search for the truth unveils a tangled web of bizarre abductions, political manoeuvrings and international espionage. Kidnapped! is an emotional and uncompromising journey into the most controversial issue in Japan today. It is a powerful account of the remarkable story of a group of ordinary Japanese citizens who are perhaps the last remaining casualties of the Cold War and who have become the latest pawns in a dubious, diplomatic chess game of life and death. e98 Written by Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee