Prisoner of Pyongyang?

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When U.S. army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins was allowed to leave North Korea in 2004 after nearly 40 years, North Korean officials rifled through his personal belongings, Jenkins says, and confiscated family photographs that included anyone other than himself, his wife and their two daughters. Or so they thought. In their haste, the North Korean censors missed a 1984 photo taken in Wonsan on the country's east coast. At first glance, it is an innocuous family snap of Jenkins with his wife Hitomi Soga and their first daughter Mika during a rare trip to the beach. But at the left of the frame, another sunbather is visible. Jenkins has identified the woman as Anocha Panjoy, a Thai citizen he says was abducted by North Korea in 1978. If true, it would represent the first verified case of state kidnapping by North Korea of someone from a country other than Japan or South Korea. In the book, Jenkins says Panjoy told him two other women were kidnapped along with her. Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post says they were from Hong Kong and Macau.

In his autobiography, which was published in Japan in October (and coauthored by this correspondent), Jenkins gives a detailed account of Panjoy's tale. He claims that she told him she was grabbed in Macau, where she was living at the time, taken by boat to Pyongyang, and made to marry Larry Allen Abshier, another U.S. Army deserter in North Korea. According to Jenkins, the couple lived near his own home outside of Pyongyang. Abshier died in 1983 and Panjoy was moved away by party cadres in 1989. Jenkins says he doesn't know what became of her.

Two weeks ago, Sukham Panjoy, a resident of Chiang Mai who had reportedly seen local media coverage of Jenkins' life story, declared that the woman in the photo was his younger sister, Anocha, who disappeared from Macau 27 years ago. These revelations have caused a storm of anger against North Korea in Thailand and sparked concerns that there may have been more Thai abductees. In a meeting with Thai officials last week, however, North Korean envoys denied that anyone by Panjoy's name or description had been kidnapped or had ever lived in North Korea.

This denial presents a dilemma for Thailand, which enjoys good relations with North Korea. Sihasak Phuangketkaew, a Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman, says, "We have considerable grounds to think this is the same person, but we want to leave the door open, and we want to work with the North Koreans on this."