There are thousands of conspiracy theories with no proper explanation. Some people believed that these theories are real and are kept secret to avoid any further debate.
No one knows whether conspiracy theories are facts or just some man-made theories. Some decades ago, some theories were taken as just theories but later became facts as people started to find pieces of evidence.
In this article, we’ll discuss some conspiracy theories that later became true or fact.
1. North Korea Abducting Japanese
Imagine you are a Japanese citizen watching your favorite anime at your home and suddenly hear a news that one of your friends or relatives is missing, like completely missing and nowhere to be found. Later you find out that he/she is in North Korea forcefully teaching Japanese to North Korean terrorists.
The same thing happened in Japan, where people started to disappear with no traces. The thing started when Yutaka Kume who was a security guard at Tokyo’s Mitaka city hall, disappeared on 19 September 1977 from Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture. The suspect in this kidnapping was Se Ho Kim, who was a North Korean spy.
Later on, October 21, 1977, a Japanese woman named Kyoko Matsumoto disappeared on her way to a knitting school. On 15 November 1977, a 13-year-old Japanese student, Megumi Yokota, went missing when she was coming back home from her school. In June 1978, a woman named Yaeko Taguchi who was a mother of two and a bar hostess also went missing.
The citizens of Japan suspected that the North Koreans were behind all these kidnappings. The government of Japan did not consider it as a fact as there was not enough evidence to prove it and was seen as a conspiracy theory.
But later in 1987, an incident happened that shocked both South Korea and Japan. The Korean Air Flight 858 blasted in midair, resulting in 115 deaths (104 passengers and 11 crew members). After investigating, it was reported that two North Korean agents were behind this, and one of them was a woman named Kim Hyon-hui.
Kim Hyon-hui was the only survivor left after the airplane blast. She was taken into custody, and she pretended to be a Japanese. After further interrogation, Kim admitted that she was a North Korean agent and was learning Japanese from a Japanese woman named Lee Un-hae.
Kin did not know the actual name of Lee Un-hae, but in Lee’s notebook the word “Chitose” was written. This suspected that it could be Yaeko Taguchi because she used this name at the club where she used to work.
The Japanese investigators presented 15 photos of women to Kim, and she picked Taguchi’s photo without any hesitation. This confirmed that Lee Un-hae was Yaeko Taguchi who went missing in June 1978 and also confirmed that the North Koreans were behind the abduction of Japanese citizens.
Later in 2002, during the First Japan-North Korea Summit, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted that they had abducted 13 Japanese citizens. After further investigation, the government of Japan recognized that 17 people were abducted by the North Koreans, from which five returned.
The names of the citizens who returned are Yasushi Chimura, Fukie Chimura, Hitomi Soga, Yukiko Hasuike, and Kaoru Hasuike. These victims returned on 15 October 2002 on the condition that these five abductees who returned will decide their own future weather if they want to stay in Japan or Korea as their families were in North Korea. The Japanese authorities told North Korea that these five will stay in Japan.
According to the North Korean government, 8 out of 13 victims died, and during the summit, the North Korean authorities also provided the death certificates of the victims. According to them, the reasons for their deaths were:
| Name of the Victims | Reason of death (According to North Korea) |
| Ms. Megumi Yokota | Suicide (age 29) |
| Mr. Shuichi Ichikawa | Heart attack (age24) |
| Mr. Toru Ishioka | Gas poisoning (age 31) |
| Mr. Tadaaki hara | Liver cirrhosis (age 49) |
| Ms. Yaeko Taguchi | Traffic accident (age 30) |
| Ms. Rumiko Masumoto | heart attack (age 27) |
| Mr. Kaoru Matsuki | Traffic accident (age 43) |
| Ms. Keiko Arimoto | Gas poisoning (age 28) |
The reasons were not credible, as Mr. Shuichi Ichikawa died of a heart attack while swimming, but when he was in Japan, he did not know how to swim. Similarly, Ms. Rumiko Masumoto who died because of a heart attack at the age of 27, was completely fit and fine and had no previous records of any illness before she was kidnapped.
The Japanese authorities questioned whether these 8 victims were actually dead or not because in 2004, the North Korean government admitted that they had quickly prepared the death certificates of the 8 victims before the meeting.
In 2004, North Korea returned the cremains of two victims, and they were of Megumi Yokota and Kaoru Matsuki. According to North Korea, the remaining six victims who died were buried.
After DNA testing, it was notified that the cremains were neither of the two victims, which leaves questions about what actually happened to the victims.
However, there were debates about the DNA testing as it was performed by Tomio Yoshii a junior at Teikyo University without the presence of a professor. Later, Tomio Yoshii also admitted that he had no previous experience in testing cremated specimens.
2. The US Government Poisoning Alcohol
In 1920, the U.S. government prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors under the 18th Amendment.
