When Will North Korea Return Our Abductees? is the title of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today by Kyoko Nakayama, a special advisor to Japan’s prime minister.
She is referring, of course, to the seventeen Japanese nationals, most of them young women, known to have been kidnapped in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, seized from streets and beaches in Japan and taken by submarine to North Korea to be used as tutors in a school for spies. Five of these abductees were returned to Japan in 2002, and Tokyo is still seeking information on the fate of the others.
Later this month a tremendously important book will be published in this country, The Reluctant Communist, by Charles Robert Jenkins, an American soldier who deserted to North Korea in 1965, and spent the next forty years in captivity there. Jenkins married one of the Japanese abductees and was allowed to leave for Japan in 2004, where he wrote his memoirs.
One of many significant facts he reports in his book is that not only Japanese citizens were abducted. The North Korean, he maintains, were seizing people from all across Asia, and also luring to a life of slavery unsuspecting people from Europe and the Arab world.
Attention has rightly been focused on the fate of the Japanese citizens whose lives were cruelly stolen from them. But these other victims of Pyongyang are also be in need of rescue. Even if rescue is impossible, which it is, they deserve an accounting. That too is likely to be impossible until the evil regime in North Korea is destroyed.
When will that day arrive? It is impossible to say, but tomorrow would not be too soon.
How self effacing can yu be, really, if you think you deserve to be a NY Senator, despite lack of experience or demonstrated relevant talent?
Most. Over rated. Political. Family. Ever.
Old Joe Kennedy, the original poison tree.
This is certainly grotesque. I guess if I lived there, I would know if anyone is commenting on the equally relevant issue of what it says about Governor Paterson, and the Democratic Party of New York, that CKS is even in consideration for the job.
Out here we don’t hear about that so much, with this pesky, irrelevant budget thing going on.
The press treatment of Sarah Palin has perhaps irretrievably unhinged media characterizations of female office seekers. Veruca Salt? That’s small and ignoble. Besides – this is New York.
The governor, the son of an Albany powerhouse, holds his seat because the real governor, who was unbelievably rich because his father knew how to play Manhattan real estate, was laundering money to pay for pricey hookers.
One of our senators holds the seat because her husband was president. The seat was previously occupied by the guy whose brother was president.
This last year Hillary was running for president and Charlie Schumer was being Charlie Schumer so New York didn’t have a senator. Can Caroline be any worse?
Addendum:
I note the source of your annoyance (and beyond) about Caroline came from the New York Times.
Think about that.