A former U.S. army sergeant who deserted to North Korea in the 1960s and who has begun a new life in his Japanese wife’s hometown has said he wants to become a Japanese citizen, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, was sentenced last month to a dishonourable discharge and 30 days confinement after saying he deserted from South Korea to the secretive communist state because he was frightened.
He was released on Nov. 27 after getting time off for good behaviour and arrived on Tuesday on the remote Japanese island of Sado to start what he said was the “last chapter” of his life with his wife and their two North Korean-born daughters.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said Jenkins and his daughters, Brinda, 19, and 21-year-old Mika, intended to apply for permanent residence in Japan and that Jenkins wanted to take Japanese citizenship, a process which can be difficult.
Jenkins, from Rich Square in North Carolina, was a 24-year-old sergeant when he deserted in January 1965 to North Korea while on patrol near the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. He said at his trial he had deserted to avoid hazardous duty in South Korea and escape combat in Vietnam.
He met and married Hitomi Soga, 20 years his junior, in North Korea after she was kidnapped by Pyongyang’s agents to help train spies. She was repatriated two years ago and the family was reunited last July.
“It is here on this island of Sado in Japan that I will hopefully live my remaining days with my wife and children,” he told a news conference on Tuesday as his wife and daughters sat by his side.