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Thirty years after they disappeared, three missing women were the subject of a search by amateur sleuths following up on decades-old clues in Hong Kong and Macau.
Japanese teacher Sadaki Manabe spent the festive season tracking down old newspaper reports and digging up information on the women, suspected of being snatched and spirited to North Korea in 1978.
The trio comprised one Thai and two Macau residents.
'There is Anocha Panjoy, a Thai woman who disappeared from Macau in 1978,' Mr Manabe said, pointing to his  hand-drawn 'map' suggesting connections among suspected kidnap cases  around the world.
Mr Manabe, who heads the Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea, has spent 10 years looking for people suspected of having been kidnapped and taken to  the hermit state.
With  him was Tomoharu Ebihara, of the Thailand-based Association for the Rescue of North Korean Abductees.
They estimate that more than 600 abductees have ended up in North Korea, with 485 from South Korea, 100 from Japan and a small number from Lebanon, Romania and eight other nations.
Three young women disappeared from the  then Portuguese enclave of Macau on the evening of July 2, 1978. All were last seen with a 'Mr Fukoda', a man who claimed to be rich and Japanese.
US army deserter Charles Jenkins said in 2005 that he had seen  Ms Panjoy in North Korea.
Mr Jenkins' tale added weight to an earlier account by South Korean actress Choe Eun-hee, who was kidnapped and taken to North Korea and later escaped. Choe said she saw Hong Leng-ieng,  another woman from the missing trio, in North Korea in the 1980s.
Mr Manabe said he found it puzzling that Macau  residents appeared to be indifferent towards the missing  Ms Hong and another Macau girl, So Mio-chun.
'Anocha Panjoy had a lot of friends who once worked with her in Macau, but they did not want to talk about the past,' he added.
North Korea has previously confirmed abducting people from Japan and South Korea.
Mr Manabe's mission costs about US$200,000 each year and he relies on donations from Japanese.



Two sleuths on the case of women missing from Macau, 30 years on