Drone_pilot
01-06-04, 11:01
The last person you might expect to find in North Korea is an American soldier, especially one who has chosen to stay there voluntarily.
But Charles Robert Jenkins has been in the isolated North since 1965. When offered a ticket to Tokyo by visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last month, he refused.
He desperately wants to be reunited with his Japanese wife, who returned to her homeland in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted kidnapping her and several others in the 1970s.
But if he joined her, he would risk arrest by the US military, which accuses him of desertion.
The 62-year-old American GI disappeared from duty on 5 January 1965, when he was serving in South Korea to help guard the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
He was leading a patrol near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), when he told his platoon he was going to investigate a noise. He never came back.
Days later, his arrival in North Korea was broadcast over the loudspeakers on the DMZ, according to Nobuharu Kumada, a Japanese man who says he served with Mr Jenkins.
BBC Read More (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3753967.stm)
But Charles Robert Jenkins has been in the isolated North since 1965. When offered a ticket to Tokyo by visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last month, he refused.
He desperately wants to be reunited with his Japanese wife, who returned to her homeland in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted kidnapping her and several others in the 1970s.
But if he joined her, he would risk arrest by the US military, which accuses him of desertion.
The 62-year-old American GI disappeared from duty on 5 January 1965, when he was serving in South Korea to help guard the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
He was leading a patrol near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), when he told his platoon he was going to investigate a noise. He never came back.
Days later, his arrival in North Korea was broadcast over the loudspeakers on the DMZ, according to Nobuharu Kumada, a Japanese man who says he served with Mr Jenkins.
BBC Read More (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3753967.stm)