Posted on 06/02/2004 8:40:24 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea's mystery guest
By Sarah Buckley
BBC News Online
The last person you might expect to find in North Korea is an American soldier, especially one who has chosen to stay there voluntarily.
But Charles Robert Jenkins has been in the isolated North since 1965. When offered a ticket to Tokyo by visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last month, he refused.
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| No-one knows for sure how Mr Jenkins arrived in North Korea |
He desperately wants to be reunited with his Japanese wife, who returned to her homeland in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted kidnapping her and several others in the 1970s.
But if he joined her, he would risk arrest by the US military, which accuses him of desertion.
The 62-year-old American GI disappeared from duty on 5 January 1965, when he was serving in South Korea to help guard the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
He was leading a patrol near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), when he told his platoon he was going to investigate a noise. He never came back.
Days later, his arrival in North Korea was broadcast over the loudspeakers on the DMZ, according to Nobuharu Kumada, a Japanese man who says he served with Mr Jenkins.
| It's too many unanswered questions |
| Charles Jenkins' nephew, James Hyman |
The US military has said Mr Jenkins left behind four notes which stated his intention to defect.
"I am sorry for the trouble I will cause you. I know what I have to do. I am going to North Korea. Tell family I love them very much. Love, Charles," one of the notes, allegedly left near his footlocker, is reported to have said.
But James Hyman, a nephew in North Carolina, said that the military has no hard evidence of his uncle's supposed defection, and believes instead he was kidnapped.
He pointed out that the army lost the original copies of the notes.
"Of course they weren't able to be found. There were no four letters," he told BBC News Online.
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| The separation has been tough on his wife, Hitomi Soga |
[The quoted note] "was signed 'Love, Charles,' and the family didn't know him as Charles. They knew him as Robert or 'Super'," Mr Hyman said.
He said his uncle was a loyal serviceman who would not have deserted.
"Every time I saw him he always had his uniform on," Mr Hyman, who was four years old when he last saw Mr Jenkins.
Life in the North
The only person who knows the truth is Mr Jenkins himself, and he has given very few media interviews.
He told a Japanese magazine in 2002 that he was living happily in North Korea, and thanked the country's leader Kim Jong-il for his good treatment.
But it is difficult to ascertain how far Mr Jenkins' comments reflect the truth in a country which operates close surveillance and does not tolerate disloyalty.
North Korea's propensity for disinformation could also explain the incriminating radio broadcasts, and his appearance, according to the Pentagon, in a North Korean propaganda film called Nameless Heroes.
Mr Jenkins met his wife, Hitomi Soga, in North Korea, as her English teacher. Mr Jenkins told the Japanese magazine they were drawn together by their mutual loneliness, and they married in 1980 - a union, he said, which brought them great happiness.
| JAPAN'S MISSING |
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| Snatched in the '70s and '80s Used as cultural trainers for N Korean spies Five allowed home in 2002 Five children now freed from N Korea Eight said to be dead, others missing |
This domestic contentment was shattered in October 2002, when the Japanese Government arranged for Ms Soga, and four other kidnap victims, to visit their home country for the first time since their abduction in 1978.
Mr Jenkins said he had only learned the truth of his wife's history two weeks before.
The homecoming was supposed to be brief, but Tokyo never allowed the five to return, and went on to campaign for their families to join them.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi succeeded in bringing about that reunion for the families of four of the abductees last month, after talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
But he failed to persuade Mr Jenkins, and the couple's teenage daughters, Belinda and Mika, to come to Japan too.
The Pentagon has charged Mr Jenkins with desertion and five other related charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico told the BBC that the alleged letters and propaganda broadcasts amounted to "pretty strong evidence".
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| Mr Jenkins and his daughters have not seen Hitomi for 20 months |
Media reports say Mr Jenkins could face up to five years in jail if convicted. Lieutenant Plexico would not be drawn on possible penalties.
"It all depends upon a lot of circumstances and what arrangements are made in advance. There's too many variables to give an honest answer," he said.
Tokyo has pledged to lobby Washington to pardon Mr Jenkins, but the US Government has not given any indication that it will listen.
Mr Hyman said he had made it his life's work to help his uncle, and was confident he would eventually be cleared.
"The lawyer that I'm talking with (says) it's very probable.
"He has done numerous presidential pardonings and he says this is very do-able... it's too many unanswered questions."
Ping!
I say let Mr. Jenkins stay in Korea they seem to deserve each other.
The North Koreans had four Americans, Jenkins among them, they called "fortune's favorites." All four had walked off guardposts/patrols in the DMZ back in the 60s. Jenkins is the only one I've heard anything about for several years.
Has anybody ever seen the movie "Nameless Heroes?"
But 39 years??? In North Korea??? Men-tal.
On the other hand, if in fact he truly was kidnapped somehow along the DMZ at night by a nation known for kidnapping, the man indeed has had one life of injustice.
It is true one kid, US Army, who went north in 1982 (never to be heard from again save a few pro-DPRK press conferences) was rumored to have fallen head over heals over a beautiful North Korean agent the DPRK had planted in a pub off-base near his post on the DMZ. Once her work was reportedly done, she disapppeared entirely.
I personally think none of this is clear yet.
Ah hell, let him go to Japan. Just dont ever let him step foot back in America.
Any info on these people will be appreciated.
The Pentagon has released the names of four US soldiers who deserted to N Korea in 1960's:
Abshier, Dresnok and Jenkins are believed to have participated as actors in a N Korean movie, Unsung Heroes. The black-and-white movie, apparently filmed over several years in the early 1980s, portrays North Korea's counterintelligence efforts, in particular Kirkland's Big Boy, during the Korean War. The Big Boy was a CCRAK operation which was in actuality run by N Korean counter-spy agents.
On Feb. 2, 1989, a N Korean defector reported to the US 501st MIS that 11 US POWs were working as English teachers and translators at a N Korean military foreign language school in Pyongyang.
Two other American soldiers deserted to N Korea after the War and are believed to have died there. They are Pvt. Joseph White and Ryan Sup Chung. White was a member of the 2nd Infantry Division, and Chung was with a unit based in Germany. White lived in St. Louis, left his unit in August 1982 and apparently drowned in 1985 in N Korea.
About 8,100 Americans are officially listed as unaccounted for from the Korean War. N Korea denies holding any American captives.
Thanks. However, I know all of those cases backwards and forwards.
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