North Korea’s ‘Comrade Joe’
U. S. SOLDIER DEFECTED ACROSS THE DMZ IN 1962
Joe Dresnok, whose death, aged 74, has been confirmed by his sons on North Korean television, was the last surviving American defector to North Korea.
In August, 1962, at the height of t he Cold War, Dresnok, a 21- year old U. S. army private ( first class), stunned the world by bolting across the demilitarized zone ( DMZ) that cuts Korea in two and defecting to the communist North.
He found himself in another — alien — world. North Korea, the most secretive nation on earth, was dour, inhospitable and still in ruins a decade after the Korean War. Four years later, realizing he made a mistake, Dresnok and three other American defectors tried to seek asylum in the Soviet embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
Swiftly handed back to the hard- line communist authorities, Dresnok feared he and the others would be shot. Instead they were converted to the North Korean way of life. Finding himself trapped, he decided that his only option was to fit in, to learn to love the country and the life it offered him.
“They might be a different race,” Dresnok said, “they might be a different colour. But God damn it, I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna learn their way of life.” He learned the language and customs and studied their revolutionary history. “Little by little, I came to understand the Korean people.”
Eventually finding acceptance, he was given parts in North Korean propaganda films, usually appearing as a brutal American.
But despite s pending more than half his life living, working, and bringing up a family in North Korea, “Comrade Joe,” as the Western media dubbed Dresnok, remained a man of permanently divided loyalties.
James Joseph Dresnok was born on Nov. 24, 1941, in Richmond, Va. His family was poor and split up when he was nine, and he moved with his father to Pennsylvania. Having lost contact with his mother and younger brother, Joe was placed in a foster home where he endured appalling conditions, dropped out of school, and joined the army the day after his 17th birthday in 1958.
After marrying young, Dresnok served two years in West Germany, returning to find that his wife had left him. In 1962 he was posted to South Korea, in a unit deployed along the DMZ. Facing a court- martial for leaving his base to visit a brothel, Dresnok deserted his post and at noon on Aug. 15, while his comrades were eating lunch, he seized a weapon and dashed across a minefield in broad daylight into North Korean territory.
It was a miracle that he made it: the four- km- wide strip bristled with two and a half million landmines.
Quickly apprehended, he was taken by train to Pyongyang for interrogation. Eventually he became a national hero and was provided with a modest government stipend and a small apartment. He married an Eastern European woman and they had two sons. When she died young, Dresnok married the daughter of a Korean woman and an African diplomat, with whom he had another son.
He taught English at a foreign language college in Pyongyang, and in retirement filled his days fishing, smoking and drinking heavily.
“I don’t have intentions of leaving,” he told a British television crew who made a film about him in 2008 called Crossing The Line. “Couldn’t give a s-- t if you put a billion damn dollars of gold on the table.”
In a video interview posted this month his sons said he died of a stroke last November.