A traffic sign on the Grand Unification Bridge which leads to the truce village Panmunjom, just south of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, on July 19.KIM HONG-JI/Reuters
At 11 p.m. on January 4, 1965, U.S. Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins set out on a patrol of the demilitarized zone separating South Korea from its totalitarian neighbour to the north. None of his men seemed to notice that Mr. Jenkins was almost quivering with fear, and dead drunk.
Fearing being sent to Vietnam, Mr. Jenkins planned to desert, and had downed 10 beers to get up the courage. Slipping away from his men, he tied a white t-shirt to his rifle and started walking across the DMZ. After several hours, he was picked up by a group of North Korean soldiers.
“My life, as I had known it for 24 years, was over,” Mr. Jenkins wrote in his memoir, The Reluctant Communist. He had hoped to be sent to the Soviet Union, but would instead spend the next four decades trapped in North Korea, one of several American deserters who had “assumed that they would be able to get out one way or another” only to be bitterly disappointed.
This week, another U.S. soldier – Private Travis T. King – crossed the DMZ, breaking away from a civilian tour group in the peace village of Panmunjom and sprinting over the de facto border. According to multiple reports, Mr. King was facing disciplinary action, following a stint in detention in South Korea, Korea, and had been due to board a flight home before absconding to join the tour group.
North Korea stays silent on its apparent detention of a U.S. soldier who bolted across the border
“We’re closely monitoring and investigating the situation,” U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Tuesday, adding Mr. King had “willfully and without authorization crossed the military demarcation line” at Panmunjom.
Writing Wednesday, Chad O’Carroll, the Seoul-based founder of analysis service NK Pro, said North Korea would likely release Mr. King “in relatively short order – though a lack of clear precedent means it’s still difficult to predict Pyongyang’s next steps.”
A South Korean military guard post from Imjingak peace park in the border city of Paju on July 19.JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
The last time an American apparently tried to defect to North Korea was in 2014, when Arturo Pierre Martinez crossed the border with China. He gave a press conference in Pyongyang in which he denounced U.S. policy, but was later quietly released and returned home.
Bruce Byron Lowrance also had a short stay in North Korean custody, after being detained on the Chinese border in October, 2018. He was released the following month, as an apparent show of good will from Pyongyang around talks between then U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
As part of negotiations that year, Mr. Trump also secured the release of three other American detainees – Kim Dong-chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song – who had spent more than a year in North Korea after being detained on espionage charges, which they and the U.S. said were false.
Other foreigners have not been so lucky. In late 2015, Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student from Ohio visiting North Korea as a tourist, was accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster and later sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. Mr. Warmbier was held for 17 months before suffering a medical emergency under uncertain circumstances. He was returned to the U.S. in a comatose state and died soon after his arrival.
Mr. Warmbier’s family maintains he was tortured while in custody, and a U.S. court found North Korea guilty in a wrongful death suit in 2018, ordering Pyongyang to pay US$500-million compensation. Other former detainees have spoken of abuse, malnutrition and forced labour during their time in custody.
Canadians too, have been detained in North Korea. In 2015, Hyeon Soo Lim, a Christian pastor who travelled to North Korea regularly on humanitarian missions, was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour after being accused of trying to overthrow the regime. He was finally released on health grounds in mid-2017, after intense lobbying from Ottawa.
“Historically, the North holds these folks for weeks, if not months, for propaganda purposes,” said Victor Cha, a former U.S. government official and Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It also sometimes requires an American official or ex-official to travel there to obtain the release.”
Communication between the two sides has broken down considerably since the historic Trump-Kim talks, however, and tapered off almost completely during the pandemic, when North Korea sealed itself off from the world, even leading the few foreign diplomats based in Pyongyang to leave.
Mr. King’s detention comes as a U.S. delegation led by White House Indo-Pacific co-ordinator Kurt Campbell is in Seoul for meetings with South Korean officials on North Korea’s nuclear program. Pyongyang greeted Mr. Campbell’s visit by launching two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan early Wednesday.
Mr. Jenkins – who died in 2017 aged 77 – was finally released thanks not to his own government, but that of Japan. During his time in North Korea, he had married Hitomi Soga, one of many Japanese nationals kidnapped by Pyongyang during the 1970s and ‘80s. Tokyo negotiated her release in 2002, and Mr. Jenkins was able to join two years later.
One of his fellow deserters, James Joseph Dresnok, remained in North Korea until his death. He repeatedly voiced support for Pyongyang and took part in propaganda films, a role his two sons continue to play today.
With reports from Reuters
James Griffiths