To stop bootleggers from supplying alcohol the government took various initiatives but the Mafias groups saw the opportunities and stepped in to fill the demand and supply gap.
The US government was trying everything to stop the supply of alcohol during the probation period, but due to the high demand for alcohol, the supply did not decline.
Now, the conspiracy theory is that the government added poisonous chemicals in alcohol to limit its supply and consumption. However, it is a fact that the US government indeed purposely added poisonous chemicals in alcohol during the prohibition period to stop alcohol consumption.
Actually, what happened is that after the ban on alcohol in the US, the sellers started supplying alcohol illegally and the black market was at its peak because of the ban and the authorities were facing difficulties to shut it down.
The government decided to add harmful chemicals to the industrial alcohol to make it undrinkable for the drinkers. The main ingredient or you can say chemical here was methyl alcohol or wood alcohol which was used to make the alcohol poisonous, and this process is called denaturing.
For your information, methyl alcohol is a very poisonous chemical and can cause permanent blindness or even death when consumed. About 60 to 240 millimeters of this chemical is enough to kill an adult.
Why Poisoning Industrial Alcohol
The illegal alcohol sellers were stealing or buying industrial alcohol because they were cheap and enough to fulfill the alcohol demand in the US. The liquor sellers hired chemists to make the industrial alcohol drinkable because the US was denaturing the industrial alcohol even before the ban on alcohol and the 18th Amendment.
Let me explain to you the scenario in simple terms: In 1906, the United States adopted a regulatory technique long-established in Europe to address the economic burden of alcohol taxation on industrial manufacturers.
At the time, alcohol intended for human consumption was taxed heavily, but applying these same levies to alcohol used in industrial products—such as paints, solvents, or pharmaceuticals—would have needlessly inflated production costs.
To resolve this, the U.S. introduced a system that exempted industrial alcohol producers from beverage taxes, provided they rendered their product undrinkable through a process called denaturing. This involved adding toxic or foul-tasting chemicals (e.g., methanol, benzene) to the alcohol, ensuring it could not be diverted for illegal drinking purposes.
The liquor seller somehow renatured the industrial alcohol and made a drink for human consumption which was still harmful for human consumption.
The government then too decided to add harmful chemicals (methyl alcohol) to limit the consumption, but people still were consuming alcohol. This resulted in thousands of deaths, and many suffered from blindness and paralysis.
In 1927 on the new year, it was reported that 41 people died consuming industrial alcohol. This alcohol was legal and as I said due to chemicals it became more poisonous than ever.
Due to deaths from the consumption of alcohol, the prohibition ended in 1933. It was estimated that from 1926 to 1933 at least 10,000 people died because of industrial alcohol consumption.
New York’s chief medical examiner, Charles Norris, stated this government policy as “Legalized murder” accusing the federal government for the murder of US citizens.
3. Smoking does not Kill
What if someone says to you that smoking is a healthy activity and has no connection with lung cancer? Well, the tobacco companies used to say this back then to promote their cigarettes.
In the 1930s, when there was no proper evidence that smoking leads to lung cancer or is bad for your health. The tobacco companies used to advertise their cigarettes as a healthy thing.
The American tobacco company launched an advertisement in 1930 stating that 20,679 physicians said that their cigarettes (Lucky Strikes) were less irritating to the throat than other brands.
Then another tobacco company, Philip Morris launched an ad in the Saturday Evening Post in 1937 claiming that doctors had conducted a study and realized that when the smokers had switched to Philip Morris, every sign of irritation disappeared. Of course, it’s a false claim and the doctors were paid to say this.
When researchers in the late 1940s and early 1950s started to get links to smoking and lung cancer, the big American tobacco companies issued the “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in 1954 to create doubts or confuse smokers about the fact that smoking leads to lung cancer or any other health problem.
The Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers addresses the links between cancer and smoking and states that the companies were taking help from the TOBACCO INDUSTRY RESEARCH COMMITTEE to research the link between lung cancer and smoking. However, the committee did not start any research regarding the issue as they did not want the profits to go down.
The true motive of the tobacco companies for issuing the Frank Statement was to make the public less worried about lung cancer caused by smoking. The Frank statement highlighted that no proof tells us that smoking causes lung cancer and also stated that their products(cigarettes) were safe to consume.
But things changed when a 1964 report by the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory committee officially declared smoking a cause of lung cancer. It was also revealed that the tobacco companies knew about the fact that smoking was harmful for human health, but they kept it a secret.
Today, the World Health Organization and other health organizations agree that smoking leads to lung cancer. Studies also shows that quitting smoking significantly improves lungs health and reduces the risk of cancer.
Now it is also mandatory for tobacco companies to add labels to their smoking products indicating the risk of smoking.