The abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government happened during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983.
Although only 17 Japanese (eight men and nine women) are officially recognized by the Japanese government as having been abducted, there may have been hundreds of victims...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese_citizens
http://www.outsideonline.com/1923586/did-north-korea-kidnap-american-hiker
The following year, in May 2012, the Tokyo nonprofit National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea dropped a bombshell. One of the organization’s most reliable sources, a North Korean defector who had provided flawless intelligence to NARKN for years, had obtained Chinese security documents indicating that in August 2004, a 23- or 24-year-old American studying at a Chinese university was arrested in Yunnan province on charges of helping illegal residents. According to the documents, authorities had released the American in September, and he’d ended up in the hands of five North Korean secret agents who were in the area searching for defectors. NARKN was certain it had to be David.
In November 2012, a friend of the Sneddon family filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department for all records related to David. Though the request turned up 14 documents, the government refused to release 13, citing concern for privacy and the “interest of national defense or foreign relations.”