Hitomi Soga

In October 2012, she reportedly pleaded with the North Korean government for the release of her mother and other abductees.

Soga was one of a group of five Japanese abductees whom North Korea allowed to visit their homeland in September 2002. Though the trip was intended to be brief, she, like her four companions, never returned to North Korea. She and many Japanese called on North Korea to release family members who had been left behind. On July 9, 2004, Soga was reunited with her husband and two daughters in Jakarta, Indonesia, which had been chosen as a neutral venue to allay fears that Jenkins would be arrested. The family came to Japan on July 18, 2004.

Soga, a nurse, was abducted from her hometown of Mano-cho, now part of the city of Sado, Niigata, on August 12, 1978, and taken to North Korea to train agents in Japanese customs and language. Her then 46-year-old mother, Miyoshi, disappeared at the same time and has not been heard from since. The North Koreans gave Soga the Korean name Min Hye-gyeong (Korean: 민혜경 ). She met Jenkins in early July 1980, when he was asked to teach her English, and they married on August 8, 1980. They had two daughters, Mika and Brinda.

Hitomi Soga-Jenkins (Japanese: 曽我ひとみ Soga Hitomi, born May 17, 1959) is a Japanese woman who was abducted to North Korea together with her mother, Miyoshi Soga, from Sado Island, Japan, in 1978. She married Charles Robert Jenkins, an American defector to North Korea, in 1980. Charles Robert Jenkins died in 2017, Hitomi currently lives in Japan with her children.