HONOLULU -- Amid the swirl of diplomatic maneuvering among the United States, Japan, South Korea and North Korea stands the strange case of Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, who is accused of having deserted from the U.S. Army in South Korea in 1965 to defect to North Korea.
In perhaps the mother of all coincidences, Jenkins is married to Hitomi Soga, a Japanese who was abducted by North Korean agents from northwestern Japan in 1978 and taken to Pyongyang. She met Jenkins there in a school where he taught English; they married in 1980 and have two daughters, ages 19 and 17.
Soga was one of five Japanese allowed a month ago to visit Japan, where the issue of the North Korean abductions has erupted into a raging controversy. The Japanese government has kept Soga and the others in Japan because their families fear for their safety if they return to North Korea.