US deserter pleads guilty
2004-11-03 08:13
Camp Zama - An American soldier who vanished from his army unit in 1965 pleaded guilty on Wednesday to deserting the military and fleeing to North Korea to avoid dangerous duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The plea - part of a bargain with United States military officials to win Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins a lesser sentence - was a major step in unravelling a Cold War mystery that began when he disappeared from his post and defected to communist North Korea four decades ago.
Sentencing was expected later in the day.
"Ma'am, I am in fact guilty," Jenkins told the judge, Colonel Denise Vowell, in sometimes tearful testimony before a court-martial at this US army camp outside of Tokyo. He also pleaded guilty to aiding the enemy by teaching English to military cadets in the 1980s.
Started drinking
Jenkins, however, denied that he advocated the overthrow of the United States in propaganda broadcasts, and pleaded innocent to charges of making disloyal statements. Vowell dropped those accusations against him.
The frail 64-year-old turned himself into US military authorities on September 11, two months after he left Pyongyang and came to Japan for medical treatment. Tokyo has called for leniency in his case so he could live in Japan with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, and their two daughters.
In full uniform for the court-martial, Jenkins wept as he described his depression, fears of death and heavy drinking in the days leading up to his January 5, 1965 disappearance from his unit.
He said he was afraid of being transferred to dangerous daytime patrols in the Demilitarised Zone between the two Koreas, or worse: Vietnam.
"I started to fear something for myself, but I started to fear even more that I might cause other soldiers to be killed. I started to drinking alcohol," he said, breaking down in tears. "I never drank so much before."
After 10 days of planning, he headed for North Korea with a white tee-shirt tied to his rifle as a surrender flag.
Jenkins said he was harshly mistreated in North Korea and forced to teach English to military cadets from 1981 until 1985, adding that refusing to do so would have brought "hardship to me and my family that would never end."
Longest desertion saga
Soga, a Japanese citizen who married Jenkins after she was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978, also pleaded with the court for leniency, saying that Jenkins had provided for his family despite gruelling conditions in North Korea.
The court-martial is the climax to one of the army's longest desertion sagas. Though army deserters from the 1940s are still being sought, no deserter or desertion suspect has surrendered after as long an absence as Jenkins.
Jenkins joined the army as a teenager, received a Good Conduct Award after his first tour of duty in South Korea in 1961 and rose to the rank of sergeant.
- AP