A Harrowing Tale of Desertion and Redemption

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	• The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick University of California Press, 2008 - 232 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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In a way, a happy ending

I picked up the book out of curiosity and now am glad that I read it. Before reading the book, I thought of him as a strange man who defected to North Korea of all places, lived the good life as the token trophy, and now decided that he had had enough. I now feel more sympathy for his plight as he's revealed as a man whose momentary stupidity consigned him to forty years in hell. I was touched by his courtship of his wife, who was even more grievously wronged (at least he walked in with his two feet), and am glad to know that they are doing well in their new lives in Japan. A fascinating personal glimpse into the most isolated, brainwashed place in the world.

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Pretty pathetic story in all accounts

There is two sides to a coin with this book. On one side is the the story of author who turned out to be pretty pathetic individual in nature. He is a man who not only disgraced himself but his nation and uniform he wore. So fearful was he of being a soldier that he drank and ran to the enemy of his nation. His outlooks on his decision to go AWOL to the North Koreans borderline on a criminal stupidity. I would say that he deserves every minute of North Korean hospitality he had to endured.

Then there is the other side of the coin, an interesting look at the life and times inside of North Korea, one of the most despotic nations on the planet, rule by someone even more pathetic then the author. I found this part of the book to be utterly interesting and worth reading. Anyone thinking about repeating the author's ill-advise decision to flee to North Korea should be deter by what is written here. However, even as I was reading it, I can't help but feel that I am being whitewashed here. That the author isn't writing everything truthful and he is definitely holding things back.

The author is living in Japan now with his Japanese wife, a forgiving nation thanks to his wife who was kidnapped by the North Korean government. The US military let him go easy although he got 30 days and dishonorable discharge. No doubt, they must have concluded that he suffered enough under the North Korean tutelage.

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A Harrowing Tale of Desertion and Redemption

The Reluctant Communist is the harrowing tale of Charles Robert Jenkins' life in North Korea following his desertion from the US Army in 1965. The story is bookended with an exposition of his life before desertion and his ultimate escape in 2003 and new life in Japan.

On the book's cover, we see Jenkins staring out from the cover of the Reluctant Communist with a near-expressionless face that belies the gripping tale he tells inside. It's part biography, part confession, part travelogue, part political history, part prodigal son, and ALL thriller. The work brings to vivid life the struggle of the individual against a profoundly evil socialist state.

Jenkins teamed with Jim Frederick of Time to write the book. The co-author manages to keep himself in the background for most of the story, limiting himself to the Foreword and to organizing Jenkins' tale into a coherent whole. To his credit, Frederick's discipline helps to retain the plain talk of Jenkins and lend the story an authentic voice, while still moving the story forward at a nice clip.

Frederick, hailing from Time Magazine, stumbles once when he inserts gratuitous references to America's racist past in the passages leading up to the desertion. But, thankfully, this PC irrelevancy isn't enough to veer the story over the cliff, and is redeemed by everything that follows.

The book could have benefited from a few maps, photos, and/or sketches to personalize the story. Without doubt, there is atill an untold but related story of Japanese abductees. One hopes Frederick will tackle that next, since he glosses over this here. But, these are quibbles in an otherwise gripping yarn. Do not miss this book!

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reviews: page 1, 2

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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