Five Japanese make first visit home since abducted by spies

FIVE Japanese citizens returned home yesterday for the first time since they were kidnapped by North Korean spies a quarter of a century ago, weeping for joy as they rushed into the arms of long-lost loved ones.

In a reunion marking a thaw in one of the last Cold War frontiers, the three women and two men stepped off a chartered jet from North Korea wearing crisp suits and dresses.

First they clung to each other, then they erupted into tears and broad smiles as they hugged mothers and fathers on the tarmac of Tokyo's Haneda airport.

They were greeted by a group of about 70 friends and family waving Japanese flags and offering large bouquets of pink and red roses. Arms linked, the reunited families were then swept into an airport lounge.

"We were all smiles and talking. I'm really happy that Fukie is just like the old Fukie," Yuko Hamamato said of his sister.

She and her then-fiancee Yasushi Chimura were grabbed from behind, wrapped in bags and whisked away in North Korean boats as they strolled along a secluded Japanese beach in 1978, when both were just 23.

Now married, they are among the five returnees who are the only known survivors of at least 13 people snatched by the North in the 1970s and early '80s sometimes carried away bound in body bags to train agents in Japanese language and culture.

Their short visit to last only one or two weeks marks a turning point in Tokyo's often stormy relations with its reclusive communist neighbour.

But celebrations were tempered by renewed anxiety that the returnees could not speak freely about life in North Korea. There was also concern about the eight other abducted Japanese who did not make the trip because North Korea has listed them as dead.

"We have to work harder to save everybody who has not yet returned," said Hidekazu Hasuike, father of returnee Kaoru, reflecting widespread suspicion in Japan that other abductees are still held captive in the North.

Suspicion runs high in Japan, in part, because the abductees, now all in their 40s, are only allowed to stay a week or two and are forbidden to bring their children.

Giving brief remarks during an evening news conference with other family members, the abductees stuck mostly to tightly scripted comments which thanked those back home for worrying about them over the years.

When asked by the moderator whether they had anything else to say, such as whether they missed Japanese food, they filed silently out of the assembly hall.