The Japanese government obtained data on Pyongyang residents nearly a year ago that included information related to a woman whose birthday and other attributes were identical to those of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota, government and ruling coalition sources said Thursday.
The government of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda intends to demand that North Korea reinvestigate the whereabouts of abductees who Pyongyang says have died or never entered the country, including Yokota, the sources said.
The data also contain information concerning 85 others believed to be Japanese, most of them apparently married to Koreans who moved to North Korea from Japan in the years after the end of World War II.
But a government source said the possibility that some of them were abducted by North Korea cannot be ruled out.