North Korea’s Abduction Project

12
Save paper and follow @newyorker on Twitter DECEMBER 21, 2015 North Korea’s Abduction Project BY ROBERT S. BOYNTON O Kaoru Hasuike and Yukiko Okudo were kidnapped from Japan by North Korean operatives in 1978. KYODO / COURTESY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX n the evening of July 31, 1978, Kaoru Hasuike and his girlfriend, Yukiko Okudo, rode bikes to the summer fireworks festival at the Kashiwazaki town beach. They whisked down the winding lanes of their coastal farming village, a hundred and forty miles north of Tokyo. Then they parked their bikes and made their way past a crowd of spectators to a remote stretch of sand. As the first plumes rose in the sky, Kaoru noticed four men approaching. Cigarette in hand, one of them asked him for a light. As he reached into his pocket, the men attacked, gagging the couple, binding their hands and legs. “Keep quiet and we won’t hurt you,” one of the assailants said. Kaoru and Yukiko were thrown into separate sacks and loaded onto an inflatable raft. Peering through the sack’s netting, Kaoru saw the warm, bright lights of Kashiwazaki City fading into the background. An hour later, he was transferred to a ship idling offshore and forced to swallow several pills: antibiotics to prevent his injuries from becoming infected, a sedative to put him to sleep, and medicine to relieve seasickness. Two nights later, he arrived in Chongjin, North Korea. Yukiko was nowhere in sight, and Kaoru’s captors told him that she had been left behind in Japan. Kaoru, who was twenty, had fashionably shaggy hair and a ready smile. Cocky and intelligent, he was studying at Tokyo’s prestigious Chuo University. Still, like much of his generation in Japan, he wasn’t interested in politics, and knew almost nothing about Korea, North or South. Yukiko, twenty-two, the daughter of a local rice farmer, was a beautician for Kanebo, one of Japan’s leading cosmetics companies. She and Kaoru had been dating for a year, and he planned to propose to her once he finished his law degree. The overnight train from Chongjin to Pyongyang was bumpy, and by the time Kaoru arrived the next morning he was furious. “This is a violation of human rights and international law!”he shouted. “You must return me to Japan immediately!” His abductor watched his tirade calmly. Kaoru, seeing that confrontation wasn’t getting any response, tried evoking sympathy. “You have to understand that my parents are in ill health,” he explained. Their condition would worsen if they worried about him. “You know,” his abductor said, “if you want to die, this is a good way to do it.” He told

description

Interesting article

Transcript of North Korea’s Abduction Project

Page 1: North Korea’s Abduction Project

Save paper and follow @newyorker on Twitter

DECEMBER 21, 2015

North Korea’s Abduction ProjectBY ROBERT S. BOYNTON

O

Kaoru Hasuike and Yukiko Okudo were kidnapped fromJapan by North Korean operatives in 1978.KYODO / COURTESY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX

n the evening of July 31, 1978, KaoruHasuike and his girlfriend, Yukiko Okudo,

rode bikes to the summer fireworks festival at theKashiwazaki town beach. They whisked down thewinding lanes of their coastal farming village, a hundred and forty miles north of Tokyo.Then they parked their bikes and made their way past a crowd of spectators to a remotestretch of sand. As the first plumes rose in the sky, Kaoru noticed four men approaching.Cigarette in hand, one of them asked him for a light. As he reached into his pocket, themen attacked, gagging the couple, binding their hands and legs. “Keep quiet and wewon’t hurt you,” one of the assailants said. Kaoru and Yukiko were thrown into separatesacks and loaded onto an inflatable raft. Peering through the sack’s netting, Kaoru sawthe warm, bright lights of Kashiwazaki City fading into the background.

An hour later, he was transferred to a ship idling offshore and forced to swallow severalpills: antibiotics to prevent his injuries from becoming infected, a sedative to put him tosleep, and medicine to relieve seasickness. Two nights later, he arrived in Chongjin, NorthKorea. Yukiko was nowhere in sight, and Kaoru’s captors told him that she had been leftbehind in Japan.

