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American Freed by N. Korea Relishes Celebrity in Japan
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Frederick writes in the book's foreword: "I thought it would have been ideal if he had lived a life of decadent privilege at the right hand of Kim Jong Il, if he had acted as a kind of court jester in the Dear Leader's inner circle."
But Jenkins had no such privilege, no such access, no such life. He is not a court jester. He is not a shrewd political observer. By his own description, he is an ill-educated guy who walked the wrong way.
He grew up in a large, poor family in the small, poor town of Rich Square, N.C. His father was a drinker who died early, and his mother was a nurse who struggled to feed seven kids. Jenkins did poorly in school and joined the National Guard at 15 after lying about his age.
Soon, he joined the Army and was sent off to South Korea to prowl around as leader of a "killer hunter team" along the DMZ, the stupendously well-guarded border between the two Koreas. While there in 1965, he grew unhappy with his dangerous job. He also had heard rumors that he was soon to be sent to Vietnam.
"I gave in to the worst side of myself," he says in the book. "I attempted to run from all of my problems rather than confront them head-on like a man and a soldier."
He walked into North Korea at night, stupidly assuming that because it was a communist country, it would turn him over to the Soviet Union, which would turn him back over to the U.S. government.
Instead, he became a Cold War trophy who outlasted the Cold War, a semi-privileged captive in a country that, with each passing decade, grew poorer, more isolated, more paranoid and more threatening to the rest of the world.
Jenkins makes no attempt in his book to explain why this happened. He doesn't have a clue. He is not that kind of guy.
The power of his story is in the details of his life. It was unspeakably boring, as well as depressing, drunken, hungry, cold, maddening and painful.
Speaking of pain: One warm summer day, while teaching English in a military school, Jenkins showed up for work in short sleeves. A "US Army" tattoo was visible on his left forearm. This upset the Communist Party cadre there.
Doctors were called in to cut off the tattoo, without benefit of anesthetics. Several cadres held Jenkins down, while a doctor used a scalpel to slice skin above and below the tattoo. Then, as Jenkins screamed, the doctor pulled up the intolerably tattooed skin and cut it off with scissors.
It should be noted that Jenkins is the only source for this and nearly all the other stories he tells about his life in North Korea. He does, though, have a wicked scar on his left forearm.
