The New York Times ran a fuller description of the testimony offered by Sgt. Charles Jenkins and wife Soga Hitomi during his court-martial at Camp Zama, Japan. Even if only half of it is accurate, it’s stil an amazing look at life on the other side of the DMZ. Stuff like this:
In rare testimony on Wednesday about life in North Korea, Sergeant Jenkins and his wife said their lives had been controlled by omnipresent “political supervisors.”
Mrs. Jenkins said her supervisor prepared her for her first meeting with Sergeant Jenkins in June 1980 by suggesting that “I was to marry” him.
“Little by little, we started to love each other,” Mrs. Jenkins said, noting that they decided to get married barely one month after meeting. “My husband did not like North Korea, nor did I.”
One day, when Sergeant Jenkins was a bachelor, living with three other defectors, he took advantage of the rare absence of their political supervisor to search their house. In the attic, he recalled, they found tape recorders. In each room, they found a microphone.
The Americans, he said, were forced for 10 hours a day to study and memorize the writings of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, writings that he called “class struggle from the perspective of a crazy man.”
Six months ago, while he was still in North Korea, such a statement could have earned Sergeant Jenkins execution. He said here on Wednesday that if he had once criticized Mr. Kim or his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, there would have been no forgiveness. “Go dig your own hole, because you are gone,” he testified. “I have seen that done.”
The Flying Yangban, however, would be pleased to know that Jenkins got through his 40 years in the North with the help of James Clavell:
Deprived of books, Sergeant Jenkins said he had so treasured a banned a copy of the historical novel “Shogun” that he read it 20 times. In later years, he tinkered with a state-issue, single-channel North Korean radio so that he could secretly listen to the BBC and Voice of America.
Now he can watch the mini-series on DVD! Anyway, in closing, Jenkins gave us this final description of life in the Workers’ Paradise and its Dear Leader:
“After living 40 years in North Korea, there is no freedom like the freedom in the United States,” he said. Referring to Kim Jong Il, he added, “People in North Korea suffer under a system that is evil and is run by a man who is evil to his bones.”
English teachers here in South Korea might get a kick out of this, found in another NYT piece on Jenkins:
In two week teaching stints every month at the academy, he was restricted to his classroom and to a spartan room, with only a bed and a desk. Asked by the judge if he was under duress, Sgt. Jenkins testified that he once refused to teach.
???They took me home, tied me up, and beat the hell out of me,???? he testified. ???I didn?????t go to the University for 20 days, my face looked so bad.????
Refusal to teach, he said, would mean that he and his wife would be sent into internal exile where harsh rural living conditions prevailed. The teaching job lasted for five years until the North Koreans ended the program, saying that they did not like “my pronunciation.”
UPDATE: Jeff in Pusan contributes his own thoughts on Jenkins:
At his sentencing, his defense lawyer, Capt. James Culp, said four decades in North Korea was punishment enough. I would have to agree with the defense lawyer. However, he could not just be let off with a “time heals all wounds” type of sentence. I think 30 days in jail is a fair and reasonable sentence as it show leniency to someone who has suffered a great deal, but also serves the needs of justice. Justice tempered with a healthy does of mercy is a good thing in appropriate circumstances, and I believe this is just such a circumstance.
8 Comments
I have no sympathy for him…….but….maybe just a tiny bit.
He has suffered much for such a terribly, wrong decision.
If I were God or a judge, I’d order him to tell his full story, from defection to leaving North Korea, to historians the military often uses (historians who work for the military but usually aren’t considered to be “beholden” to the military). These historians are good at digging for the facts and “reporting them.”
To put it better, I’d make the guy tell his story starting with the bad choice and the reasons he had for making it back then, then go into what hell he saw in North Korea, not just in relation to himself, but to all he saw in North Korea (the plight of average North Koreans too), and then let him go.
I wouldn’t even put him in prison while he told his story. I’d let him live comfortably on a US base in Japan or in the US if he has family he’d like to be near here. He has suffered enough.
I just want the bare bones of his story and what he witnessed in NK to be told soon.
And I don’t want that story tarnished even a tiny bit by the pure academics in Asian Studies programs or whatnot in universities.
Yeah, guys. I suppose being born dumb, poor trash in Rich Square, North Carolina was his bad luck. He’d been better off if he’d been born to an American politician, given a legacy grant to attend an Ivy League university, and allowed to jump ahead of 60 other applicants in applying to the Air National Guard (along with two other sons of politicians and seven Dallas Cowboys in his entering class), and all the while supporting troop deployments to a war he wouldn’t have to fight in if he didn’t want to (basically acting as a chicken-hawk).