Kaoru, who was twenty, had fashionably shaggy hair and a ready smile. Cocky andintelligent, he was studying at Tokyo’s prestigious Chuo University. Still, like much of hisgeneration in Japan, he wasn’t interested in politics, and knew almost nothing aboutKorea, North or South. Yukiko, twenty-two, the daughter of a local rice farmer, was abeautician for Kanebo, one of Japan’s leading cosmetics companies. She and Kaoru hadbeen dating for a year, and he planned to propose to her once he finished his law degree.

The overnight train from Chongjin to Pyongyang was bumpy, and by the time Kaoruarrived the next morning he was furious. “This is a violation of human rights andinternational law!” he shouted. “You must return me to Japan immediately!” His abductorwatched his tirade calmly. Kaoru, seeing that confrontation wasn’t getting any response,tried evoking sympathy. “You have to understand that my parents are in ill health,” heexplained. Their condition would worsen if they worried about him.

“You know,” his abductor said, “if you want to die, this is a good way to do it.” He told

Page 2: North Korea’s Abduction Project

K

“You know,” his abductor said, “if you want to die, this is a good way to do it.” He told

Kaoru that the reason he had been kidnapped was to help reunify the Korean Peninsula,

the sacred duty of every North Korean citizen. After all the pain his Japanese forefathers

had inflicted on Korea, the man continued, it was the least that Kaoru, who had

benefitted from his country’s rapacious colonial exploits, could do. Precisely how he

would hasten reunification was left ambiguous. The abductor hinted that he would train

Korean spies to pass as Japanese, and perhaps become a spy himself.

“You see, once the Peninsula is unified under the command of General Kim Il-sung, a

beautiful new era will begin,” he went on. North Korean socialism would spread

throughout Asia, including Japan. “And when that glorious day comes, we Koreans will

live in peace. And when you go home at that time you’ll have an excellent position at the

top of the regime!”

Kaoru was placed in an apartment in Pyongyang. Escape was virtually impossible; three

minders monitored him twenty-four hours a day, each taking an eight-hour shift.

Although he didn’t have a religious background, he tried praying, placing his palms

together and pressing them to his eyes. This display of piety elicited ridicule from his

captors. In North Korean movies, the only characters who prayed were the cowardly

Japanese prisoners begging for mercy.

aoru was given access to a restricted library with Japanese-language books about

the history of North Korea. Japan demobilized the Korean Army in 1907, and

officially annexed Korea on August 29, 1910. The Japanese were careful to distinguish

between Korean leaders (inept, corrupt) and the Korean people (proto-Japanese, full of

potential), and predicted that Korea would thrive now that it was part of the Japanese

Empire. From the late thirties through 1945, Japan pushed Koreans to assimilate,

requiring them to speak Japanese, take Japanese names, and worship at Shinto shrines.

Men were forced to labor in Japanese factories and mines, and some women were

dragooned into sexual slavery. Roughly two hundred and thirteen thousand Koreans

fought in the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy.

By the end of the Second World War, four million Koreans were living outside Korea,

and more than seven hundred thousand Japanese civilians and troops were living inside

Korea. But the loss of the Japanese Empire meant that a new theory of Japanese identity

was required. In postwar Korea and Japan, a rhetoric of racial purity thrived. Within the

Korean Peninsula, the newly independent North and South competed to see which could

more thoroughly eradicate Japan’s influence, in an effort to become the Korean people’s

legitimate homeland.

In January, 1980, after eighteen months in North Korea, Kaoru was summoned to his

minder’s office. Several officials were waiting for him. They announced that Yukiko, his

girlfriend, was in North Korea after all. In fact, she was in the next room. It turned out

that the story about her being left behind in Japan had been a ruse designed to force

Page 3: North Korea’s Abduction Project

that the story about her being left behind in Japan had been a ruse designed to force

Kaoru to cut all emotional ties to Japan. The couple had been undergoing the same

pedagogical routine: learning Korean, studying the regime’s ideology, wondering whether

they could survive in this strange country. Like much else in North Korea, their isolation

had been staged.

Kaoru and Yukiko married three days after they were reunited. “I would have done it that

morning,” Kaoru said. “I didn’t want to wait.” The groom received a haircut and was

outfitted with a new white shirt and a necktie; the bride wore a simple flower-patterned

dress. The ceremony was officiated by the most senior official present, who opened by

invoking the blessings of the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung.

The most important wedding present a North Korean newlywed couple can receive is a

home in which to start their new life. (Because there is virtually no private property, the

gift is from the state, and can be withdrawn at any time.) Hasuikes’ first home was a

traditional one-story cinder-block house an hour south of Pyongyang. Painted white, it

had a wooden roof with ceramic tile shingles and five rooms: a kitchen, two bedrooms, a

living room, and a bathroom. In the back was a small garden where Kaoru grew

vegetables. He got seed and fertilizer by trading cigarettes with farmers from a nearby

food coöperative, and arranged for a cow to till the field at the beginning of the growing

season. He became fond of kimchi, and started making it for himself in the traditional

manner, stuffing cabbage and hot red peppers into clay pots and burying them in the

yard to ferment.

Their house was situated in one of the many guarded “invitation-only zones” that dot

suburban Pyongyang. The area, a square mile, limited its inhabitants’ freedom while

warning outsiders that only those “invited” to enter were welcome. All North Koreans

develop a heightened sensitivity to coded language, and they knew well enough to avoid

it. The development was a well-tended prison inside the secretive state. Still, the housing

and food were better than what most North Koreans had. Kaoru saw the place as a gilded

cage.

Hasuikes’ neighbors were an odd assortment: other abductees, North Korean spies,

foreign-language experts—anyone whose access to outside information made them a

threat to the regime’s carefully crafted official narrative. With small clusters of houses

fanning out from a central building, each separated from the others by densely wooded,

artificial hills, the invitation-only zone was designed to discourage private contact among

residents. At its center, the roads converged on a large guest house, which had spaces for

meetings and classes. As part of the government’s attempt to control the flow of

information into the country, the North grants few long-term visas to foreign visitors, so

this cluster of Japanese abductees provided a rare educational opportunity for spies, many

of whom would be sent to infiltrate Japan.

The Hasuikes were given jobs translating articles from Japanese into Korean. (The task,

Page 4: North Korea’s Abduction Project

K

The Hasuikes were given jobs translating articles from Japanese into Korean. (The task,oddly, could have been performed by any one of the millions of North Koreans who hadbeen forced to learn Japanese during the colonial era.) At the start of every week, theywould receive a stack of Japanese magazines and newspapers, with sections blacked outby a censor and specific articles circled for translation.

The newlyweds fell into a routine. Each morning, after being woken up by anannouncement from the radio loudspeaker that is installed in every North Korean houseand workplace, Yukiko would prepare a traditional Korean breakfast of rice, eggs, andkimchi. Afterwards, Kaoru would go for a run, taking a route past identical small whitecottages, down paths that cut through the hills and trees. After a few thousand yards, hewould see barbed-wire fence peeking above the trees.

Kaoru did what he could to make their house feel like a home. “In the same way that, as achild, I made up games without toys or playmates, I found time to play by myself in theinvitation zone,” he wrote. He carved a mahjong set out of wood and taught his wife toplay. Although he hadn’t played golf in Japan, he spent several weeks clearing a nearbyarea to create a five-hole golf course. He drew on his memories of watching the game ontelevision to come up with something approximating the rules, and played obsessively,using balls made by sticking cotton swabs together. “As idiotic as it may seem,” he wrote,“as someone starved of play this course was great fun.”

im Il-sung, in his 1946 decree “On Transporting Intellectuals from South Korea,”explained his desire to bring five hundred thousand people to the North to

compensate for the mass exodus in the years leading up to the war. He envisioned anambitious abduction project that would serve his regime while destabilizing othercountries. It began with the South. An estimated eighty-four thousand South Koreanswere kidnapped during the Korean War. For the first two decades after the 1953armistice, the abductees were primarily South Korean fishermen whose boats had driftedtoo far up the coast. South Korea has confirmed that just under five hundred of itscitizens are still held in the North.

