Posted on 12/06/2004 3:15:58 PM PST by DirtyHarryY2K
NEW YORK : A US Army deserter said the one thing he did right during his 40 years in North Korea was to leave the country, which was training his daughters as spies, in an interview.
"I made a big mistake of my life, but getting my daughters out of there, that was one right thing I did," Charles Robert Jenkins told Time magazine 40 years after he downed 10 beers and wandered across the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.
Jenkins, a GI from North Carolina, said North Korea wanted him to have Western-looking children that they could turn into spies.
Jenkins, 64, received lenient treatment from the US military after turning himself in. He surrendered to US army officers in Japan and received a 30-day sentence for desertion and aiding the enemy and a dishonorable discharge.
Jenkins deserted to North Korea as a 24-year-old sergeant in 1965, upon hearing that his unit would be shipped to Vietnam.
His wife Hitomi Soga was among Japanese abducted by North Korea during the Cold War to teach its spies Japanese. Soga was returned to Japan in 2002 amid a rapprochement between North Korea and Japan.
She was reunited with Jenkins in July in Jakarta, Indonesia. The family then came to Japan ostensibly for Jenkins' medical treatment.
Jenkins said North Korean officials did not like the look of a tattoo, which said "US Army" and removed it -- using scissors and a knife, but no anesthetic.
"The doctor told me that they save anesthetic for the battlefield, he told the newsweekly.
Jenkins dropped out of the seventh grade in Rich Square, North Carolina, and the military had determined that his intelligence was well below average, the New York-based magazine said.
He said that the North Koreans wanted to use daughters Brinda, 19 and Mika, 21, as spies.
"They wanted us to have children," Jenkins told Time, "so they could use them later."
He said that the government had already begun preparing them with language classes.
As for US travel, he said he only wants to visit his aging mother. - AFP
screw him - traitorous coward
He should back to his communist paradise ASAP.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
Send him back to N Korea.
I don't care how stupid he is. Good moral character can flourish in the poorest soil.
"The doctor told me that they save anesthetic for the battlefield, he told the newsweekly.
I hope Kim Jong Il saved that tattoo, because it's going to be stamped onto his backsides someday.
As far as Jenkins, he's living proof that desertion and defecting to the enemy is an incredibly stupid move. I'm glad the case is getting some amount of publicity, for just that reason.
Send him back to NK
His return brings with it information that should serve as a warning to all Americans, that North Korea is a monstrous country. It is better for us to have him back and whatever information he brought with him.
Please, somebody explain to me how one "wanders across" one of the most heavily fortified frontiers in human history --- Drunk!
Oh, and another question, would this guy have 're-defected' back to his home country if the NK's hadn't forcibly re-patriated his kidnapped Japanese wife?
It was probably only voluntary exile for the first day. After that I'm sure he would have loved to have returned even if it meant returning to a prison cell. I actually have more sympathy for this guy than for the deserters and cowards that went to Canada. He was a deserter and a coward himself afterall, but he has spent the last 40 years living in a totalitarian hell.
NK must have finally ran out of bones of dead GIs.
The Northern and Southern borders of the DMZ, 2 kilometers away from the MDL, are where the fences and fortifications start.
We've had patrols get lost and wind up in the North Korean zone before, and some guys have made a game of jumping over and back when they're playing the fool out on patrol.
I had this vision of something just short of "no-man's land". I would think that the DMZ is monitored at certain crossing points, like Panmunjom?
There are a couple farming villages in it, one on each side by Pan Mun Jom, with their rice fields extending right up to the border. The entire DMZ is patrolled by each side up to the MDL, and Pan Mun Jom itself, which used to be the only crossing point, has guard towers and a platoon of both North Korean (on their side, after the '76 axe murders) and UN Joint Security Force MP's. (At least it did while I was there '89-'91)
I'm going to have to retract my statement about no fortifications, as both GP Ouilette and GP Collier (2nd ID posts on the main supply road through the DMZ up to Pan Mun Jom) are sandbagged bunkers, more or less, and note that my entire DMZ experience was within the Pan Mun Jom area.
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