On March 30, 1970, nine Japanese Red Army students who hijacked Japanese Airlines (JAL) passenger aircraft Yodo in the sky arrived in Pyongyang via Seoul. With 30 years elapsed since, their possible home return is again on the lips of people, as their expulsion from North Korea is being discussed in connection with the forthcoming United States' removal of the North from the list of terrorism-supporting countries.
North Korea, treating them as political refugees, has granted them various favors. Housed in Pyongyang, the best place to reside in the North, the hijackers enjoyed financial support too. Through an intermediary role positively played by Pyongyang authorities, six of them have married Japanese ladies. Five of them were listed missing in Japan, having been instructed by the Japanese Foreign Ministry to return their passports on grounds, among others, that they contacted apparent North Korean agents. Thirty-two family members of the Tokyo hijackers still live in Pyongyang.
The hijackers earnestly began to earn their livelihood in the 1990s when the North Korean government, plagued by economic woes, suspended financial assistance to them. Setting up the office of "Japan-Korea Tourist Co." in Potonggang Hotel of Pyongyang, they have recruited tourists from Japan to visit the North through support groups there. They also export to Japan North Korean books and commodities.
Takamaro Tamiya and Gintaro Yoshida, both leaders of the group, have since died of illness. Yasuhiro Shibata, who was 16 years old when he flew to North Korea, returned home in 1985. Arrested and convicted of charges of engaging in underground activities, he was released from a prison after serving a three-year term. The incident indicated that the hijackers, if they returned home and were tried by the court, would be able to be freed from prison following an imprisonment of between three and five years. In June 1990 they sent a letter to the then Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, requesting that their return back to home be negotiated.
The Tanaka counterfeit dollar incident, that took place in Thailand in 1996, drew world attention as North Korea was alleged to have masterminded it. The incident came to an end when Thai authorities, finding him innocent, repatriated him to Japan. The hijackers have endeavored to return home, telling the Japanese public through the Internet their recent conditions and their views on the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
"Having been born and brought up in Pyongyang, I'd never felt any social disharmony in language and customs. Upon graduation from school, however, I had no place to go. For the first time then I began to perceive myself as a Japanese," confides Azumi Tanaka, Tanaka's daughter, expressing her wish to come to Japan. Graduating from a junior high school in Pyongyang, she has been working in the Rajin-Sonbong free trade zone in the northeastern tip of the North. She adds these remarks, which she says were often exchanged among her father and his associates, "It was wrong to have taken people (passengers) hostage to achieve our own ends. We shouldn't place ourselves above the people, but place the people above us."
