The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea

By Thomas J. Moore

Book Overview

In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520253337
• ISBN13: 9780520253339
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Every man for Herself

It was a bit raw for me taste, but I will say that it is very entertaining. The characters leap off of the pages at you most of the visuals are raw much like the descriptions given.

It's Not Where You're From But Where You're Headed

In Maryann Reid's Every Man for Herself, Nina Bettus Raines is a 25-year old woman who desperately needs to make some changes in her life. Raised in Allswell, Texas by a mother who cared more for her young husband, than her daughter, Nina was raped by her stepfather repeatedly at a young age and later married a selfish and controlling husband. Nina's husband Trent was a sneaky man who posed as a minister, while he secretly...

(3.5 stars) Yesterday's Newspaper

Nina Bettus-Raines of Allswell, Texas, is considered a backward country girl. Nina's young life is overflowing with years of abuse and betrayal from her family. Now 25 years old, she's unhappily married and unable to catch her breath. It seems as if no one is ever interested in Nina's side of the story. In the five years that they've been married, her borrowing, fake-preaching husband Trent is always working some sort of scam...and...