Kim Jong-il, who would go on to take over his father’s position, expanded the programoutside the Koreas. He diversified and expanded intelligence operations, abducting nativeteachers to train North Korean spies to navigate the languages and cultures of Malaysia,Thailand, Romania, Lebanon, France, and Holland. Japanese nationals were especiallysought after, because their identities could be used to create fake passports. The Japanesegovernment officially recognizes seventeen abductees, but estimates of their numbers runfrom a few dozen to several hundred. The targets tended either to be unmarried men oflow social status who lived far from their families, and wouldn’t be missed, or youngcouples. Japan’s traditional family-registration system (koseki) had yet to be fullycentralized in the nineteen-seventies, when the first Japanese people were abducted, so

there was no reliable national database against which a forged passport could be

Page 5: North Korea’s Abduction Project

B

there was no reliable national database against which a forged passport could becompared. And a Japanese passport granted the holder access to virtually any country onEarth.

People began to disappear from Japan in 1977. A security guard vacationing at a seasideresort two hundred miles northwest of Tokyo vanished in mid-September. A thirteen-year-old girl named Megumi Yokota, walking home from badminton practice in the portcity of Niigata, was last seen eight hundred feet from her family’s front door. Dozensmore went missing from other parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. AThai woman living in Macau was grabbed on her way to a beauty salon. Four Lebanesewomen were brought from Beirut. A Romanian artist, having been promised anexhibition, was abducted. Some were lured onto airplanes by the prospect of jobs abroad;others were simply gagged, thrown into bags, and transported by boat to North Korea.Their families spent years searching for the missing, checking mortuaries, hiring privatedetectives and soothsayers. Only five of the Japanese abductees were ever seen again.

eyond the wedding arrangements for Kaoru Hasuike and Yukiko Okudo, theNorth Korean government systematically did more matchmaking. Enter the

American Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, who, in January, 1965, was stationed at thedemilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Part of a four-man “hunter-killer”team, Jenkins was tasked with drawing fire from North Korean troops during daytimepatrols. He had grown depressed and drank heavily, and he concocted an escape plan. “Iwas going to walk north across the DMZ and into North Korea,” he wrote in hismemoir, “The Reluctant Communist” (2008). “Once there, I would ask to be handed overto the Russians, and request a diplomatic exchange for passage back to the UnitedStates.” In the early hours one morning, Jenkins informed his squad that he was going tocheck the road, but instead he tied a white T-shirt to his M-14 rifle and crossed into theD.M.Z., taking “high, slow, deliberate steps” to avoid trip wires that would set off a mine,he recalled. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he told me. Three weeks later, oneof the North’s propaganda loudspeakers announced the news of his arrival. “TheRepublic that is the Eternal Paradise will protect with hospitality the brave SergeantJenkins!”

The U.S. military tried to keep Jenkins’s defection quiet, for fear that more soldiers mightfollow. A few others had done so already, under similarly hapless circumstances. Afterbeing debriefed by the North Koreans, Jenkins was assigned to live with them in a tinyhouse, where they slept on mats on the floor. “We four who willingly walked across theDMZ were Cold War trophies, which is why I think we were never treated like POWs.As the stars of several propaganda pamphlets—and later movies—we had to look like wewere happy, or at least healthy,” he wrote. They were cast whenever a North Korean filmor television show called for Western villains. But their primary job was to teach English.He said, “We just wouldn’t correct the students’ mistakes, or we’d purposely teach themnonsense words.”

