Last Surviving US Defector to North Korea Speaks Out

[AYOUB]

By Reuben Staines

Staff Reporter

 

At the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, four young U.S. soldiers disappeared from their units in South Korea and crossed the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into North Korea.

 

Two of the men later died of natural causes in the North. A third _ 64-year-old Charles Jenkins _ was allowed to leave Pyongyang last month to be reunited with his Japanese wife, an abductee who was released to her homeland two years earlier. The ailing Jenkins now may face U.S. court martial for desertion.

 

However, the fate of the fourth man, Private James Dresnok, was uncertain until Monday when two British filmmakers announced they had found him living happily in the North Korean capital and plan to make a documentary about his life.

 

Dresnok, who was 21 when he defected across the DMZ in August 1962, told the filmmakers he has enjoyed a simple life in the North.

 

``He hasn’t got any great yearning to get out of there,’’ said Nicholas Bonner, associate producer for the film, which will be called ``Crossing the Line.’’

 

During an interview in May, Dresnok agreed to appear in the documentary, saying he hoped it would help change negative perceptions of North Korea in the international media.

 

``They are human here,’’ the last surviving U.S. defector in the North told the filmmaker. ``The U.S. military teaches you they are evil communists, they have horns, they have fangs, they have red faces. I never believed such bullshit. Of course, there is an ideological difference, but that is the only difference.’’

 

Dresnok said he and the other American defectors had not been mistreated when they arrived in North Korea. ``We were under the supervision of the North Korean military. They took good care of us and they requested us to teach English to military personnel,’’ he explained.

 

The 63-year-old said he originally did not want to stay in Pyongyang, preferring to continue on to the Soviet Union. ``Having crossed, after a few months I began thinking it over and decided to remain,’’ he said.

 

Dresnok was identified along with Jenkins in the North Korean propaganda film ``Unsung Heroes’’ in 1996 but little else was known about his life after defecting.

 

Bonner, who has already made two documentaries in the North along with director Daniel Gordon, said he believed viewers would be fascinated by the story of the U.S. soldiers who turned their backs on the West. He declined to comment on whether Dresnok was free to leave North Korea, saying it would take away from the impact of the documentary.

 

Bonner said the film would attempt to present an unbiased account of the lives of Dresnok and the other U.S. defectors. ``We are certainly offering a different perspective. We are showing a part of Korean society never before shown,’’ he said.

 

While the North Korean government had arranged the interview with Dresnok, Bonner said he was sure it had not stage-managed the defector’s comments.

 

``We have never been restricted from filming anything we have requested or anything that we have come across during shooting. They have never censored our tapes,’’ he told The Korea Times.

 

Filming is scheduled to begin in September _ pending approval from Pyongyang _ and Bonner hopes to complete the documentary by next spring. ``A State of Mind,’’ a documentary Bonner and Gordon made about everyday life in the North, will screen at the Busan International Film Festival in October.

 

 

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr