American Publishes Book About 40-Year Imprisonment in N. Korea

Charles Robert Jenkins, who has seen things in secretive North Korea that only a few Westerners have experienced, tells a story of despair and regret, redemption and love in his latest autobiography...

In 1965, U.S. Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, deserted his post in South Korea and fled to the communist North a move he now calls "the stupidest thing I have ever done." After spent nearly four decades inside North Korea, in 2004, Pyongyang finally let Jenkins leave. He chose to turn himself in to Japan. An English language version of Charles Robert Jenkins’ autobiography "Confession" has found a publisher and will be released in early 2008!

It is co-written by Jim Frederick, who interviewed Jenkins back in 2004 for a special report on Time Magazine. |


Charles Robert Jenkins (born February 18, 1940) is a former United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004 after deserting his unit and crossing the DMZ. Jenkins was born in Rich Square, North Carolina. He joined the army in 1958 and was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. He served in South Korea from 1960 to 1961, in Europe to 1964, and in South Korea again.

In South Korea, Jenkins was assigned to night patrols. As a result of fears that he would be transferred to combat duty in Vietnam, he started drinking alcohol. One night, after reportedly drinking 10 beers, he set off on his nightly patrol of the Demilitarized Zone. In the early morning of January 5, 1965, he told his patrol that he was going to investigate a noise. He subsequently crossed into North Korea and surrendered to forces there, in hopes of being sent to Russia and eventually America. Shortly thereafter, North Korean propaganda declared that a U.S. sergeant had defected, and broadcast alleged statements by the defector, reportedly in stilted English. The U.S. Army claimed Jenkins wrote four letters stating his intention to defect, the original copies of which were lost. His relatives maintained throughout his absence that he was abducted.


Information about Jenkins' status was unavailable outside North Korea for many years. Jenkins says he almost immediately regretted his defection. He says that he and three other U.S. servicemen, Larry Abshier, Jerry Parrish and James Dresnok, were quarantined in a one-room house with no running water until 1972, where they were made to study the Juche philosophy of Kim Il-sung. They were forced to memorize large passages of Kim's in Korean, and beaten frequently. He says that at one point in 1966, he found his way to the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang and requested asylum, which was denied. Eventually, Jenkins was placed in separate housing and began teaching English at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. His very thick North Carolina accent interfered with the government's goal of teaching spies English so that they could pass as South Korean, and when the North Koreans realized this, he was fired from that job.

In 1980, Jenkins was introduced to Hitomi Soga, a 21-year-old Japanese nurse who had been abducted by North Korean agents in 1978, along with her mother, during a search for Japanese citizens who could train future spies in Japanese language and culture. Soga's mother was never heard from again, and Soga was "given to" Jenkins. The North Koreans had paired a number of Asians with people of European descent, with the assumption that North Korean spies could pass more effectively as South Korean if they were of Eurasian heritage, which is not uncommon in South Korea, but almost unheard of in North Korea. Soga and Jenkins fell in love, and thirty-eight days after meeting, they were married. They had two daughters, Roberta Mika Jenkins (born 1983) and Brinda Carol Jenkins (born 1985, often called "Belinda" in English media). In 1982, Jenkins appeared in the propaganda film Nameless Heroes, which provided the first evidence that he was alive. The U.S. government did not publicly reveal this information until 1996.

Source: Japanprobe, Wikipedia

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