Deserter tells of beatings and 16-hour propaganda lessons

Far from finding a communist paradise, four American soldiers suspected of deserting to North Korea in the 1960s were forced to live together in a tiny house under constant surveillance, to scrounge for food and study the works of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung for up to 16 hours a day.

Two died before ever again seeing the outside world.

Shedding new light on a bizarre Cold War tale, former US Army sergeant Charles Jenkins told a court martial in Japan that he and the others lived for years as a tightly knit – if not always harmonious – group honed by hardship, poverty and frequent beatings.

Jenkins surrendered to US military authorities in September after nearly 40 years in the secretive Stalinist state. He was convicted of desertion and aiding the enemy and began serving a 30-day sentence on Wednesday.

His confession detailed decades of virtual imprisonment for himself and the others, Private Larry Abshier of Urbana, Illinois, who the military says went missing in 1962 at the age of 19; Cpl Jerry Parrish of Morganfield, Kentucky, accused of deserting in 1963 at 19; and James Dresnock of Richmond, Virginia, a private when he crossed into North Korea in 1962.

“Of the three other Americans who lived in North Korea with me, only Dresnock and I are left,” Jenkins, now 64, said in a dramatic statement read to the court by his military lawyer. A copy of the unsworn statement and another document outlining the reasons for his desertion were obtained by The Associated Press.

Jenkins, originally from Rich Square, North Carolina, said Parrish died in 1996 of an abdominal infection. Abshier died of a heart attack in 1983. Dresnock still lives in the North.

From shortly after he crossed into North Korea in 1965 until 1972, Jenkins said, he lived in a house with the other three men. He did not say why the others left their units.

Jenkins, however, confessed that he deserted on January 5, 1965, because he was afraid of being shot patrolling the Demilitarised Zone and of being sent to Vietnam.

He said he had intended to somehow return to the United States, but soon realised North Korea was not going to let him go.

“For many years we lived in a one-room house that we all shared,” he said in the statement. “We slept on the floor. There was most often no electricity, and we had no running water. We were allowed to bathe once a month, though in the summer we bathed more often in the river.”

Jenkins said their “job” was to study – in Korean – the philosophy of Kim Il Sung, which they did for 10 hours a day. He said he and the other Americans called it “the study of class struggle from the perspective of a crazy man”.

“If we didn’t memorise enough, or were not able to recite portions of our studies on demand, we were then forced to study 16 hours a day on Sunday, which was our only day of rest,” he said.

“I longed to leave that place every day.”

Jenkins said he and the others tried to escape by seeking asylum in the Soviet embassy in 1966. Guards allowed them in, assuming they were Russian.

“Of course, when they found out who we were, they sent us out of the embassy, and none of us figured out why we weren’t shot by the North Koreans later on,” he said. “From then on, any time we did anything real stupid, we did it together, ’cause we figured they wouldn’t want to kill all the Americans at one time.”

By 1980, the three were allowed to live in houses of their own.

That year, Jenkins married Hitomi Soga, a Japanese who had been abducted by North Korean spies in 1978. Soga was allowed to return to Japan two years ago Jenkins and their two North Korea-born daughters joined her in July.

Jenkins said the North Koreans used Dresnock as an enforcer.

“The North Korean army often used Dresnock to beat the other three of us when we did wrong, though there were plenty of North Korean soldiers who put us down as well,” he said.

“I cannot remember how many times I was physically beaten during those times for this and that. I try not to think about that any more, and usually I don’t.”

He said he was close to Abshier.

“Of us all, he was the simplest, the most scared, and my closest friend. I looked over him like a big brother,” Jenkins said. “A little piece of me died that day when he left us.”