Charles R. Jenkins in Tokyo in September, when he surrendered to the United States Army.
Posted on 11/04/2004 6:17:02 AM PST by OESY
CAMP ZAMA, Japan, Nov. 3 - Charles Robert Jenkins, the Army sergeant who left his soldiers and walked into North Korea in 1965 to avoid combat duty in Vietnam, received a light sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in a court-martial here to desertion and aiding the enemy.
After hearing bleak testimony about his harsh life in North Korea, an Army judge seemed to accept a defense lawyer's argument that Sergeant Jenkins, 64, had "already suffered 40 years of confinement." The judge, Col. Denise Vowell, then demoted him to private, stripped him of four decades of back pay and benefits, and gave him a dishonorable discharge and a 30-day jail sentence.
The prosecutor, Capt. Seth Cohen, had called for a tougher sentence, evoking, in a veiled way, the need for military discipline while American soldiers are fighting in Iraq. Referring to noncommissioned officers like Sergeant Jenkins, he said, "We can't have soldiers going into the field fearing that their N.C.O.'s will abandon them, especially given the state of the world today."
But the trial and sentencing seemed to reflect American political needs to mollify Japanese public opinion, which has been moved by the drama of the American defector from North Carolina and his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga Jenkins, whom he met in North Korea a few years after North Korean agents had kidnapped her from a Japanese island in 1978.
Apparently to minimize American media attention, the one-day military trial took place as votes were being counted in the American presidential election.
Massaging Japanese public opinion is important to Washington, which wants to move the Army's First Corps from the state of Washington to this base, already the headquarters of the United States Army in Japan. By receiving a 30-day sentence, Private Jenkins is now detained in Japan, avoids return to the United States for incarceration, and can receive weekly visits from his Japanese wife and their two North Korean-born daughters.
To further soften Japanese opinion, military officers gave a slide show of the detention facility, which is on a United States Navy installation at Yokosuka. Drawing oohs and aahs from Japanese reporters, the slides showed rows of exercise bicycles, a living room-style visitation room, and close-ups of the food, including a large photo of a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top.
"It's not Club Med, but it is not hard labor either," said Capt. King H. Dietriech, commander of the Navy facility. He also stressed that "there will be no special treatment for Private Jenkins."
For the American, one more month of controls should not be a big strain.
Mrs. Jenkins was returned to Japan in 2002 along with four other Japanese who had been abducted. Japanese diplomats arranged with North Korea for Sergeant Jenkins and their two daughters to leave for reunification with Mrs. Jenkins this past July, and the United States Army began court-martial proceedings against him in September.
In rare testimony on Wednesday about life in North Korea, Sergeant Jenkins and his wife said their lives had been controlled by omnipresent "political supervisors."
Mrs. Jenkins said her supervisor prepared her for her first meeting with Sergeant Jenkins in June 1980 by suggesting that "I was to marry" him.
"Little by little, we started to love each other," Mrs. Jenkins said, noting that they decided to get married barely one month after meeting. "My husband did not like North Korea, nor did I."
One day, when Sergeant Jenkins was a bachelor, living with three other defectors, he took advantage of the rare absence of their political supervisor to search their house. In the attic, he recalled, they found tape recorders. In each room, they found a microphone.
The Americans, he said, were forced for 10 hours a day to study and memorize the writings of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, writings that he called "class struggle from the perspective of a crazy man."
Six months ago, while he was still in North Korea, such a statement could have earned Sergeant Jenkins execution. He said here on Wednesday that if he had once criticized Mr. Kim or his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, there would have been no forgiveness. "Go dig your own hole, because you are gone,'' he testified. "I have seen that done."
With little coaxing by the defense counsel, Capt. James D. Culp, Mrs. Jenkins painted a portrait of a broken industrial society where living standards had regressed to the 19th century.
With no heat or electricity in their Pyongyang house during most of the winter, she said that to sleep in the cold "we would wear everything we owned in terms of clothing when we went to bed." Warm water never flowed from faucets. Warm baths were rare luxuries.
Reading at night was by candlelight. When the candle wick had burned, she said, her husband "would collect the melted wax in a can and use it for a homemade candle." With the food rationing system breaking down, she said, they grew vegetables and raised chickens in their yard, but the family often went to bed hungry.
The family was forbidden to leave the house without their political supervisor. Coils of barbed wire surrounded their house, she told the court.
Deprived of books, Sergeant Jenkins said he had so treasured a banned a copy of the historical novel "Shogun" that he read it 20 times. In later years, he tinkered with a state-issue, single-channel North Korean radio so that he could secretly listen to the BBC and Voice of America.
Such surreptitious acts of rebellion carried the sanction, Mrs. Jenkins said, of being "thrown out of the city, and taken to a remote mountain area to live."
With anti-American hostility acute, Sergeant Jenkins recalled that one day he was taken to a hospital where orderlies held down his forearm as a doctor, without using anesthesia, cut off a piece of skin tattooed, "U.S. Army."
In his closing statement, he apologized to soldiers under his command, to the Army and to the nation.
"After living 40 years in North Korea, there is no freedom like the freedom in the United States," he said. Referring to Kim Jong Il, he added, "People in North Korea suffer under a system that is evil and is run by a man who is evil to his bones."
After one day in North Korea, he said, he realized that he had made a terrible mistake.
Noting that he was forbidden to write to his family in America while in North Korea, he said, "I am deeply sorry to my family, who suffered in silence for 40 years."
From North Carolina, his younger sister, Pat Harrell, said by telephone that she would tell the news to their 91-year-old mother. "This has been 40 years in coming, in believing that one day I would hear from him,'' Mrs. Harrell said. "I never gave up hope. Now I am just waiting to able to touch him."
Charles R. Jenkins in Tokyo in September, when he surrendered to the United States Army.
Wah.
With those ears, he could have flown out. He spent his time in hell and the old goat should have been given a break.
You deserted your country don't ask for sympathy from anyone other than the New York Slimes.
We should send this article over to the DU so that they make travel plans to North Korea...
One day for 40 years of Hell.
I hope he writes a book telling the world what it is like to be a N Korean
God Bless our Korean Vets for keeping S Korea free of the evils of communism
Its amazing how many people in America wish this on their own country....they dont have a clue
as to what it will really mean if the Soros of this world and the Kerry's of this world have their way..
BTW JOHN F KERRY was a bigger traitor than this man....what is his punishment going to be?
and when?
After one day in North Korea, he said, he realized that he had made a terrible mistake.
All liberals in America should experience this...(for a day)
I guess he found out the hard way...it wasn't the paradise he thought it would be.
"All liberals in America should experience this...(for a day)"
Why not 40 years, and be rid of them ?
This has to go down as one if the worst career moves ever.
He was 20 years old and made a terrible mistake. He spent 40 years in tyranny. I don't feel sorry for him, but at least he is letting the truth be known about life in N. Korea. He totally shines light on Pres. Bush claim of N Korea being evil. This is a good.
tsk tsk - he got hungry, cold, and sick --- so now he was hoping for nanny carter to be still in power and crawling to the communists in abject apology.
Well traitor, carter is NOT in power and the communists/socialists/monarchist/anarchists are going to be destro.... oops ... too rough of language for most of our republican politicians .... They will be .... errrr ... something anyway.
I think you put this story in perspective nicely.
Lived a tough life. Looks closer to 84 than 64. Decisions and actions have consequences. He now has a story that needs to be told. Good luck to him.
Sad story. I hope he lives a few more years and can contribute something useful to Japanese society.
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