Four US soldiers fled to Korea nearly 50 years ago are arranged to marry female prisoners are foreigners.
On the night before bed, Charles Jenkins, an American soldier who fled to Korea in 1965, turned to Hitomi Soga, the Japanese woman he had arranged for him to marry, and kissed her three times. BBC.
"Oyasumi," he said in Japanese, meaning "good night". She responded in English in North Carolina, Jenkins' mother tongue.
"We do that to never forget who we are, where our hometown is," Jenkins wrote in his memoirs.
Their affair is painful, strange and attractive. Caught in an isolated country, famed for starvation and labor camps, the two come together through chance: matchmaking in prison.
Jenkins died on December 11, at the age of 77, stumbling into Korea on a fateful night in January 1965. The 24-year-old Jenkins is drunk and bored. As a US Army sergeant stationed in South Korea, Jenkins was afraid of being hit by bullets while crossing the border, or worse off being sent to Vietnam and dying there.
Jenkins admits fugitives are potentially dangerous, but he still hopes to apply for asylum at the Russian embassy and return to prison. However, fate left him arrested by the North. The four-decade-long challenge began.
Forced marriages
Jenkins was detained in a single room with three others who fled in 1962, James "Joe" Dresnok, a muscular man, up to two meters tall; Larry Abshier - allegedly the first American soldier to flee to Korea; and Jerry Parrish, 19, fled. Parrish said that if he returned home in Kentucky, his father-in-law claimed to have killed him.
Four people had to learn the thought of Kim Il Sung - the late Korean leader, 10 hours a day. In 1972, they separated in their own country and were called Korean citizens, despite being under surveillance.
They taught English at a military school, but Jenkins quickly got sacked because of the rustic voice of North Carolina. 4 people forced to play evil in a 20-episode propaganda film that made them famous in the world. They are also forced to marry female prisoners, both foreigners.
Jenkins believes that Pyongyang is implementing a spy training and production program, training Western-styled children as spies overseas.
While four US soldiers went to Korea in their own way, their wives did not. North Korea admitted only kidnapping Japanese citizens, but Jenkins said wives from different countries were kidnapped by secret agents.
Hitomi Soga, who later became Jenkins, was a 19-year-old nurse in 1978 when he was abducted from Sado Island in the western part of Japan. She was arrested as a teacher for teaching Korean to Korean agents. Her Japanese identity gives her a future he never expected.
When the couple married in 1980, Jenkins spent 15 years in Sambhong. At first, the two had nothing in common except for the hatred of the Koreans but as time passed, they began to fall in love.
For more than 22 years, Jenkins and Soga have always been happy with their marriage. They were grateful and gave birth to two daughters: Mika, now 35, and Brinda, two years younger than her. A turning point in life came to the family in 2002, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 70s and 80s.
Mr Kim said eight people were dead, agreeing to have the remaining five returned to Japan. They are two couples and Hitomi Soga. Jenkins is not allowed to go with his wife.
Japan understands and accepts citizens who are far from home. They never go back to Korea. Jenkins and his two daughters are separated from Soga. He knew that if he tried to reunite with his wife in Japan, he would be arrested by the US military and face life imprisonment.
Two years away, Jenkins can not wait. You and your children fly to Indonesia, where there is no extradition treaty with the United States, to meet Soga. Finally, under the encouragement of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the time, Jenkins said he would defy the risk of being sentenced by the tribunal and dying in jail for family reunion.
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Jenkins reunion with his wife at jakarta airport, Indonesia in June 2004. Photo: AFP.
On September 11, 2004, a defector ferried from a hospital van to a Zama camp on the outskirts of Tokyo. Jenkins looks older than the age of 64. Wearing gray suits, bare hands, he greeted soldiers with an American military officer.
"Hi, I'm Sergeant Jenkins, I came to see you," he said.
Jenkins was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment for fleeing and helping the enemy (his time in English), but only served 25 days for good behavior. He is said to have revealed everything he knew about Korea in exchange for leniency.
"I made a big mistake in my life but putting two daughters out of Korea was one of the right things I did," Jenkins said.
Until the moment of his death, Jenkins believed that North Korea wanted to train spy girls. The top two language schools that the children attended were trained