In 1965, Charles Jenkins crossed the D.M.Z. into North

Page 6: North Korea’s Abduction Project

In 1965, Charles Jenkins crossed the D.M.Z. into NorthKorea. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” hesaid.AP / COURTESY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX

The regime began pairing the defectors with womenwho had been abducted from foreign countries. Inthe summer of 1980, Jenkins was introduced to awoman who the regime wanted to learn English.Her name was Hitomi Soga, and she was fromJapan. “I had never seen anybody so beautiful in mylife,” he wrote. For several months, they wouldsmoke, talk, and play cards. One night, Jenkinsventured that he had heard of a number of Japanesepeople who had been brought to North Koreaagainst their will. She looked frightened and remained silent, but pointed to her nose toindicate that she was one of them. At dusk on August 12, 1978, Soga had gone shoppingwith her mother, Miyoshi, at the general store near their home on Sado Island. Threemen followed them, and on a quiet stretch of road pulled them behind a tree and boundand gagged them. They dragged them a few hundred feet down the road to the KonoRiver, where a small skiff was hidden beneath a bridge. When Soga arrived in NorthKorea, her mother was gone.

A minder urged Jenkins to marry her. “You and she don’t seem like it, but you are actuallythe same. You both have nothing here. Together, you would each at least havesomething,” he said. Jenkins soon started proposing almost every day. After several weeks,she relented, and they were married on August 8, 1980. They had two daughters, Mika,in 1983, and Brinda, in 1985.

Perhaps the most significant instances of the North Korean regime acting as a romanticfacilitator involved the Red Army Faction, a group of young radicals from Japan whohijacked an airplane in 1970 to receive combat training in North Korea. Once inside thecountry, the men were schooled in juche, North Korea’s official philosophy, commonlytranslated as “self-reliance,” and guided by the collective unconscious embodied in KimIl-sung. When Kim judged that the group had been successfully reëducated, he called apress conference. “Their ideological state seems to have improved,” he said, as themembers of the Red Army sat stiffly at a conference table. He took to calling the men his“golden eggs,” and planned to use them to spread North Korea’s revolutionary ideasaround the world. The only problem was that there weren’t enough of them.

It was decided that the members of the Red Army needed wives. Because North Koreanlaw forbids marriage between its citizens and foreigners, the group’s North Koreanoverseers suggested that spies recruit suitable Japanese women from Europe and Japanand bring them to North Korea to serve as brides. It is unclear exactly how all the wives

got to North Korea, or whether they were aware of the reason for their recruitment. One

Page 7: North Korea’s Abduction Project

got to North Korea, or whether they were aware of the reason for their recruitment. Oneof them was told that she would be going to study in North Korea but had to keep it asecret; she was directed to tell her parents that she was going to Europe, and the daybefore she left she signed half a dozen postcards, pre-stamped and addressed to them,filled with banalities (“The weather here is beautiful”). The Marriage Project, as thematchmaking scheme came to be known, culminated in May, 1977, when the entiregroup got married, one by one, in the course of a week. Kim Il-sung visited theRevolutionary Village to celebrate the weddings, and told the Red Army that now theymust “continue the revolution by giving birth to the next generation.”

I asked Sergeant Jenkins what he considered the point of all the abductions. Heanswered by telling me about a visit that two North Korean cadres paid to his home in1995. Such a visit was unusual, so he was nervous. The conversation turned to hisdaughters. “Thanks to the great benevolence of Kim Jong-il,” they said, the girls wouldbe sent to the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. The college is one of the mostprestigious in North Korea, but it also feeds into the country’s intelligence service.“That’s when I knew they were planning to turn Brinda and Mika into spies,” he recalled.“Think about it. They would be perfect raw material for North Korean spies, becausethey looked nothing like what someone would expect a North Korean spy to look like.”Mixed-race children are common in South Korea and Japan, but they are unheard of inthe North. Jenkins believes the abduction project was a long-term breeding program.That could explain why most of the Japanese were abducted in pairs, usually a girlfriendand boyfriend out for a romantic evening, and why the North Koreans had no use forJenkins’s wife’s mother.

