In a March 2010 interview with Kyodo News, Wakabayashi stated that the hijacking was a "selfish and conceited" act. Moriaki Wakabayashi was an early member (bass player) in the long-running avant-garde rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés. He died on Novemof heart failure at a Tokyo hospital. In April 2015, he ran in the city assembly elections in Kiyose, campaigning on an anti- Abe platform and against the city's policies which are "bullying" the elderly. He joined an antibase movement in Okinawa and an antinuclear campaign, and wrote several books related to the Red Army Faction. He said that they had intended to go to Cuba via North Korea. After his release in 1989, suffering from poor health, Shiomi obtained a lowly paid job as an attendant at a multi-level parking facility in Kiyose, Tokyo, where he was working as late as 2008. Shiomi was arrested, convicted, and served almost 20 years in prison in Japan.
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The alleged mastermind of the hijacking, who did not take part in the actual operation, was Takaya Shiomi. The plane carrying Vice Minister Yamamura and the remainder of the crew was released two days later and returned to its gate at Haneda Airport at 9:39AM on April 5. Using North Korea as a base, they thought they could promote rebellion in South Korea and elsewhere across East Asia. The hijackers' motive was to defect to North Korea. They then proceeded to Pyongyang's Mirim Airport, with Yamamura now as hostage, where they surrendered to North Korean authorities, who offered the whole group asylum.
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Japan's Vice Minister for Transport, Shinjiro Yamamura, had volunteered to take the place of the remaining hostages, and the hijackers accepted. Armed with samurai swords and pipe bombs, the hijackers took 129 hostages (122 passengers and seven crew members), releasing 21 of them at Fukuoka Airport and then landed at Seoul's Gimpo Airport (after an abortive attempt by the South Korean government to disguise the airport to make it appear that the plane had landed in North Korea).