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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not