He may have been on to something. The North Korean defector Jang Jin-sung, in his2014 book, “Dear Leader,” describes a program instituted after it became clear thatabductees would never become spies. The “seed-bearing strategy” involved sendingattractive North Korean women to seduce foreign diplomats, journalists, andbusinessmen. The resulting children gave the regime leverage over the fathers—whowould be manipulated into aiding the North through favorable news coverage, businessdeals, or government aid—and the children could be trained as spies. When I met Jang,he connected the abduction project to the seed-bearing program. “They were essentiallythe same project, just using different methods,” he said. “They went from kidnappingpeople to kidnapping eggs.”

Kaoru Hasuike and Yukiko Okudo had a daughter and a son, born in 1981 and 1985.The couple gave them secret Japanese names, Shigeyo and Katsuya. Every day, a minderwould ferry the children back and forth to day care outside the invitation-only zone, and,like kids growing up anywhere, they perceived their lives to be normal. For native NorthKoreans, secrets and omnipresent surveillance were as common as air. When each childturned eight, the regime sent them to a boarding school a hundred and twenty milesnorth of Pyongyang. They would be allowed to visit home for three months, during

winter and summer holidays; there were no parents’-day visits or phone calls, and care

Page 8: North Korea’s Abduction Project

B

winter and summer holidays; there were no parents’-day visits or phone calls, and carepackages took a month to arrive, if they were delivered at all. None of the students knewprecisely where their peers were from. The Hasuike children passed as North Korean,and they believed they were.

ecause the locations of the kidnappings were scattered, and because the number ofdisappearances was relatively small, few people in Japan drew a connection among

the incidents, or even identified them as abductions. A local paper slyly described acouple as having been “burned up” by their passion, the implication being that theyeloped after the woman became pregnant. When the families of the missing went to thepolice, they were told that, with no evidence of foul play, there was nothing to investigate.Gradually, a few members of the Japanese government became aware of the abductions;not every operation went according to plan, and the police occasionally found NorthKorean military artifacts in spy boats that washed up on remote beaches. A Japanesecouple was discovered with their hands tied, bags over their heads, after their would-beabductors had abandoned them and fled. But Japan avoided acknowledging theabductions officially. What could have been done? Japan had neither diplomatic relationswith North Korea nor a military that could take unilateral action, and its mutual-securitytreaty with the United States wouldn’t be triggered by a handful of kidnappings. If aJapanese official made the matter public, North Korea might hide the evidence by killingthe abductees. “It can’t be helped” (shikata ga nai) is a phrase commonly used in Japan torationalize inaction. And so dozens of people languished in North Korea for a quartercentury.

The most dramatic proof of the abductions came in 1987, when two North Koreanterrorists tucked explosives, planted inside a Panasonic radio, into an overhead luggagecompartment on a South Korean airliner. They bailed on the flight in Abu Dhabi, beforethe bomb killed everyone on board. One of the terrorists later confessed that she hadbeen taught Japanese by an abductee. North Korea never took responsibility, but afterseveral years it opened diplomatic discussions with Japan. Finally, at a meeting in 1997,Japanese negotiators substituted the phrase “missing people” for “abductees,” and theNorth agreed to investigate.

On September 17, 2002, the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, flew fromTokyo across the D.M.Z. in order to begin the process of normalizing diplomaticrelations—a condition of which was accounting for the Japanese citizens who had beenheld in Korean custody. North Korea waited until the last possible moment to hand overthe list of surviving and deceased abductees: the North admitted to kidnapping thirteenpeople, eight of whom the regime claimed were dead, all under suspicious circumstances.Only five were said to be alive.

Kim Jong-il entered the negotiation room wearing his signature khaki-colored military

Page 9: North Korea’s Abduction Project

O

Kim Jong-il entered the negotiation room wearing his signature khaki-colored militaryjacket. “As the host, I regret that we had to make the Prime Minister of Japan come toPyongyang so early in the morning in order to open a new chapter in the D.P.R.K.-Japan relationship,” Kim said. Reading from a memo pad, Kim explained to Koizumi thathe wanted to initiate “a truly neighborly relationship” with Japan. “I, too, hope that theopportunity that this meeting presents will greatly advance bilateral relations betweenour two countries,” Koizumi replied. But then his tone grew stern. “I was utterlydistressed by the information that was provided,” he began. “I ask that you arrange ameeting for us with the surviving abductees. And I would like you to make an outrightapology.” Kim listened in silence, looking uncomfortable. After a long pause, hesuggested, “Shall we take a break now?”

