AMERICAN SERVICEMAN CONFIRMED ALIVE IN NORTH KOREA!!! (BREAKING)

Associated Press ^ | 2 October 2002 | Yuri Kageyama

[AmericanInTokyo]

TOKYO (AP) -- An American serviceman who defected to North Korea later married a Japanese woman who had been abducted by North Korean agents, and both are now living in the North's capital, Pyongyang, a senior Japanese official said Wednesday.

[AmericanInTokyo]

What a strange twist. Of course, North Korea is lying about how the various kidnapped Japanese (who were young) died in North Korea (natural disasters, suicides, car accidents, disease) and their bodies never found. This follows on the PFC JAMES T. WHITE case, a young Army soldier that defected in the DMZ in 1982, and then was reported by N. Korea to his parents has having died in a 'swimming accident' in the Pottangang River, his body never recovered. My theory--he freaked out and came to his senses and wanted to go home, and the KPA had no choice but to 'terminate his assignment'. "Body never found"--indeed.

[Iwentsouth]

Should be former US Serviceman.

I wonder how he came to marry a kidnapped woman? Was she brainwashed or a comfort woman for this disgusting traiter.

[Drango]

was one of four Americans who deserted their Army posts in

Who cares about him? I sure don't.

[VOA]

What a strange twist.

No kidding.
I about freaked out when reading the story of the Japanese girl (age 13?) that
the North Koreans say they snatched off the streets of Copenhagen while she was
on tour.

Given I grew up listening to the stories of a man who survived the march to Bataan
(my father's co-worker), I admit my first reflex was to say "now Japan knows how it feels
to be abused by a foreign power".
But I soon came to my senses and realized that we should simply give them
sympathy and say "welcome to the club" of peaceable countries abused by totalitarian @ssholes.

[Redbob]

F*ck Jenkins.

[dd5339]

Ping

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Sady, we find that every time the NK's want something, they give us the bones of US war dead.

[Poohbah]

Why should I care if this traitorous piece of s**t is alive?

[Publius6961]

I have no problem with these "disatisfied "americans".
At least they are consitent in their criticisms of their home country.

I wish more dissidents would do the same.

[hchutch]

Hear, hear.

"We have a treason warrant for Mr. Jenkins. Hand him over."

[rogerthedodger]

So that we can prepare the firing squad.

[Poohbah]

Why waste the ammunition? Just find a rope and a suitably tall tree.

[El Sordo]

Upon reading the title I thought this was a POW, not a traitorous bastard....

[Drango]

Apparently Jim McDermott meet a cute, Burka clad gal while he was in Bagdad. We can only hope he'll do the same as Jenkins.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Deserter or no deserter, the guy ('piece of s..t' as you say) needs to be repriated to face USA justice, and debriefing on the fates of other Americans up there. Of course, if we ever get him back, he would probably 'slip and fall on a mountain climbing expedition on the slopes of Mr. Kumgang, body never to be retrieved', according to the NKs....

[FormerLurker]

Why would an American serviceman want to "defect" to that rathole? It makes one wonder if he wan't in fact kidnapped himself, but they're claiming that he "defected" in order to save face. After a bit of brainscrubbing, I'm sure that he'd say whatever they tell him to say..

[AmericanInTokyo]

North Korea cannot be trusted on anything. Unless there were witnesses in the guys' unit that saw them walk willingly over the line (like Pfc White) or otherwise talk bolshevist crap in the quonset hut before going over, we can assume that the North Koreans could VERY WELL HAVE KIDNAPPED THEM somehow, precisely what they did to Japanese walking on beaches or making out in parking lots in Western Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. North Korea needed both international saavy spies, and English and Japanese instructors. Of course, due to brainwashing or threats of having their entire family wiped out if they returned to America, there will be no motivation for them to talk with US consular officials in Pyongyang if they were ever given the chance.

[marshmallow]

When I first saw the headline I thought this was about POWs or MIAs. Now I see it's really about deserters. These guys are voluntarily in Norh Korea. Good for them. Forty years in that hell-hole is punishment in itself.

What fools.

[AntiGuv]

That's exactly what I was thinking myself. I cannot conceive of any reason why an American serviceman would defect to North Korea. If the North Koreans can kidnap Japanese girls from Europe, it's certainly not strange to think that they can snatch the occasional soldier in the DMZ.

[pops88]

Why would an American serviceman want to "defect" to that rathole? It makes one wonder if he wan't in fact kidnapped himself, but they're claiming that he "defected" in order to save face.

No kidding. It's a real head scratcher.

