TOKYO — A record 9,753 participants disappeared from Japan's technical internship program last year, government data show, continuing an upward trend that has spurred efforts to overhaul the system to allow trainees to more easily leave abusive environments.
That's 747 more people than in 2022, or about 2% of the 509,000 people who were in the program by the end of 2022 or qualified last year. About 5,500 of the missing cadets came from Vietnam, although this number has fallen slightly since 2022, while the number from Myanmar has nearly tripled to more than 1,700.