US deserter hopes for new life
2004-07-18 11:17
Tokyo - An ailing former US soldier who faces prosecution for alleged desertion to North Korea arrives in Japan on Sunday hoping to start a new life here with his wife, who was kidnapped by Pyongyang more than 20 years ago.
Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, was due here at 08:55 aboard a Japanese government-chartered flight from Indonesia with his Japanese wife Hitomi Soga and their two daughters.
On arrival the frail-looking Jenkins is to be immediately taken to a Tokyo hospital for treatment of complications arising from stomach surgery in Pyongyang and other medical problems, Japanese officials said.
The affair has saturated the media here with the family's departure from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, where Soga was reunited last week with her husband and daughters after 21 months apart, broadcast live in Japan via satellite.
Their arrival will mark the beginning of the next chapter of an emotional drama that has gripped Japan and reinforced strong public antipathy here towards the dictatorship in Pyongyang.
Indonesia agreed to hold the reunion as it has no extradition treaty with the United States, which has warned that it could still prosecute Jenkins for his alleged desertion in 1965 while on border patrol in South Korea.
Held just two days ahead of upper house elections in Japan, the reunion was widely seen as a ploy to boost the standing of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's party, which however lost strength in the poll.
There is still widespread anger here about North Korea's admitted kidnapping of several Japanese citizens during the Cold War to train its spies in Japanese culture.
Soga is among only five of those who were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to return to Japan. Their homecoming came one month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in 2001 admitted for the first time ever to the kidnappings.
Jenkins had been reluctant to join his wife in Japan for fear of being extradited to be charged for desertion.
But he told Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri on Saturday that he was ready to risk facing prosecution for the sake of his family's unity.
"I want to get better first of all. I wish I will eventually go to Sado, my wife's home, with all of my family and live together there," Jenkins told the president, according to Japanese press reports.
US ambassador to Japan Howard Baker said in a statement on Saturday Washington may delay its request for Jenkins's transfer to US custody because of his poor health.
He confirmed however that Washington has "the right to custody of Sergeant Jenkins and will do so at the appropriate time".
Jenkins has been charged with deserting to North Korea, soliciting other servicemen to desert, aiding the enemy and encouraging disloyalty.
But his family in the United States say they believe he did not desert but was captured and then brainwashed in the Stalinist state.
Soga was kidnapped from the scenic island of Sado in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in 1978 when she was a 19-year-old apprentice nurse.
She spent two years at a spy institute learning the Korean language and culture before marrying Jenkins in 1980.
Jenkins told a Japanese magazine in 2002 that he has taught English at the elite Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and appeared in a few North Korean propaganda movies, posing as a US military spymaster in one of them.
The couple's two daughters, Mika, 21, and Belinda, 18, are students at the school.
His wife was allowed to return home with four other kidnap victims in October 2002 following a historic summit between Koizumi and North Korea's paramount leader.