[Numbers Guy]

That's exactly what I was thinking myself. I cannot conceive of any reason why an American serviceman would defect to North Korea. If the North Koreans can kidnap Japanese girls from Europe, it's certainly not strange to think that they can snatch the occasional soldier in the DMZ.

We shouldn't be assuming that these guys defected until we *know* they defected.

Being AWOL is not proof of defection; they very well may have been ambushed and taken. Maybe they were off the base without permission and were grabbed but didn't defect.

People here shouldn't jump to conclusions. Just because there's certainly a possibility, even a probability, that they defected doesn't mean that other alternatives are possible.

The other issue is the number of past credible reports of elderly white men teaching English to North Korean soldiers, far more than four possible defectors. In other words, American POWs who were never returned after the Korean War ended.

[Dead Dog]

The question is, are they infact deserters or were they taken like the Japanese. From what I've heard about American in the 1960s, especially in the military, this is highly unlikely...especially to have lost almost 1 per year during this period..then none after. Something doesn't make sense.

[Poohbah]

I cannot conceive of any reason why an American serviceman would defect to North Korea.

You've never seen what the unit s**tbirds will do to get away from the wrath of the company "first shirt."

[Drango]

The question is, are they infact deserters or were they taken like the Japanese

If they didn't desert it's indeed another story.

5¢ a day will fund the filth at Salon. What will you donate to FreeRepublic?

[Thane_Banquo]

Maybe North Korea will ship this cowardly traitor back to the states so he can enjoy a proper hanging.

[Dead Dog]

sh!tbirds are a unique species, and from what I've seen, they average about 1.5 per platoon. I've always assumed these were the ones that show up to antiwar rallies in partial uniform.

[thunderdome]

Reality bump.

This is not in the local Korean news though:
http://www.kcna.co.jp/contents/01.htm#2

I like the dateline in that link:
"Pyongyang, October 1 (KCNA) -- The U.S. imperialist warmongers"...

[r9etb]

Soga was abducted from Japan's secluded Sado island while shopping with her mother in August 1978.

This is just plain wierd. There's no rational reason to do something like this (not that Kim Il Sung, or his handsome son are rational).

I suppose in some twisted way they might have seen this as revenge for Japan's use of Korean "comfort women."

It's also possible, I suppose, that there have been many Japanese who were kidnapped, brainwashed, and repatriated as spies -- and that the missing ones were the ones who washed out of spy school....

[OldFriend]

He was a defector.............let him rot there.

[cynicom]

Recall this happened during the "60s".

[Loyalist]

If he defected, let him die there. He isn't worth the rope and I doubt the North Koreans, paranoid and secretive as they are, would have let him know anything about other Americans in North Korea.

If he was kidnapped, put every pressure on North Korea to turn over him and any other Americans who were either unreleased POW's or kidnapped.

There is just not enough information to determine whether these men went to North Korea willingly.

[Bon mots]

Can we send them Jane Fonda? Maybe Ted Turner too?

[Puppage]

Cowardly, traitor bump!

[cynicom]

Bon...

I can tolerate these boys much easier than the ones that ran to Canada or sandbagged their duty totally like Clinton and others. At least these soldiers admitted upfront, as to what they were, by defecting. Not too much difference between them and the other cowards.

[FormerLurker]

Recall this happened during the "60s".

During the early to mid 60's, there was a strong patiotic fervor amongst those that entered the service. It wasn't until the late 60's and early 70's that the anti-war movement really picked up steam..

In fact, I'd say the anti-war demonstrations didn't really ratchet up the rhetoric until Woodstock, which took place in 1968. The student killings at Kent State occured in 1970, and Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam in 1972..

As Jenkins entered the service in 1965, my guess would be that there is more to this than is being reported. We can't assume that a US serviceman would simply want to desert his country and live in a hellpit such as North Korea for no reason. This is especially true after we take into consideration the fact that North Korea HAS kidnapped various persons in the past..

[robowombat]

In the White case I think a viable alternative explanation is that White was happy to shift his allegiance and underwent plastic surgery to alter his features enough that no one who knew him in his previous life would be able to positively recognise him.

He was given several years of intense trainin in the people's paradise during which time his keepers could make a determination of his reliability. After training was finished he was set up in some sort of NK front company in the orient, possibly Hong Kong, and provided anmple spending money and a luxurios apartment. His initial intelligence tasks were simple so his capacity could be monitored. The monitoring and mentoring was done through a very attractive Korean female that was an employee of the front company and soon moved in with our boy.

If he progressed adequately more tasks were given him of a progressively more difficult nature. If he was a flop he could have been pulled out of Hong Kong harbor after being filled with drink and drugs and dumped over the side one cold night.

