US Soldier Who Defected to North Korea Dies
Aformer US sergeant who defected to North Korea and became Pyongyang’s prisoner for nearly 40 years has died.
Charles Jenkins, 77, lived in Japan where he had settled with his family after his 2004 release. He was among four US soldiers who defected in the 1960s and later became North Korean film stars, but was the only one who was released. The others reportedly died in North Korea, including James Dresnok who was said to have died of a stroke in 2016. Mr Jenkins died on Sado island on Monday, where he was living with his wife Hitomi Soga, also a former prisoner of North Korea. He collapsed outside his home, Japanese media reports said, and later died of heart problems in hospital. His wife said that she was “very surprised” by his death and “cannot think of anything.
A plan that went wrong
Mr Jenkins had led an extraordinary but also difficult life in North Korea, which he would later chronicle in a memoir and several interviews.
In 1965, while stationed with the US Army in South Korea by the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), Mr Jenkins decided to abandon his unit and defect to the North, fearing he would be killed in patrols or sent to fight in the Vietnam War.
He said he thought that once in North Korea, he could seek asylum with the Russian embassy, and eventually return to the US in a prisoner swap.
One January night, Mr Jenkins said he downed several beers, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to North Korean soldiers there. He was only 24 years old.
But Russia did not grant him or the other Americans asylum. Instead, they were held as prisoners by the North Koreans. “Thinking back now, I was a fool. If there’s a God in the heaven, he carried me through it,” said Mr Jenkins in a 2005 interview with US broadcaster CBS. The men were forced to study the teachings of then-leader Kim Il-sung; did translation work; and taught English. But they also became minor celebrities when they acted in North Korean propaganda films, starring as Western villains.
Mr Jenkins said his captors often beat him, and conducted medical procedures on him that were sometimes unnecessary or brutal, including cutting off a US Army tattoo without anaesthesia, an experience which Mr Jenkins had described as “hell”.