U.S. deserter describes hardship

By Seattle Times wire services

Charles Jenkins was sentenced to 30 days.

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CAMP ZAMA, Japan — Charles Robert Jenkins, the former U.S. soldier who was given a 30-day jail sentence for deserting to North Korea, testified about four decades of harrowing conditions in the communist country that were widely conceded to be worse than a prison term.

Jenkins, 64, wept frequently during his court-martial at this U.S. military camp near Tokyo. He said that he was kept in conditions of near-starvation and that the North Koreans removed the U.S. Army tattoo from his forearm with scissors — and without anesthesia.

Jenkins and three other former soldiers lived in a one-room house without electricity or water, were watched constantly by minders and were sometimes forced to beat one another.

The military judge, Col. Denise Vowell, recommended Jenkins' jail time be suspended. If the military accepts that recommendation, Jenkins would be released from a naval facility in Yokosuka, Japan. He also was reduced in rank from sergeant to private and dishonorably discharged.

Many in the Pentagon had wished for Jenkins to receive a harsher sentence, but Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government pushed for leniency so that Jenkins could be reunited with his wife, Hitomi Soga.

Soga, a hugely sympathetic figure in Japan, married Jenkins after she was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978. She was released two years ago.

In full military dress for the proceedings, Jenkins wept as he described his depression, fears of death and heavy drinking in the days leading up to his desertion.

He said he began thinking of fleeing because he was afraid he would be transferred to dangerous daytime "hunt and kill" patrols in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, and feared he could not lead a squad into fighting.

"I started drinking alcohol," he said, bursting into tears. "I never drank so much before."
 
Jenkins, who joined the National Guard at 15 and the Army at 18, said he was also convinced he would be sent to Vietnam.

"I knew Vietnam was combat, and jungle warfare," he told the court. "I'd never been in the jungle in my life. How could I lead soldiers there?"

Jenkins said he intended to ask the North Koreans to send him to the Soviet Union, and thought he would then be returned to the United States. Instead, he said, he was treated harshly in North Korea, forced to appear in propaganda films and to teach English to military cadets from 1981 until 1985. He said refusing to do so would have brought "hardship to me and my family that would never end."

His only joy, he said, was his love for his wife and daughters.

Soga pleaded with the court for leniency. "He loved us, his family, from his heart," she said. "I felt that he protected me."

Jenkins became the focus of intense negotiations in 2002, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted Soga had been abducted. She and four other abductees were allowed to return to Japan that year, but Jenkins and his daughters — Mika, now 21, and Brinda, now 19 — stayed behind until coming here in July.

Compiled from reports by the Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers.