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Our wedding was on August 8, 1980, just 38 days after we first met. There was no real ceremony to speak of. During the day we went into Pyongyang to have our picture taken and in the evening we had a celebration dinner at home. The food was nothing special, to be honest. Pig's feet, dumplings, rice and cabbage. The biggest accomplishment of the day, however, was that with some flour, eggs and sugar, we managed to improvise a wedding cake. We first took about 10 eggs and 230 g of sugar, put them in a bowl, and beat them for 20 or 30 minutes until it all began to foam and froth. Then we added 230 g of flour, stirring real slowly. We lined a pan with a kind of heavy butcher paper—as usual, we didn't have enough oil to line the pan with—and poured the mixture into it. We didn't have an oven, so we set the pan in a boiling pot of water so it floated like a boat. Then we covered the pot and let it cook for about 40 minutes. We pulled the pan out, let it cool, and then cut and pulled the paper away. It was drier than hell, and there was no icing, but that was our wedding cake.
I had saved up about 600 or 700 won, so I was able to buy a nice bottle of cognac for the wedding. Our leader, chief of staff, an old cook, the political commissioner, the political commissioner's aide and their driver all attended our wedding celebration dinner. My wife wore a traditional Korean dress that night, and she looked radiant. She wrote vows in the Korean language and I read them. I wish I could say they were all that romantic or as beautiful as the poetry she now sometimes writes in Japanese, but since this was North Korea, most of it had to be so much party bullshit: how we would live as a family for the greater benefit of the nation and the party and the people and the Great Leader. We also had to sing a song glorifying Kim Jong Il. At that time we didn't care it was propaganda, we were just happy to be singing.
Soon after we were married, my wife bought a bottle of sake from the Pyongyang Shop. It was big, and it was the good stuff, so it was very expensive. It was a treat and a treasure to sip that sake, and my wife and I made that bottle last for months and months. Every day or two we would have a little bit, but we savored it, so we would pour each other just the smallest of sips. I loved the pale, cold taste, and to this day sake is my favorite drink. Once the sake was gone, I used that bottle to hold cooking gas and it sat out on the balcony of our apartment for years afterward. I liked having that bottle around because it was an artifact from the days that our marriage had just begun and it was a piece of Japan, the homeland that my wife so desperately longed for, here in our house.
Knowing how badly my wife missed Japan, it wasn't long after we were married that I asked her what the Japanese word for "good night" was. Thereafter, every night before we went to bed, I would kiss her three times, and tell her "Oyasumi." Then she would say back to me, "Good night," in English. It became a ritual from which we never varied. We always wished each other a pleasant night's sleep in the other's native language. We did this so we would never forget who we really were and where we came from. Even though we were in love and thankful to be together, we did this to remind ourselves that this place was not really our home, and that no matter what happened, she was still Japanese, and I was still American.
In a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2002, Kim Jong Il admitted for the first time that North Korea had kidnapped Japanese citizens. The next month, Soga and four other Japanese abductees were flown to Japan for a visit. After Soga did not return, Jenkins was told that his wife was being held captive. Jenkins feared he would be imprisoned by the U.S. if he went to Japan. In 2004, Koizumi broke the deadlock.