JAPAN/NORTH KOREA: Five Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s arrived in Tokyo yesterday for an emotionally charged visit home, their first in 24 years.
A Japanese government-chartered jet carrying the five landed at Haneda airport in the afternoon two hours after it left Pyongyang.
Minutes later the five, looking older than their years, stepped into the brilliant autumn sunshine smiling at relatives waiting on the tarmac waving Japanese flags and carrying banners that read Welcome Back.
Husband and wife Mr Yasushi Chimura and Ms Fukie Hamamoto, both aged 47, emerged first, followed by another couple, Mr Kaoru Hasuike (45) and Ms Yukiko Okudo (46). Last off the aircraft was Ms Hitomi Soga (43), married to a US national who reportedly defected to North Korea while serving in the US military in South Korea.
She was not officially recognised as a kidnap victim until Pyongyang confirmed last month she was alive in the secretive state. Ms Soga disappeared in August 1978 along with her mother whose fate is unknown. The returnees' six children and Ms Soga's husband remained in North Korea in a move their Japanese relatives condemned as hostage-taking.
Ms Hamamoto and Ms Okudo were smartly dressed in beige skirts and matching jackets, while Ms Soga wore a floral print blouse under a dark blazer. Both men wore dark suits with white shirts and ties. All five sported North Korean flag lapel pins.
At the foot of the aircraft steps, the returnees broke down in tears as they hugged parents and siblings they had not seen for decades.
After about five minutes, the five, clutching huge bouquets of red roses, were escorted to a terminal building to continue their family reunion away from the eyes of the massed Japanese media before being taken by bus through the capital's congested traffic under a police escort to a Tokyo hotel.
They are due to stay there until tomorrow when they are expected to visit their respective home towns.
"I am happy to see you. I really thank you very much," Ms Hamamoto said to a packed news conference at the hotel four hours after arriving here.
"I am really happy to see my parents well. I made a lot of people worried," said Mr Hasuike.
The other three voiced brief expressions of gratitude for being able to return to Japan before all five left the press conference after less than five minutes without taking any questions.
The homecoming came after North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, acknowledged the abduction of Japanese nationals for the first time at a landmark summit with the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, last month.
The admission prompted Mr Koizumi to agree to resume talks on normalising diplomatic ties later this month.
The five, along with at least eight others Pyongyang says have since died, were abducted to train and give their identities to spies who were to infiltrate South Korea posing as Japanese.
An appeal from the abductees' families for restraint by the media appeared to go unheeded as reporters packed the hotel lobby and newspapers printed special editions, completely overshadowing news about the deadly bomb blast on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. The publicly funded network NHK ran non-stop coverage from early morning.
The five were to remain in Japan for up to two weeks, although an official date for their departure has not yet been decided.
On Monday, Mr Koizumi slammed the secretive Stalinist nation and suggested it had killed some abductees. "It is certainly an outrageous country. It snatches, removes and then kills," he said in a televised speech, also stressing the importance of resuming talks with North Korea in order to prevent a repeat of the past. Mr Koizumi tried to play down the remark later, telling reporters he had meant to say some people were saying this.
The prime minister has no plans to meet the returnees, but he issued a statement saying: "My heart aches when I think of the sorrow and hardships those abducted and their families have experienced." - (AFP)