WELDON, N.C., June 20 -- Army deserter Charles Jenkins said Monday that he regrets leaving his post for North Korea, where he spent nearly 40 years, and called the communist country's leader, Kim Jong Il, "an evil man."
At his sister's home here, Jenkins, 65, said he lived under harsh conditions in North Korea and never expected to see his mother, Pattie, 91, again. They were reunited last week.
Jenkins defected in 1965. "I let my soldiers down. I let the U.S. Army down. I let the government down, and I made it very difficult for my family in the United States to live," Jenkins said in a story posted on the Raleigh News & Observer's Web site.
