Japan demands North Korea send alleged U.S. deserter for treat

TOKYO -- An alleged U.S. Army deserter hospitalized in North Korea has turned down Japan's invitation to come for medical treatment and a reunion with his wife, because he fears arrest by the United States, the Kyodo news agency reported Friday.

Charles Robert Jenkins is suffering from insomnia and tremors caused by emotional trauma, the Japanese news agency reported from Pyongyang. He has been hospitalized since Tuesday.

The agency also reported that North Korea had rejected Japan's demand to let Jenkins visit for medical treatment and a reunion with his wife.

Jenkins, 62, is accused of defecting to communist North Korea from his U.S. Army post along the South Korean border in 1965. Tokyo has asked Washington to pardon Jenkins, but the United States has not yet replied.

"Unfortunately, I can't go to Japan. If I went, I would be arrested right away," Kyodo quoted Jenkins as saying in a bedside interview.

Jenkins, formerly of Rich Square, N.C., is married to Hitomi Soga, 43, who was abducted from a Japanese seaside town by North Korean agents in the 1970s.

Soga and four other Japanese abductees were allowed to leave North Korea for their first visit home last month, if they left behind their families. The Japanese Foreign Minister said Soga learned of her husband's hospitalization late Thursday through a message Jenkins relayed via North Korea's Embassy in Beijing late Thursday.

"Of course I'm worried about my husband," Soga said Friday. "I was given very little information and I'm worried. But I'm leaving everything in the hands of the Japanese government."