| Page 2 of 5 < > |
American Freed by N. Korea Relishes Celebrity in Japan
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Wearing a "happi" coat -- a bright yellow shopkeeper's vest with Japanese characters on it -- he sells sugar cookies seven hours a day, six days a week, shaking hands and posing for pictures with tourists.
His wife, Hitomi Soga, who is 20 years younger than Jenkins, grew up here on Sado and now works at city hall.
It was on this island on Aug. 12, 1978, when Soga was 18 years old, that three North Korean agents grabbed her at dusk, stuffed her in a black body bag and stole her away on a ship.
Fifteen years later, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted that his agents had abducted 13 Japanese, including Soga.
But there are eight other abductees who the Japanese government says were taken in the 1970s and 1980s and are still unaccounted for. It wants them back.
North Korea infuriated the Japanese by sending home the bones of abductees who supposedly had died -- bones that DNA testing found did not match any of the missing Japanese.
It is almost impossible to overstate the emotional power and political sensitivity of the abductee issue in Japan. The government bans all imports from North Korea, refuses to give it food aid and forbids its ships to enter Japanese harbors. More than any other country, Japan has been talking tough in six-nation negotiations meant to coax North Korea into abandoning nuclear weapons.
The national obsession with abduction has made Soga, like Jenkins, famous. But she does not talk to the press and neither do the four other Japanese abductees who were released six years ago.
Soga is not pleased that her American husband does talk, and talk and talk. Jenkins said that over the past four years, she has warned him not to write an autobiography, not to grant interviews and not to put his signature on the cookie boxes he sells.
She is now warning him, he said, not to write a second volume of his life's story.
"She said that in the end North Korea is going to get fed up. I am going to walk out my garage one morning to walk the dog, and I am going to get a bullet in the head. Very possible."
Becoming a Cold War Trophy
When he learned the arc of Jenkins's life inside North Korea, Jim Frederick, a senior editor at Time magazine who helped write "The Reluctant Communist," was disappointed.
