The Marmot’s Hole

Being an expat in Korea sometimes can really jiggle your sense of reality, or as I once wrote over at my nuckleheaded effort at a “blovel,” Ahssa!:

“Being a successful ESL teacher at a Korean hagwon requires the willingness to rationalize catastrophic personal disasters out of existence.”

So pity poor Charles Jenkins, who fled to the DPRK in 1965 ’cause he didn’t want to get shot at in Vietnam and is only now on the verge of returning to America. So instead of maybe getting shot at in Vietnam, he got a living hell for about 40 years.

The saga of Charles Robert Jenkins began on an icy winter night almost four decades ago along the southern boundary of the bleak Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas. According to US military records released in 1996, Jenkins disappeared at 2:30am on January 5, 1965, while leading a four-man patrol in a wooded area about 10 kilometers south of Panmunjom.

Saying he heard a noise, the young Sergeant Jenkins signaled his three-man squad to halt while he went ahead to investigate the suspicious sound. His comrades waited, but their leader never returned. He had vanished into the shadowy realm of North Korea. Little is really known of what happened to him after that cold midwinter night.

At the time he went missing, Jenkins, then 24, was serving with the 8th Cavalry. He was a well-regarded army veteran, having enlisted in 1955 at the age of 15. Despite his long service record, the US Army did not believe he had been captured, but instead listed him as a defector to communist North Korea.

The army’s conclusion was based on four letters it says Jenkins left behind in his barracks. According to the US military, they strongly indicated that he was contemplating defection. In one letter, reportedly discovered in his footlocker and addressed to his mother, he wrote a farewell message. According to the US military, it read: “Forgive me, for I know what I must do. Tell my family I love them. Love, Charles.”

His family in North Carolina, who have never been allowed to see the letters, claim they must be fake, pointing out that Jenkins never used “Charles” but always either signed letters “Robert” or used his nickname “Super”. They have always maintained he is a captive and not a deserter, a claim the US military dismisses.

Three weeks after vanishing, North Korean state radio announced that Jenkins had defected to gain a “better life” in the communist state.

[...]

The ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan make it impossible for President Bush to be lenient with Jenkins. Even though Jenkins deserted in 1965, the statute of limitations is 40 years. Wartime desertion is punishable by long confinement or the death sentence. Senior military figures say that not to convene a court martial would be seen as betraying the millions of military personnel who perform their duties in dangerous circumstances and would erode military moral. However, some argue that living in North Korea for 38 years is probably punishment enough for any human being.

Of course, Jenkins was eventually tried and convicted of desertion by the U.S. military, only to be released soon after.

Being an English teacher in Korea myself, this bit always gives me the willies:

It was revealed that Hitomi Soga met Jenkins when she made a request to learn English. It appears Jenkins was working as an English teacher, possibly coaching spies.

I love my job, but how did those teaching sessions go? At least he didn’t have to teach kindy.