Former U.S. soldier reported to be husband of kidnapping victim

TOKYO -- An American serviceman who defected to North Korea later married a Japanese woman who had been abducted by North Korean agents, and both are now living in the North's capital, Pyongyang, a senior Japanese official said Wednesday.

The serviceman, Charles Robert Jenkins of North Carolina, was one of four Americans who deserted their Army posts in South Korea in the 1960s.

The Pentagon first confirmed that the four were alive and living in North Korea in 1996.

But the revelation Wednesday was the first time Jenkins had been connected to another twist from the Cold War: the case of Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s and forced to help train spies for the reclusive communist nation.

Japanese officials returned Tuesday from a mission in North Korea to get information on 13 Japanese citizens whom North Korea admitted last month to kidnapping.

During the mission, North Korea told the investigators that Jenkins, 62, who entered North Korea in January 1965, married Hitomi Soga, 43, in August 1980, Japanese Cabinet spokesman Shinzo Abe told a Tokyo news conference on Wednesday.

They have two daughters -- ages 19 and 17 -- both students at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, Abe said.

Soga was abducted from Japan's secluded Sado island while shopping with her mother in August 1978. Pyongyang said Soga was kidnapped with the help of a Japanese operative it refused to identify.