Former U.S. Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins has said that he believes North Korea intended to make spies out of the two daughters he had in the country with Japanese abductee Hitomi Soga, Time magazine reported Sunday. The article, based on an interview with Jenkins and available on the Time website, said the 64-year-old American began to suspect at one point that his daughters Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19, were meant to be ''spy fodder.''
''They wanted us to have children so they could use them later,'' the article titled ''In From the Cold,'' written by Jim Frederick, quoted Jenkins as saying. He describes his 1965 desertion from his army post in South Korea to North Korea as ''the stupidest thing I have ever done.'' Jenkins realized almost immediately that he had made a mistake, it said. Jenkins and the daughters remained in North Korea when Soga, 45, returned to Japan in October 2002 for the first time since she was abducted by North Korean agents in 1978. In July this year, they were reunited in Jakarta and came to Japan. |