The goal of his training was/is to advance him to a position in Europe or the US for intelligence gathering or technology transfer purposes. He may now be back in this country. Consider how easy it has been for obvious suspicious foreigners to establish themselves here. How much easier to plant a cuckoo who was originally an American.

The Chinese and the NK's know that their agents will always stand out in the west so the next best thing is a westerner who has been turned.They can never fully trust them but they can worm their way in places no oriental could without causing comment. What happened to the attractive female mentor. She is probably still with White if their personalities clicked. They probably have a couple children now.

Just think this couple could live right down the street from you in some nice suburb in Silicon Valley or Austin or some other tech center. That's right the friendly fellow down the street with the pretty oriental wife and the nice high achieving kids. A fantasy, maybe-maybe not.

[wallcrawlr]

Why is it news today if we knew about it in 1996?

[cynicom]

Former...

The 1960s ushered in Camelot and the feel good era of free love and sex etc etc. These young men certainly did not defect north for reasons of ideology or from fear of combat as there was none.

Clinton and the other cowards openly stated their reasons, they loved self more than duty to country, so they are still among us.

For whatever reason the defectors went north, they have paid for their deeds. Clinton and the Canada people are enjoying the fruits of their cowardice.

[Iwentsouth]

When he dashed across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea while on a U.S. Army patrol on Jan. 5, 1965, Jenkins left behind a good-bye note in his barracks.

"Dear Mother: I am sorry for the trouble I will cause you," he wrote, according to Army records released to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. "I know what I will have to do. I am going to North Korea.
Tell family I love them very much."

The Army later issued court-martial charges against Jenkins after determining that he had participated in North Korean propaganda broadcasts in which he said he enjoyed life in the communist North and urged U.S. soldiers in the South to desert.



There some info on google about him.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=charles+jenkins+north+korea+propaganda&spell=1

[My2Cents]

Axis of Evil ping.

[Caesar Soze]

If he defected, let him die there. [...] If he was kidnapped, put every pressure on North Korea to turn over him and any other Americans who were either unreleased POW's or kidnapped.

Heck, why not kidnap him back? Or at least establish contact once he's found? NK will be opening a walled-off capitalist city, CIA has been recruiting a Korean Language Officer/s for months ... once that "Westernized" city is opened up, it should be child's play to recruit Korean agents or put in illegals of our own. If he wants out, we send over another Candian movie crew. If he doesn't, well, other options can be considered.

[AntiGuv]

Yeah, but to North Korea?! Remember the four guys that were snatched briefly by Iraq and then returned? Or the three guys that were snatched by Yugoslavia? There's no telling what might've happened. I'm just unprepared to assume that they defected just because the North Koreans say so....

[Travis McGee]

Ping.

[Poohbah]

Yeah, but to North Korea?! Remember the four guys that were snatched briefly by Iraq and then returned? Or the three guys that were snatched by Yugoslavia? There's no telling what might've happened. I'm just unprepared to assume that they defected just because the North Koreans say so....

Quit looking at this through 2002 eyes and look at it through 1965 eyes. A lot of poorer red-diapered babies were drafted.

[AntiGuv]

Yes, that's an excellent point - and the note mentioned above changes the picture considerably for me. Sorry, I hadn't read that post yet.

[AntiGuv]

Which, incidentally, leads me to note that the penalties for treason are quite clear....

[fourdeuce82d]

Anybody remember that American dentist who "defected" to the Soviet Union in the mid 80's with his family? Wonder whatever happened to him...

[FormerLurker]

When he dashed across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea while on a U.S. Army patrol on Jan. 5, 1965, Jenkins left behind a good-bye note in his barracks.

Do you have a link to that info, I can't seem to find one...

Although, notes can and have been forged on more than one occasion. Any reference that indicates the handwriting was verified as his?

[TonyRo76]

Upon reading the title I thought this was a POW, not a traitorous bastard....

IMO this Jenkins jerk is right up there with Jihad Johnny--or even worse, given that he was enlisted in the service of our country. He needs to face a U.S. court-martial for treason, and then a firing squad.

[AmericanInTokyo]

I have come across the actual name of the North Korean school in municipal Pyongyang (actually it is a language institute) where former American soldiers are said to be still there, teaching English to North Korean diplomats and spies. One can assume they are socialists and there by their own volition; one can assume they were kidnapped and either held against their will, or in fact brainwashed. We should be careful on this one where we come down in judgement. The best way is to try to figure out a way to get them out of there before they are executed.