But, I suppose either way, he would not have done “hazardous duty” in Korea or Vietnam. Just from reading this article though, I think the latter route is preferable!
(Just Kidding!)
Considering the war in Iraq and the cases of deserting soldiers, this case might spell trouble. Legally, this man committed an intentional crime, and he was sentenced as if he was just negligent. Morally, making an exception for him when so many others have and had similar feelings undermines any moral arguments I learned or believe.
He should be returned to Pyongyang, because one choice is all a citizen gets. Once you decide to leave, you just can’t go back when you want. Robert Kim can’t keep making trips across the pond every time he gets a job interview. Pyongyang doesn’t wnat him back because he’s great propaganda. Look! The coward goes back to his cowardly people, and they pity him! What a bunch of losers! All those schmucks have is greed, and we still got that Jenkins loser to come over. We brutalize our people, and they love us! Give them all our cowards quick! Citizenship is not a right, its earned. And, it is revocable, and not to be bestowed upon adults but once. Jenkins is North Korean, now. Give him back.
I wonder what many of the people who post on this blog have done to “earn” their citizenship? Hmmmm? I guess it was getting born where we were born! I don’t know why Infidel’s moral beliefs need to be so unforgiving. Take the guy’s case in context. There are some mitigating circumstances (like say, his past 40 years living in the DPRK!) for chrissakes. How many bright ideas did you have when you were 24 years old? I don’t know… maybe a harsher vengence for his bad decision would have served all of us better?
Anyway, the only people who have “earned” their citizenship I know are legal immigrants who bust their asses trying to sumersault legal hurdles of host countries to get a decent education, or the chance to own a house and a Ford Bronco (try doing that in India or Pakistan!)
Have you done anything to justify your citizenship other than waste tax dollars? Have you ever served in the military, and then continued in government service, as members of my family have? Have you ever joined the Peace Corps? Did volunteer service, or even helped an old lady across the street? Have you ever done missionary work?
Yes, I have little compassion for his suffering, because there are plenty of people who stay loyal to themselves, their families, and their communities who don’t run to NK! Do we condone this man’s actions because he is stupid or just because its ideologically convenient (that may be where your values lie). Compassion and pity are crueler than duty or honor, because destroy social bonds based on honesty and loyalty. They are the nuclear options, which highlight human solidarity over survival. There’s unity in the charnel house, too. Mercy on the battlefield is usually deadly. Deserters should not be trusted, and although I do not support capital punishment, the sentence for desertion should equal the substance of a life. This man can serve the rest of his life, and he might earn my forgiveness.
This is a legal case, not a situation for compassion. If you think the UCMJ is cruel, or that judges lack compassion, then lobby Congress. Try and get a majority to agree with you! But don’t advocate watering down legal decisions or supporting the watering down to fit your religious notions of compassion and forgiveness. Forgiveness comes after contrite entreaty, not before, or so I was taught. And, even if youare forgiven, you are always guilty, just pardoned and useless to society.
Laws are made and enforced to set policy, deter offenders, punish, and induce reflection. I am simply pointing out that this case undermines those functions. And, it is a disservice to all those who are serving, have served, and will serve in any capacity beyond the narrow self-interest most citizens practice. Stop trying to conceive of the military as civilian life with bad haircuts and food and an occasional dangerous moment. Its a counter-culture that, whose members are sacrificed to protect the greater whole. Its not job training, social experimentation, or the place to find a spouse.
Also, I’ll accept a dissenting opinion from a vet (or friends still serving), but not from civs on this issue. This is a case where experience is required.
If any of our military in Iraq desert to the enemy (not while under fire!) and then manage to keep their heads and limbs unsevered while spending 40 years in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, I think I’d be inclined to feel they had already served a good portion of the long, hard-labor sentence they would deserve. Of course, if they don’t serve out their 40 years in a hellhole, then we should should force them to make up the difference in hellholes of our own devising.
I suppose six years in the Army Reserve wouldn’t count by your reckoning, so of course my opinion doensn’t mean shit (especially since all I got out of my service were bad haircuts and food and the occasional dangerous moment!) And, yes, you got me pegged: I hate honesty and loyalty. You know you’re right and I needed the lecture…
I find the Jenkins story fascinating. Too bad I can’t say the same for his testimony and reminisces. Until he is finally out of US custody for good, we will never really know his real feelings about his time in North Korea. He did what many in his situation do—embellished facts because he thought that’s what his captors wanted to hear, and he was angling for a lighter, more lenient sentence.
It will be interesting to hear what he has to say once he is safely settled in Japan. I can just see a Japanese publisher approachig the both of them with a sweet book deal…