The Red Army Faction members - Takahiro Konishi, Shiro Akagi, Moriaki Wakabayashi and Kimihiro Abe -have been on the international wanted list since 1970, when they seized control of the Yodogo, a Japan Airlines jet, with samurai swords and pipe bombs.

To the embarrassment of the Japanese government, they diverted the plane to communist North Korea, where they were initially treated as heroes of the revolution.

But they are now pleading to come home, having long outstayed their welcome in an impoverished country that is increasingly desperate to jettison its cold war baggage.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, knows the Yodogo group must return if he is to secure economic aid during a historic first summit with the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, next week.

The hijacker's families have already started to return. Tomorrow, five of their children will fly back to a homeland they have never seen. With them will be one of the hijacker's wives, Takako Konishi, who will be arrested as soon as she sets foot off the plane.

The four men are packing their bags and are presenting their return, which could come within the year, as a sacrifice to ease tensions in north-east Asia.

"To remove the threat of North Korea being targeted as part of the US 'war on terror', we request a return to Japan," the group said in a recent statement.

The Yodogo hijacking is etched into the memory of millions of Japanese. For the authorities, it was a humiliation they have never forgotten or forgiven. For many student radicals, it heralded a bloody shift from domestic peace protests to armed struggle on an international stage.

Globally, the incident ushered in a decade now synonymous with hijacks and kidnappings as the Red Army Faction's various splinter groups became as feared as Black September, the Baader Meinhof gang (also called the Red Army Faction) and the PLO.

The Yodogo hijackers have become almost mythical figures, their lives in one of the world's most reclusive nations shrouded in secrecy and obfuscated by cold war propaganda.

But, with a return looming, the group's closest associates are painting a picture of a botched hijacking, reluctant residence in North Korea, and at least one secret negotiation with the Japanese government to return home.

Takaya Shiomi, who founded the Red Army Faction in August 1969, says the hijackers never intended to go to North Korea.

After storming the cockpit of the Yodogo, they were misled about the range of the plane, forced to refuel in Fukuoka and then tricked into flying to Seoul. After swapping their 129 passengers for a single hostage - the Japanese transport minister - they eventually made their way to Pyongyang, where they wrongly assumed they would be allowed to fly on to Havana.

"The hijack was a success, but the result was a failure," says Shiomi, who was jailed for 20 years for masterminding the Yodogo incident, though he did not take part in it. "We had always planned to go to Cuba, but that hurt North Korean pride. When the Yodogo hijackers arrived in Pyongyang, they said they wanted to stay. But that was a lie. They had no choice."

To the outside world, however, it appeared a spectacular success. The Japanese government had been humiliated. The perpetrators were rewarded with military medals, a personal audience with North Korea's president, Kim Il-sung, and luxury accommodation at the "village of the revolution" on the outskirts of Pyongyang.

They even had marriages arranged for them with brides secretly flown in from Japan between 1975 and 1978. When the wives were discovered, they were linked to a series of abductions, counterfeiting and espionage.

"The wives were at the heart of Yodogo group's international operations," said a Japanese prosecution lawyer last week, during the trial of Emiko Kaneko, the wife of Shiro Akagi, who returned to Japan last September. "They threatened national security and the standing of Japan in the international community."

Despite these allegations, the only charges that the government has been able to press on Ms Kaneko are lying on a job application form and failing to return her passport when requested.

"It is a political trial," said Ms Kaneko. "But I accept it. All we can do is hang our heads and admit that what we did was wrong even though it felt right at the time. We were idealistic students who wanted to change the world and challenge a USA determined to wage war."

She and the other wives face 10 months in prison. Their husbands will probably be sentenced to more than 10 years, though they have tried to bargain for an early return and a more lenient punishment.

Officially, the government refuses to negotiate with "criminals", but the Guardian has learned that the former chief cabinet secretary Hiromu Nonaka held a 90-minute meeting with Mr Konishi during a 1998 trip to Pyongyang. But any deal that might have been on the table then is gone.

Given the rapid opening of North Korea, the hijackers will have to come home on the Japanese government's terms.

Their former leader, Shiomi, says any further wait by the Yodogo group is merely delaying the inevitable.

"In 1970, I got 20 years and they escaped to Pyongyang. I envied them then, but maybe I was the lucky one. My time in prison is over. The rest have it all still waiting for them."