When Charles Robert Jenkins, the former US soldier who has spent the last 40 years in North Korea, left the communist state yesterday morning, Japanese media were desperate to know if he intended to stay away permanently.
And they got no help from his dog.
In a strange tale made stranger by the obsessive musings of Japanese pundits, the media had unleashed its attention on an unlikely target: the Jenkins family dog.
Jenkins, 64, a North Carolina native who Washington wants to put on trial as a deserter, left Pyongyang with his two grown daughters to be reunited with his Japanese wife in Indonesia.
Japan's media had hoped the family dog might provide the vital clue: if Jenkins brought the dog, he intended to stay for some time in Indonesia. No dog, the reasoning went, and he intended a quick return to Pyongyang.
But just hours before Jenkins was due to arrive at the airport in Pyongyang, and the dog-watching could begin, a newspaper reported that the tell-tale pooch was already dead.
"Both of them are dead of old age," the Yomiuri Shimbun quoted a Japanese government official as saying, referring to the dog and its predecessor.
Jenkins has been a household name in Japan ever since his wife, 45-year-old Hitomi Soga, was released by North Korea two years ago along with four other Japanese abductees.
Jenkins, who met and married Soga in North Korea, had previously refused to join her in Japan for fear he would be handed over to the US for a court martial.
Indonesia, unlike Japan, has no extradition treaty with the US, so the media is speculating the family may live there for some time.
Yomiuri Shimbun said the Japanese government had made preparations in Indonesia in case Jenkins brought the dog.
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