The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
Mar 2008 · Univ of California Press
4.7star
9 reviews
Ebook
238
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About this ebook
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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4.7
9 reviews
Dameon Fowler
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December 19, 2022
The love he found. The humorous events inside this weird cult. Pretty cooks to random guards stomping around. All pretty amazing but I would think he could have given a little more detail on his surroundings. He lived there for forty years and I guess the people he was allowed to talk to was limited plus a lot of classroom brainwashing drained up his time but I would of loved to hear some sad eye sights from starving or horrifying executions. Oh, I absolutely would have killed for a paragraph or two on those propaganda books he was forced to memorize! I can't get any commie propaganda books anywhere! 😡 Sweet man. Sweet wife. Sweet family. Can't believe his wife is living without this man. Must be the hardest thing to deal with. Rest in peace! You deserve it sweet guy! Great little peek into what a rough and tough American may see when stumbling drunk into North Korea. Just wish it covered a little more than his main life events but it's still an essential for a peek into the Juche Way. 🙇
About the author
Charles Robert Jenkins is a former United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004. He now lives in Japan. Jim Frederick was Time magazine's Tokyo bureau chief from 2002 to 2006 and is now a Time senior editor stationed in London.
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