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N Korea 'kidnapped Thai woman' Anocha Panjoy's family have not seen her for nearly 30 years Thailand's government is investigating claims that a Thai woman missing since 1978 was kidnapped by North Korean agents and is now living there. Relatives of the woman, Anocha Panjoy, were alerted to her possible fate by an article written by a US man who recently left North Korea. Pyongyang has already "informally denied" abducting the woman, said Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkon. North Korea has previously admitted kidnapping Japanese and South Koreans. The missing Thai woman, Anocha Panjoy, 51, lived in Sankampaeng district in...

Four decades after he vanished into North Korea, an American soldier today pleaded guilty before a US military court to desertion and tearfully recounted how depression and fear of death drove him to defect. Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, now a frail 64-year-old, was given a light 30-day jail term in a case that had pitted American demands for justice with Tokyo’s call for leniency so Jenkins could settle down in Japan with his Japanese wife. In gripping court-martial testimony that shed light on a long-standing Cold War mystery, Jenkins said that he never intended to stay in North Korea, and...

RALEIGH, N.C. - A U.S. Army deserter who spent decades in North Korea says his communist keepers abused him and controlled every aspect of his life, down to telling him how often to have sex. "It was the worst mistake anyone ever made," Charles Jenkins said. "In words, I cannot express the feelings I have towards North Korea, the harassment I got, the hard life." In an interview airing Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes, Jenkins said he was given no painkillers when a tattoo on his forearm that read "U.S. Army" was cut off with a scalpel and scissors. ...........

In his first U.S. television interview, the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea speaks for the first time about the abuse and control inflicted on him by the communist dictatorship over his nearly 40 years there. Charles Robert Jenkins tells Scott Pelley he Êhad a "U.S. Army" tattoo sliced off without anesthetic and was even told how often to have sex by his communist "leaders" in a 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. In 1965, Jenkins was posted along the hostile border between North and South...

Army Deserter Charles Jenkins Apologizes Associated Press June 21, 2005 WELDON, N.C. - On one of his final days in the United States, U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins apologized for his more than 40-year-old decision to abandon his post for life in North Korea. Jenkins reportedly was to leave his boyhood home of North Carolina as early as Tuesday morning for an afternoon flight from Dulles International Airport to Tokyo and then head to Japan island where he now lives. But his sister's house in Weldon, where he held a news conference Monday, remained quiet early Tuesday. At that news...

Army Deserter Charles Jenkins Apologizes for Deserting Army for North Korea The Associated Press Published: Jun 21, 2005 WELDON, N.C. (AP) - On one of his final days in the United States, U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins apologized for his more than 40-year-old decision to abandon his post for life in North Korea. Jenkins reportedly was to leave his boyhood home of North Carolina as early as Tuesday morning for an afternoon flight from Dulles International Airport to Tokyo and then head to Japan island where he now lives. But his sister's house in Weldon, where he held a news...

Deserter Charles Jenkins Visits U.S. Associated Press June 13, 2005 TOKYO - Charles Jenkins, a U.S. soldier who deserted his Army unit 40 years ago and fled to North Korea, and his Japanese wife left their home in northern Japan on Monday for his first visit to the United States since he turned himself in late last year. Jenkins was scheduled to fly to Washington D.C. on Tuesday after spending a night in Tokyo. He has said he has no plans to move to the United States, but has repeatedly said he wants to see his 91-year-old mother, who lives...

Rich Square, N.C. -- Despite its pacifist Quaker beginnings, this soybean farming community is not shy about celebrating its military history. Bracketing the two-stoplight town are iron plaques honoring the Army colonel who guided the first automated aircraft landing and the general who led Marines in the first Gulf War. There was a time when some could have imagined a similar honor for Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, who as a freckle-faced, jug-eared boy stitched soldier patches from Kellogg's Cornflakes boxes onto his clothes, prowled the woods with his BB gun for "commies" and lied about his age to join the...

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...

CAMP ZAMA (Dec. 6) - Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins arrived at south Korea's Camp Clinch in 1964. Although he had already served in the Army for six years and had overseas postings, this was by far his most perilous assignment. The Americans patrolled along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated the two Koreas and occasionally drew hostile fire from North Korean soldiers across the border—even though an official cease-fire had been in place since 1953. Jenkins had served with enough distinction to find himself leading reconnaissance missions. But he couldn't cope with the danger. A seventh-grade dropout from Rich Square,...

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CAMP ZAMA, Japan - Free for the first time in nearly four decades, U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins sobbed with joy as he was released from a military jail on Saturday after serving 25 days for abandoning his squadron and crossing the border into North Korea (news - web sites) in 1965. The frail 64-year-old, still in uniform and carrying a heavy duffel bag, broke down in tears after arriving at this U.S. Army base, where he was flown by Blackhawk helicopter after completing his sentence at a nearby naval prison. When asked how he felt, he told The Associated...

Nov. 26, 2004 - After 40 years in North Korea and less than one month in a U.S. military jail, Army deserter Charles Jenkins will become a free man on Saturday. The release of Jenkins, 64, ends the longest desertion case on U.S. record. Although American deserters from the 1940s are still on the military's wanted list, none has turned himself in after as long an absence as Jenkins, who abandoned his unit along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea on Jan. 5, 1965. He turned himself in to the Army on Sept. 11 and pleaded guilty at...

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...

AMP 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...

(AP) Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins pleaded guilty Wednesday to deserting the U.S. Army in 1965, saying that he wanted to avoid "hazardous" duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam. The plea was apparently part of a bargain with U.S. military officials to win the frail 64-year-old a lesser sentence. Jenkins vanished from his post and lived in North Korea for 39 years. Jenkins also pleaded guilty to aiding the enemy by teaching North Koreans English in the 1980s. He denied that he advocated the overthrow of the United States and pleaded not guilty to charges of making disloyal statements. Jenkins...

Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins is about to get his day in court. Jenkins, accused of abandoning his South Korea post in 1965 and defecting to communist North Korea, will face a general court-martial at Camp Zama, Japan, beginning Nov. 3, said Maj. John Amberg, a U.S. Army Japan spokesman. Jenkins, 64, has been charged with desertion, aiding the enemy, soliciting other servicemembers to desert and encouraging disloyalty. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum penalty if convicted of desertion during wartime is death. Sentences in times of peace range from life in prison at hard labor to a...

Camp Zama, Japan 11 Sep 2004, 12:07 UTC An alleged U.S. Army deserter, who spent almost 40 years in communist North Korea, voluntarily surrendered on Saturday at an American base in Japan. With a long snappy salute, alleged deserter Sgt. Charles Jenkins entered this U.S. Army camp, telling an officer, Lt. Col. Paul Nigara that he was reporting for duty. Sgt. Jenkins, accompanied by his family, arrived at Camp Zama military base two hours after he was discharged from a Tokyo hospital, where he had been a patient since July. The 64-year-old quickly traded his suit and tie for an...

ZAMA, Sept. 11, Kyodo - (EDS: RECASTING 3RD, 4TH GRAFS) Accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins turned himself over Saturday to the U.S. military at a U.S. base near Tokyo to face charges filed in 1965, a big step toward resolving the U.S.-Japan diplomatic issue of what to do with the husband of a Japanese abductee repatriated from North Korea in 2002. Jenkins, 64, is expected to soon begin legal procedures to avoid imprisonment by seeking a plea bargain for a dishonorable discharge. He is likely to provide the U.S. military with information such as the whereabouts of U.S....

TOKYO — Alleged U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins, now in Tokyo, has told Japanese officials that two of a number of former U.S. soldiers in North Korea have already died, Japanese government sources said Wednesday.