When the negotiations resumed, Kim got right to the point. “We have thoroughlyinvestigated this matter,” he read to the room. “Decades of adversarial relations betweenour two countries provided the background of this incident. It was, nevertheless, anappalling incident.” Kim continued, “It is my understanding that this incident wasinitiated by special-mission organizations in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, drivenby blindly motivated patriotism and misguided heroism.” He explained that the purposeof the abductions was to find people to teach its agents Japanese, and to steal identitieswith which to infiltrate the South. “As soon as their scheme and deeds were brought tomy attention, those who were responsible were punished.” The North Koreans claimedthat the two people responsible for the abduction of Megumi Yokota, whose kidnappingwas highly publicized, had been tried and found guilty in 1998. One was executed andthe other was serving a fifteen-year sentence. “I would like to take this opportunity toapologize straightforwardly for the regrettable conduct of those people. I will not allowthat to happen again,” Kim promised.

It was inconceivable to Koizumi that a program like this could have existed withoutKim’s knowledge, especially since he was in charge of espionage operations during theyears that most of the abductions occurred. Despite his misgivings, Koizumi signed thePyongyang Declaration at a ceremony at five-thirty that afternoon. The event wasimmortalized on a North Korean postage stamp.

n October 16, 2002, a photograph of five middle-aged Japanese people—twocouples and a single woman, all wearing boxy nineteen-fifties-era suits, ties, and

skirts—seen descending from a Boeing 767 at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport appeared innewspapers across the globe. The New York Times headline read: “Tears and Hugs as 5Abducted Japanese Go Home to Visit.” Kaoru Hasuike and Yukiko Okudo, HitomiSoga, and two others returned to Japan twenty-four years after they had been abducted.Soga’s husband, Jenkins, remained in Pyongyang with their daughters. The majorJapanese television stations ran specials and live coverage all day, devoting thirty hours to

the homecoming. It would take nineteen more months of negotiations, and several

Page 10: North Korea’s Abduction Project

I

the homecoming. It would take nineteen more months of negotiations, and several

hundred thousand tons of rice, before the abductees’ children were allowed to reunite

with their parents in Japan.

The return left the public feeling simultaneously aghast at North Korea’s treachery and

patronized by the Japanese government’s incompetence. Within a week, national support

for normalizing relations with North Korea, which Koizumi had championed, plunged

from eighty-one per cent to forty-four per cent. Soon, every major political party

included dealing with the abductions in its official election agenda. When Shinzō Abe

became Prime Minister, in 2006, one of his first acts was to establish the Headquarters

for the Abduction Issue, a cabinet-level office with an enormous budget to coördinate

the government’s abduction-related efforts. It produced films, comic books, and cartoons

about the kidnappings. Abe also ordered NHK, the government-funded broadcaster, to

increase its already extensive coverage of the abductions.

In October, 2002, f ive abductees returned to Japan from

North Korea.

AP / COURTESY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX

Some Japanese activists have continued pushing for

more, driven by the conviction that the abductees

claimed dead by the North Korean regime were still

alive. An abduction support group held press

conferences and raised money for a reconnaissance

mission to infiltrate North Korea and locate the

remaining abductees. (It failed.) Another

organization, the Investigation Commission on

Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea,

has, since 2005, beamed a shortwave broadcast called

“Shiokaze” twice a day into North Korea. Segments

are announced in Japanese, English, Chinese, and

Korean; they include some international news items

and messages to individual abductees, often read by friends and relatives. Soothing piano

music plays in the background. A repeating message tells the abductees to keep the faith,

because “it will not be long until we rescue you.”

met Kaoru Hasuike on a warm April afternoon. His shaggy haircut and taut, angular

face made him appear a decade younger than he is. The only evidence of his time in

North Korea are his discolored, uneven teeth. In 2010, Kaoru completed his

undergraduate degree at Chuo University through a correspondence course, and he is

now working toward a graduate degree in Korean studies at Niigata University. He

recently informed the Japanese government that he no longer needs the monthly stipend

offered to abductees. He and Yukiko found part-time work at the Kashiwazaki city hall

during the year and a half it took for their children to be freed. Now Kaoru earns a living

Page 11: North Korea’s Abduction Project

during the year and a half it took for their children to be freed. Now Kaoru earns a livingtranslating books from Korean; he also writes his own. Yukiko is a cook in a localkindergarten.

Having spent half his life as a Korean among Koreans, it would be odd if he were able toshed his experience easily. Japanese culture has difficulty with elements that don’t fitprecise categories, and the suspicion that Kaoru was ambivalent about returning to Japan,that he was somehow both Korean and Japanese, drove some people crazy. But Kaoruseems to have survived his North Korean ordeal by living as normally as possible—a lifewith more than its share of oppression, fear, and misery, of course, but a life nonetheless.He married, had children, and, to an extent, formed friendships. What was thealternative?

Kaoru told me that the time he spent waiting for North Korea to release his children wasthe most difficult. The regime had made it clear that it was monitoring his every move,so Kaoru had to be careful not to say or do anything that would offend North Korea, andperhaps keep him from seeing his children again. During this period, the North Koreansprepared the children for the shock of learning the truth both about their parents andthemselves. “Once the North Korean authorities came to the conclusion that they wouldhave to return the kids, they told them that they were Japanese and that their mother andfather were in Japan, although they didn’t mention the abduction part,” Kaoru said. “TheNorth Korean authorities couldn’t release them into a P.R. storm where they weretraumatized, which would leave a negative impact on North Korea’s reputation. In orderto have the proper promotional value, they had to be prepared bit by bit.”

In Kaoru’s first interaction with his son after he was sent over from North Korea, hecould sense the uncertainty. On May 22, 2004, once the children’s plane took off, aJapanese official handed Katsuya a cell phone with his father on the other end. “YourKorean is strange,” the boy said. “This isn’t really my father, is it?” Kaoru had been givingKorean lessons since he returned, and the South Korean language tapes he used hadchanged his accent slightly.

“The first couple of days, we didn’t say much, we just let time pass,” he recalled. Knowingthat their Japanese was poor, Kaoru bought his kids a few Korean DVDs. The familyspent its first night together in Kashiwazaki watching “Winter Sonata,” a popular SouthKorean soap opera. When stories about North Korean defectors appeared on thetelevision news, Kaoru noticed the children’s concentration intensify as they tried to sortout what was true and what was propaganda. Once they learned that the country theyhad been taught to love had abducted and imprisoned their parents, they realized theywould have no future in North Korea. After learning Japanese, their greatest challengewas handling their newfound freedom. It was scary to suddenly not be told what to do.

“Today, when I speak with my children, I never lie about anything,” Kaoru said. “That is

Page 12: North Korea’s Abduction Project

“Today, when I speak with my children, I never lie about anything,” Kaoru said. “That isthe rule. Once you open the door and are honest, you have to continue to speak truthfullyand be completely open.”

Katsuya earned a degree in computer science from Waseda University and works for abank in Seoul. Kaoru’s daughter, Shigeyo, is pursuing a doctorate in education. BrindaJenkins studied bridal and wedding services at a Niigata trade school, got a sales job at asake distillery, and in 2014 married the son of a cement manufacturer whom she met atthe sake factory. Her sister, Mika, teaches at a day care and lives at home with her motherand father, who still communicate in Korean, their only common language.

Robert S. Boynton directs the literary-reportage program at the Arthur L. Carter JournalismInstitute at New York University. This piece has been excerpted from his forthcoming book,“The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea’s Abduction Project.”