Indonesia to host special reunion
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia has become the place for a special reunion, with North Korea allowing a family split up by Cold War abductions to celebrate their daughter's 19th birthday in the country.
The mother of the family now lives in Japan after she was repatriated there in 2002, after being abducted by Pyonyang agents 24 years earlier.
North Korean counterpart Paek Nam-sun assured her Japanese counterpart Yoriko Kawaguchi on Wednesday her government would allow the girl's father, U.S. Army deserter and defector Charles Robert Jenkins, and his two daughters to travel from North Korea to Indonesia and meet their Japanese wife and mother, Hitomi Soga.
The family is expected to celebrate the birthday of daughter, Belinda, on July 23 in Indonesia, possibly in Bali or in Bogor, West Java.
"We were told that Mr. Jenkins has agreed to a reunion in Indonesia," Kawaguchi said after meeting with Paek at the JW Marriot Hotel in South Jakarta.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda said the Japanese foreign minister had asked Indonesia whether it was ready to facilitate the reunion. "We reiterated that for humanitarian reasons we are ready to do so," Hassan said.
A Japanese official disclosed Jenkins had agreed to go to Indonesia because the country did not have an extradition treaty with the U.S., which insisted on prosecuting him for his desertion in 1964.
"I am very happy to hear the results of the Japan-North Korea talks," Soga said.
The couple married in 1989. Pyongyang abducted Soga when she was still 19 years old in 1978 along with a group of Japanese citizens. In October 2002, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi succeeded in persuading then-North Korean President Kim Jong-il to release Soga and other Japanese citizens abducted by the regime.
Meanwhile in related matters, President Megawati Soekarnoputri met with Paek and South Korean counterpart Ban Ki-moon on Thursday a day after their scheduled meeting to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue. In a statement issued after the meeting they said,"In keeping with the spirit of the South-North Joint Declaration, the two sides concurred on the need to intensify exchanges and cooperation."
Six-party nuclear talks will be held in Beijing September and will be attended by North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, the U.S. and Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is in Jakarta to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), indicated he was unlikely to meet with Paek on the sidelines of the forum on Friday.