Arimoto Akihiro, father of a Japanese victim of abduction by North Korea, has died at age 96.

His daughter Keiko was taken to North Korea in 1983 when she was studying in London.

Keiko's family found out that she was living in Pyongyang through a letter that another Japanese abductee Ishioka Toru sent to his family in 1988.

That was when her parents began activities to try to rescue their daughter.

During summit talks between the leaders of Japan and North Korea in 2002, Pyongyang admitted to having abducted Keiko and explained that she has already died.

But as some of North Korea's assertions were later found to have been false, Akihiro and his wife Kayoko continued to call for rescuing their child.

Kayoko died in 2020 at age 94.

With Akihiro's passing, the only surviving parent of Japan's abductees who have not been repatriated is Yokota Sakie, mother of Megumi, who is seen as a symbol of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.