TOKYO – 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 to 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 again.
Shedding new light on a bizarre Cold War tale, former U.S. Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins told a court-martial this week 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 U.S. military authorities in September after nearly 40 years in the secretive communist state. He was convicted of desertion and aiding the enemy, and began serving a 30-day sentence Wednesday.
His confession detailed decades of virtual imprisonment for himself and the others: Pvt. Larry Abshier of Urbana, Ill., who the military says went missing in 1962 at age 19; Cpl. Jerry Parrish of Morganfield, Ky., who is accused of deserting in 1963 at age 19; and James Dresnock of Richmond, Va., 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 said in a dramatic statement read to the court by his military lawyer.
Jenkins, a native of Rich Square, N.C., said Parrish died in 1996 of an abdominal infection. Abshier died of a heart attack in 1983. Dresnock still lives in North Korea.
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 Jan. 5, 1965, because he was afraid of being shot while patrolling the Demilitarized Zone and of being sent to Vietnam. Jenkins, now a frail 64-year-old, said he intended to return to the United States. He soon realized North Korea wasn’t 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 or more 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 memorize 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.”
Despite being under the constant watch of a “political leader,” the four organized other little rebellions that could have cost them their lives.
“During the first 10 years or so, our political leader lived directly in our home,” Jenkins said. “Once, when he was gone, we snuck up into the attic to see if we could scrounge some old electrical insulators. I was secretly building a fishing net to increase our food supply, and I needed the insulators as weights.” In the attic, he said, “We found microphones everywhere, and realized that the leader was taping everything we said between us.”
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 anymore, 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.
Associated Press
Sgt. Charles Jenkins attends a court-martial rehearsal Tuesday, a day before his hearing at Camp Zama, Japan.
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