TOKYO -- A record 9,753 participants in Japan's technical intern training program went missing last year, government data shows, continuing an uptrend that is spurring efforts to rework the system to let trainees leave abusive environments more easily.
This was 747 more than in 2022, and represented about 2% of the roughly 509,000 people who were either in the program as of the end of 2022 or qualified last year. Around 5,500 missing trainees came from Vietnam, a figure that dipped slightly from 2022, while the number from Myanmar nearly tripled to more than 1,700.
