I'm glad he and his family are finally out of North Korea | The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion,...

Surprising | The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea | Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick

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	• The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick University of California Press, 2008 - 232 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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In a way, a happy ending

I picked up the book out of curiosity and now am glad that I read it. Before reading the book, I thought of him as a strange man who defected to North Korea of all places, lived the good life as the token trophy, and now decided that he had had enough. I now feel more sympathy for his plight as he's revealed as a man whose momentary stupidity consigned him to forty years in hell. I was touched by his courtship of his wife, who was even more grievously wronged (at least he walked in with his two feet), and am glad to know that they are doing well in their new lives in Japan. A fascinating personal glimpse into the most isolated, brainwashed place in the world.

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I'm glad he and his family are finally out of North Korea

In this fascinating and quick-paced book, Jenkins answers questions that have nagged many people for 39 years. Why did he cross over to North Korea? Did he work against US interests while in North Korea (including being an interpreter in the capture of the USS Pueblo)? Did he want to be that kind of a communist? Did he want to leave North Korea?

Along the way to learning the answers to the questions above, the reader gets a chilling glimpse inside the closed-off country that proves to be at least as backwards and brutal as we understand it to be. We learn about how he met Hitomi Soga, his wife, and the life they endured with their two daughters. Contrary to the accusations made by many scorned Americans, he wasn't living in the lap of luxury as a treasured guest of Kim Il-sung. He had it better than most North Koreans did, but it was far from a life any of us would want. These were the consequences suffered by a man of quite limited aptitude (why did the Army have somebody like him on the DMZ) who, by his own admission, made a cowardly decision for the wrong reasons.

I believe the Army's decision to give him a light one-month sentence in exchange for whatever information he had was appropriate. Jenkins says he was treated well, and his wife and daughters were even given dependent privileges until his discharge. I was happy to see the Army resolve this situation so honorably. Jenkins returned to the US to visit his family and now lives in his wife's hometown in Japan. Many aspects of his terrible mistake will always be with him, but I'm glad he has the opportunity to move on.

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Surprising

To be honest, I got this book with the idea that I would hate the main character, Jenkins, a defector I had heard of from the bad old days. However, his life after walking north and his confession that it was all done out of cowardice and criminal stupidity won me over somewhat. I understand considerably more about the decision-making process which allowed him to do relatively light punishment upon his return.

This book is very insightful about the corrupt society of communsim in general and the fantasy world that the DPRK has constructed for itself in North Korea.

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In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.

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