As President Trump seeks to bring an end to the Ukrainian conflict, at the Asian end of the Eurasian continent some similar but much less known peace-restoring movements are underway.

If both succeed the Eurasian continent could begin to move from an era of incessant conflict to one of ultimate stability.

The largely unknown Asian story begins in 2001, when Tokyo set out to negotiate with the then North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, for the return of Japanese citizens rumoured to have been “abducted” by Pyongyang in the seventies and eighties.

Kim finally admitted to North Korea holding five people – two married couples working as translators and the Japanese wife of a US Korean War deserter.

The sensational news of their discovery and planned return to Japan was to be commemorated by a Pyongyang Declaration, promising not just a normalisation of diplomatic relations between the two countries, but also substantial Japanese economic aid to North Korea, a Pyongyang promise to halt rocket testing, and a promise by both to co-operate on policies in north Asia.

But Japan’s hawks, headed by Shinzo Abe, later to be Japan’s prime minister, were not happy.

Abe had accompanied then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, on his momentous 2002 visit to Pyongyang for the signing of the Declaration. But on his return to Japan, Abe announced he had found evidence North Korea was holding many more “abductees” – perhaps more than 800.

They too had to be returned before there could be any normalisation of relations, he said, with particular emphasis placed on the return of a woman, Megumi Yokota, abducted by mistake from a beach in western Japan at age 13.

Strong rightwing groups demanding the return of all the alleged abductees, Megumi in particular, were formed. Songs, poems, manga (comic books) and films were created in Megumi’s memory.

These mementos, together with Megumi’s grieving parents, were taken around the globe and shown to world leaders who were summoned to join a global call for Megumi’s release.

(In fact Megumi had married, given birth to a daughter, and reportedly had died tragically in North Korea in 1994.)

With Abe as prime minister, first in 2006 and later from 2012 to 2020, Tokyo also began to insist on frequent meetings with North Korean officials to establish the fate of Megumi and the other allegedly missing “abductees”. Their number had gradually shifted over the years from “possibly more than 800” down to 17 and then officially to “12 with the possibility of many more”.

With official support strongly right-wing, “abductee” groups were set up to provide moral support.

And so the Pyongyang Declaration, created and announced with such fanfare, was allowed to die in a welter of accusation and recrimination. The 26 million inhabitants of North Korea were left to their ungodly fate as the rest of us continue to face the threat of North Korean rockets.

But Tokyo still had a problem: requests by Megumi’s parents to be allowed to visit their daughter, allegedly still pining in North Korea. Eventually, in 2014, permission was reluctantly granted, provided the meeting was in a third country (Mongolia).

But when the parents returned, their report made no mention of Megumi, only the daughter.

Soon after, at yet another of the public meetings organised by the still powerful abductee groups demanding Megumi’s return, by chance I spotted Megumi’s mother, Sakie. I asked her why the report of the Mongolia visit had only mentioned Megumi’s daughter.

She replied with some grace that she now saw her role as assisting other abductee families.

End of the Megumi myth? Not quite.

The abductee groups continue to be active. Represented by Takuya Yokota, 56, Megumi’s younger brother, they have come out strongly condemning moves by the current prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba (Shinzo Abe was assassinated in 2022), seeking to improve relations with North Korea.

The dovish Ishiba proposes liaison offices be set up in both countries to put an end to the abductee problem. Takuya condemns the move as “unacceptable”.

Can he and the rightwing abductee groups stop Ishiba’s proposal? Unlikely; the policy change is so obviously needed.

If the change can be made, the irony would be extraordinary: An assassin’s bullet in 1914 led to a century of conflict in Europe and then Asia; an assassin’s bullet in 2022 might mark the end of more than a century of conflict on the Eurasian continent.