Jul 31, 2002 5 min read

TOKYO (AP) – Since hijacking a plane to Pyongyang decades ago, a band of Japan Red Army Faction radicals has been treated as heroes in North Korea, where they live in sprawling apartments, with cooks, maids and have chauffeur-driven luxury sedans. But even heroes can overstay their welcome.

In a surprise statement, the four suddenly announced this month that they want to return to Japan – where they face certain arrest – by September, ending their exile in a suburb of the North Korean capital and closing a violent chapter of postwar Japanese history.

The hijackers – Takahiro Konishi, 57, Shiro Akagi, 54, Moriaki Wakabayashi, 55, and Kimihiro Abe, 54 – said they decided to leave because they don’t want to endanger their North Korean hosts.

“We fear our presence could be used as a pretext to attack North Korea for being a terrorist-supporting regime,” said the statement, which was sent to Japanese media and obtained by The Associated Press.

Experts, however, say they’re being kicked out as part of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s attempt to show the world he doesn’t support terrorists.

“Pyongyang is effectively handing over the hijackers to try to bargain for what it really wants: help reviving its economy,” said Pyon Jin-il, editor-in-chief of the Tokyo-based Korea Report, a monthly academic newsletter.

Decades of international sanctions have ravaged North Korea’s economy. Famine in the mid-1990s and the loss of farm subsidies from the Soviet Union have left the country heavily reliant on aid from donor countries to feed its people. President Bush further isolated the country by branding it as part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iran and Iraq.

Giving up the hijackers would be a major concession.

The 1970 hijacking of the Japan Airlines flight with 129 people – the first ever hijacking of a Japanese plane – marked the beginning of an era of high-profile terrorist acts around the world by Japanese radicals.

Wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb, the hijackers forced the flight, bound for the southwestern city of Fukuoka, to fly to South Korea, where all the passengers were freed, and then on to North Korea, where the crew members were released.

North Korea welcomed the hijackers as heroes and showered them with gifts.

Japan believes the North also put the hijackers to work helping its spies kidnap at least 11 Japanese nationals to train North Korean agents in Japanese language and culture. Pyongyang has denied any such activities, but Tokyo has said it won’t discuss normalizing relations until the issue is resolved.

Pyongyang, through its official North Korean Central News Agency, said the hijackers’ decision to go home was their own.

But the fact the hijackers are considering a return despite the certainty of arrest – they have demanded clemency in the past – suggests North Korea may be withdrawing its support.

“For North Korea, the best thing would be to have the hijackers go home. They don’t work and they aren’t much use any more – not to mention, they’re a huge financial burden,” said Hajime Izumi, a professor of Asian studies at Shizuoka University.

In return for serving as Cold War poster boys, the hijackers were given lavish apartments with central heating, air conditioning and TVs, according to Megumi Yao, the 46-year-old ex-wife of one of the men.

They have cooks and servants and drivers who chauffeur them around in Mercedes Benz sedans, Yao wrote in her memoirs, “I Apologize,” published here last month.

But the lengthy exile has taken its toll.

Of the nine men allegedly involved in the hijacking, three have died in North Korea. Two others were caught outside of North Korea and sent to Japanese prisons.

“Though a cold wind may blow on us, Japan is the homeland that we love,” Konishi, the hijackers’ leader, wrote in the statement. “Our decision to leave our homeland with our lofty ambitions, and to live abroad for so long – the one thing that has kept us going has been our desire to do something for the sake of Japan.”

If the four return, however, they won’t find much support here.

The Red Army Faction, formed in 1969, was an offshoot of Japan’s radical left student movement of the 1960s. In 1971, the Red Army Faction merged with another group to form the United Red Army. Some of its members left to set up the Lebanon-based Japanese Red Army.

A year later, after a weeklong standoff at a mountain lodge that left two officers dead, police discovered the United Red Army had slaughtered 14 of its own followers over ideological differences.

Sympathy for their cause declined rapidly, and the radical left in Japan subsequently wilted along with other ultra-leftist movements around the world.

The United Red Army has virtually no organization left.

The Japanese Red Army was disbanded last year by founder Fusako Shigenobu following her arrest in Japan in November 2000.

Shigenobu, who had been a fugitive for more than 25 years, is believed to have masterminded other hijackings and attacks on embassies in Japan and abroad.