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.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS