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.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS