US deserter returned to protect his family

[capt_buzzard]

Charles Jenkins, the US Army deserter who begins a new life in Japan today, said he fled North Korea after 40 years of self-imposed exile because he feared that Pyongyang would use his two daughters as spies.

Jenkin's tale spans a drunken winter defection from South Korea, film propaganda work for the communist Pyongyang regime and marriage to a Japanese woman who also had been kidnapped by North Korean agents as a young girl.

Jenkins (64) detailed aspects of his life in Pyongyang, including an incident in which North Korean officials objected to a US Army tattto and removed it with a knife and scissors in an operation without any anaesthetic.

Jenkins risked prison by turning himself in to the American authorities after four decades as a wanted man. He was scared that his two daughters would be employed as spies by Kim Jong 11, the North Korean Leader.

The Times (llondon)