More than a year after leaving her American husband and two daughters in communist North Korea, Hitomi Soga wonders when she will see them again.
"Clear-blue autumn skies. Going through the skies will take me back to my beloved family. If I had wings or if I were a bird, I could fly and bring them right back with me," she wrote in a poem to express her longing.
Soga, 44, is one of five Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by Pyongyang's agents a quarter-century ago and returned from the secretive communist state in Oct. 2002, leaving their North Korean-born children behind for what was seen as a brief visit.
Her sad tale, along with those of two repatriated couples who also left children behind, has gripped the nation. It has also become a big obstacle blocking Japan from giving aid to cash-strapped North Korea, funds that would be key to any deal to end the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear arms program.
Japan insists it will raise the topic of the abductees and their children at six-party talks on the nuclear dispute starting on Wednesday in Beijing.
Pyongyang says doing so could scuttle the negotiations.
The US, North and South Korea, China, Russia and Japan last met in August, but achieved no breakthrough.
"Japan's position is that there must be a comprehensive solution to the nuclear issue, the abduction issue and other matters of concern," Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said on television yesterday. "If not, there will be no economic cooperation."
Soga and the four other abductees flew to Japan a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted at a historic summit with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Pyongyang had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies.
Soga, who has since been treated for lung cancer, and the others appear to have adjusted to life in Japan, sporting stylish clothes and mobile phones, and working at new jobs.
A hoped-for thaw in bilateral ties, however, failed to materialize after the five refused to go back to North Korea, leaving the future of their families in limbo.
Japan insists the abductees' seven North Korean-born children -- now in their teens and twenties -- be allowed to join their parents. It also wants more information on eight other abductees Pyongyang says died of illness, accident or suicide.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS