Kyoko Nakayama

Nakayama said that she had accomplished her mission, which was to win back trust in the government among relatives of the abducted.

Speculation abounds, however, that she was dissatisfied with the Sept. 27 appointment of former Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and former Liberal-Democratic Party Vice President Taku Yamasaki as special advisers.

Nakayama has called the Foreign Ministry's stance on North Korea "weak-kneed" and lashed out against the secret meeting that Yamasaki had with North Korean officials in China in April.

Nakayama accompanied the five repatriated abductees -- Kaoru and Yukiko Hasuike, Yasushi and Fukie Chimura, and Hitomi Soga -- when they were allowed to return to Japan in October 2002. The five were kidnapped to North Korea in 1978.

She accompanied Soga to Jakarta in July, when she was reunited with her American husband, Charles Robert Jenkins, and their two North Korean-born daughters.

The Japan Times Weekly: Oct. 9, 2004
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